And Yet…

A lot can happen in 24 hourshttps://t.co/E5V1CxHFS7

— Adrienne LaFrance (@AdrienneLaF) July 18, 2024

"It's really incumbent on people around Joe Biden to step up at this point and help the man they love — Joe Biden deserves better. He deserves better than he is getting from those closest to him."

— @JoeNBC advice to Biden's inner circle, as calls for him to drop out intensify pic.twitter.com/s9VZ1v7IGI

— Morning Joe (@Morning_Joe) July 18, 2024

SCOOP: Barack Obama has told allies in recent days Joe Biden’s path to victory has greatly diminished and he believes the president needs to seriously consider the viability of his candidacy.

The two presidents have only spoken once since debatehttps://t.co/pCdatCrjIr

— Tyler Pager (@tylerpager) July 18, 2024

I’m still getting fundraising emails from Biden-Harris. It’s gonna fall with a dull thud if it turns out Obama IS running Biden’s presidency and Biden says “Fuck it, I quit!”

Why haven’t we had a national conversation about the former president’s mental health?

Because too many people—including and especially in the media—have been too afraid to have it.

But we’re going to have the conversation anyway. Follow us at @PsychoPAC24. pic.twitter.com/SFFou1pDHU

— George Conway (@gtconway3d) July 18, 2024

And then we have this discussion? Yeah, I don’t think so.

Thunderdome follows. And who’s the great organizer who hand-picks Kamala and smooths everything over by August? So far the only organizing principle I see is “GET BIDEN!” And once the baying hounds catch that car? 

Biden releases his delegates and tells them to back Harris? On what authority, then, do they act? She can get the money? She can stay on the ballot? She can win the voters she couldn’t win in 2020? The polls approve? If you command it, they will vote in November? Or will Democrats do what they did in 2016 and refuse to play, because the “party leaders” said “Fuck you”?

Tell me how many polls have elected a President in recent memory. Tell me this isn’t 2016 redux. Tell me the “leadership” and donors of the Democratic Party aren’t a pack of fools and idiots who don’t understand electoral politics at all.

And when this fails, will those “party leaders” take responsibility? Or will they blame Biden for running at all, and not bowing out soon enough? (Reports are Pelosi wants Biden to withdraw to save his legacy. And if the Dems lose anyway? Gimme a break.) Will Harris be the new Hillary, the pariah who lost to Trump again? Honestly, what’s in it for her? She’d be smarter to start picking up the pieces in 2025. She’s too young to end her career now.

And Biden voters? When he wimps and walks, do they just do the work for a candidate-to-be-named beyond Thunderdome? Does it matter what they think?

These “Masters of the Universe aren’t the masters they think they are.

We are “led” by idiots desperately reading chicken entrails and praying to Mammon for succor, telling the “people” they think they follow, that they are leading them to the Promised Land.

I’ll retire to Bedlam.

My one piece of advice to the Democratic party is that those who think they can't win are seldom disappointed.

— Stuart Stevens (@stuartpstevens) July 18, 2024

The line in Nixon’s re-election year was “Don’t switch Dicks in mid-screw.” It was a sardonic re-writing of the admonition to stick with the incumbent: “Don’t switch horses in mid-stream.”

The latter still seems like a sound proverb. Especially considering the alternative.