Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: Surface calm, rip currents below

[Brexiter]

Abbreviated Pundit Roundup is a long-running series published every morning that collects essential political discussion and analysis around the internet.

CNN:

Trump claims not to know who is behind Project 2025. A CNN review found at least 140 people who worked for him are involved

Six of his former Cabinet secretaries helped write or collaborated on the 900-page playbook for a second Trump term published by the Heritage Foundation. Four individuals Trump nominated as ambassadors were also involved, along with several enforcers of his controversial immigration crackdown. And about 20 pages are credited to his first deputy chief of staff.

In fact, at least 140 people who worked in the Trump administration had a hand in Project 2025, a CNN review found, including more than half of the people listed as authors, editors and contributors to “Mandate for Leadership,” the project’s extensive manifesto for overhauling the executive branch.

Trump, in April '22, keynoted a Heritage dinner as it began work on Project 2025: “This is a great group & they’re going to lay the groundwork & detail plans for exactly what our movement will do ... when the American people give us a colossal mandate to save America." pic.twitter.com/2ni0XESMci

— Vaughn Hillyard (@VaughnHillyard) July 11, 2024

David Weigel/Semafor:

Trump’s ‘national conservative’ allies plot a revenge administration

“We’ve got to start impeaching these judges for acting in such an unbelievably partisan way from the bench,” said John Eastman, a California attorney who was disbarred last year over working with Trump to challenge the 2020 election.

“People who have used this tool against people like John or President Trump have to be prosecuted by Republican or conservative DAs in exactly the same way, for exactly the same kinds of things, until they stop,” said Berkeley Law professor John Yoo.

“I don’t say that we should be the mafia,” said Will Chamberlain, a senior counsel at the Article III Project who’d formerly worked for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. “But as a political party, if we aren’t willing to dish anything out, then we can just expect to keep taking it.”

Jennifer Schulze/Heartland Signal:

Biden is big news, but that’s not an excuse for misleading Trump coverage

Reporters, by now, should know better than to repeat Donald Trump’s statements without the context that reveals them for the lies they (usually) are.

Trump pretending to be a moderate on abortion is a political strategy. So is the distancing from Project 2025. His rambling, incoherent rallies are actual events with video evidence of him promising revenge and retribution against fellow citizens. All of this Trump news requires accurate, sustained news coverage with the same volume, tone, placement and number (but minus the hysteria) that’s been given to Joe Biden’s debate fallout.

I’ve written before and often about the failures of the Trump media coverage. This is the first time, however, that there’s ever been a Trump news blackout. At this perilous moment, the most dangerous man in America is getting a free pass because the news media is too busy with the Biden feeding frenzy. As I and many others have said repeatedly since the June 27 presidential debate, there are legitimate questions to be asked about the president. But we passed that point about 684,892 news stories ago and are now witnessing a full-on media crusade.

Meanwhile, US household net worth is at all-time highs and homeowners are sitting on $17 trillion in equity. https://t.co/ZYHvkhv6Yn

— Carl Quintanilla (@carlquintanilla) July 11, 2024

Split Ticket:

We Polled The Nation. Here’s What We Found.

Our survey found Trump at 41% of the vote, with Biden at 40%, Independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at 10%, and minor party candidates Cornel West, Jill Stein, and Chase Oliver each at 1%.

We also polled a two-way, head-to-head race as well. Here, Biden leads Trump 47–46. Critically, we find an electorate that is quite stable and polarized, just like it was in the last election; Biden wins his own 2020 voters by a margin of 91–5, while Trump wins his 2020 voters 93–4. It is the 2020 nonvoters, however, that are far more fluid; our survey found that they tilt towards Trump by a margin of 38-33, with nearly 30 percent of them undecided.

This is a notable change from the way that less-engaged voters tended to lean in previous cycles. For instance, in 2020, they were estimated to be significantly more Democratic than the rest of the electorate. The Republican advantage among these voters is a relatively new development, and it has been one of the cornerstones of Donald Trump’s polling strength in this cycle.

#New General Election Poll ? Harris 49% (+3) ? Trump 46% Ipsos #B (ABC) - 2431 A - 7/9 pic.twitter.com/dfM6Bqfyc5

— Political Polls (@PpollingNumbers) July 11, 2024

The above comes from the poll below (ABC/The Washington Post/Ipsos).

The Washington Post:

Most Democrats want Biden to drop out, but overall race is static, poll finds


More than half of Democrats say Biden should end his candidacy. Overall, 2 in 3 adults say the president should step aside, including more than 7 in 10 independents.

The poll results contradict Biden’s claim that only party elites want him to step aside. He has said that positive interactions with supporters on the campaign trail have helped persuade him to stay in the race after a debate in which he trailed off and occasionally appeared confused. But the poll finds that 56 percent of Democrats say that he should end his candidacy, while 42 percent say he should continue to seek reelection. Overall, 2 in 3 adults say the president should step aside, including more than 7 in 10 independents.

The trouble with polling right now, if it is to be believed in the first place, is that it simply cannot predict where the public goes if Biden steps down. That’s too new and radical an event for people to really know how they’ll feel.

