As President Joe Biden’s campaign scrambles to calm nerves about the president’s disastrous debate performance, Democrats on Capitol Hill are growing increasingly furious at those around him and increasingly despondent about his prospects for re-election — and their own chances of winning House and Senate majorities.
Conversations about a strategy shift are already underway, with some Democratic lawmakers and many deep-pocketed donors plotting how, should Biden continue in the race, to ensure a congressional check on a second Donald Trump term.
“The way I’m talking to my donors is: The House is the last firewall, folks. We have to flip the House,” one frontline House Democrat told Playbook last night. “Ninety-nine percent of the people I talked to can’t get their credit card out fast enough.”
But make no mistake: The despair and frustration are real, and it is pushing upward inside the party. It has been felt acutely by frontline members — the swing-district Democrats who would be the cornerstone of any majority. Donors blew up their phones over the weekend, with some prodding them to go public with a group letter calling for a new candidate, an idea that some discussed over the weekend.
I know the word “rigged” is overused in politics these days but I’m not sure how else to describe the method the RNC and DNC use to select candidates. We have a matchup of historically unpopular individuals who were both President already, and yet most feel as though there was an inevitable quality to each receiving his party’s nomination.
I live in a primary state where party registration is arbitrary and I could have easily participated in the process for either major party (just providing this background lest I be accused of being something I’m not). Problem is, by the time it rolls around to my state, the momentum of previous caucuses and primaries has all but secured the nomination already and my ability to influence the process is effectively zero.
The DNC and RNC have created a system of managed coronation disguised as some sort of democratic process. And what’s worse is they now set the precedent of rigged debates designed to exclude meaningful alternatives. If they have a second debate they’ll probably make up something about minimum Twitter mentions or shoelace color to purposely exclude RFK and other 3rd party candidates again.