I think this is correct. You get some limited intimations from polls which show Harris & Biden running similarly against Trump. But an actual switch introduces so many new variables and unknowns it's basically impossible to know how they play out together. https://t.co/IRdcMuqRYd

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) July 11, 2024

And this morning’s polling:

The heart of the problem for Biden is this -- two-thirds say he doesn't have the mental fitness to serve as president. His inability to defend himself or make the case for is party means he is banking on hyperpolarization and the strong anti-Trump sentiment to give him a shot: pic.twitter.com/J53g8LdP2M

— Domenico Montanaro (@DomenicoNPR) July 12, 2024

Why so much talk about Biden stepping down? Isn’t it settled already?

No, it isn’t. See the tweet directly above, and the ABC/Washington Post poll on voter sentiment. That’s the public, who have been thinking this for months.

Biden is competitive because Trump is awful. The public has been thinking this for months as well.

What the press conference did do is stop calls for Biden to step down. It didn’t stop calls for Biden to step aside from the campaign.

Certainly, a D needs to do better than a 2-point lead or tied bc the swing states are slightly more conservative than the country at large. Also, there's no better poll than body language of swing-state candidates, and they continue to be very nervous abt Biden at top of ticket. https://t.co/891ijDYgfl

— Domenico Montanaro (@DomenicoNPR) July 12, 2024

David Rothkopf/”Need to Know” on Substack:

America's Death Wish

Go Ahead, Put a Traitor in Charge of Our National Security...Again

But, see, here’s the thing. While we know Judge Cannon is going to try to bury the classified documents case against Trump, we don’t have to. The American people actually have a power she does not have. They can elect someone else president. Then Trump can’t traffic in national secrets ever again. (Unless he digs up the ones he buried with his first wife or somewhere else.)

In fact, if Trump is rejected, he can’t threaten our national security ever again. He can’t undermine our alliances. He can’t help our enemies. He can’t push for new “more useable” nukes as he wants to. He won’t have the ability to end the world with a touch of a button, just a few minutes after he decided he wanted to do that.

All we have to do is wake the fuck up. All we have to do is recognize that we are the ones who finally determine who is in charge of our safety. All we have to do is open our eyes, refresh our memories, see the evidence of the danger he poses everywhere, listen to what he is saying to us every day and then instead of doing the clinically insane self-destructive thing, do the thing that might not result in global disaster.

Sounds easy, right? And yet…and yet…sigh…and yet…

From a White House aide: “Hinging the fate of democracy on each of these pretty spaced out unscripted events is exhausting and unsustainable.” https://t.co/1nBhN3Z1Gr

— Tim Grieve (@timgrieve) July 12, 2024

David Rothkopf/X vis Threadreader:

These conversations seem to be continuing despite Biden's repeated statements that he is definitely running and in it for the long haul and have not been helped by recent polling data, the Cook Report downgrade of Dem battleground prospects, etc.
Don't shoot the messenger here. I'm sharing this because a.) it's what I've been hearing and b.) it explains why this has not yet gone away. People are just worried about losing. Which we all should be, given the stakes.
I still think Biden will survive as the candidate.

Every day, more electeds and officials speak out, and if it feels like a coordinated persuasion campaign, that’s because it probably is. Why? Because Biden is in until he says he’s out, and he’s the one they’re trying to persuade. If they can’t, he’s in.

But we are at a point in time where, despite thinking you know what happens next, you don’t. None of us do.

your theory of the case. If they have data that supports the path to victory that they see, they should put it out there now and help people who badly want to beat Trump rally around it. People want to see the path.

— Kate Bedingfield (@KBeds) July 10, 2024

Kate Bedingfield is the former White House communications director (2021-23) under Biden.

HuffPost:

Joe Biden Was Maybe Going To Survive This. Then Came The Last 24 Hours.

As George Clooney goes, so go congressional Democrats?

The day began ominously for the president, when former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi appeared on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” and spoke as if Biden were still deciding whether to stay in the race, even though he has clearly said he has no intention of dropping out. “Time is running short,” Pelosi said.


Biden also lost a major ally in Hollywood when actor George Clooney, who just a month ago hosted a $30 million fundraiser for the president, wrote a devastating opinion article in The New York Times calling on Biden to drop out of the race after his painfully poor debate performance.

It's 2016 and Trump has a new tone. It's 2017 and Trump has a new tone. It's 2018 and Trump has a new tone. It's 2020 and Trump has a new tone. It's 2024 and Trump has a new tone. https://t.co/KZkzEcXtLq pic.twitter.com/gRGVDH6Y54

— Christopher Ingraham? (@_cingraham) July 10, 2024

Rick Hasen/Slate:

Democrats Sure Aren’t Acting as if Trump Beating Biden Is an Existential Threat to Democracy

Despite this, few congressional Democrats have spoken up to call on Biden to step aside now, before he is officially nominated, when it would be easy to have another Democrat’s name appear on the ballot. After the official nomination, state ballot access would be a huge mess. But who is to say how Biden will be doing physically and mentally in one, two, or three months?

Instead, most Democrats are silent or have expressed their support for Biden’s run. Yet, behind the scenes, according to numerous reports, Democrats expect a shellacking, one that could not only take down Biden but also ensure that Trumpist Republicans control the House and the Senate. That situation of unified Republican political control, combined with a compliant Supreme Court, is powerful and volatile. Yet Biden seems to be taking this in stride too, telling interviewer George Stephanopoulos, when asked how he would feel next January if he stayed in the race and lost to Trump, “I’ll feel, as long as I gave it my all and I did the good as job as I know I can do, that’s what this is about.”

If it’s really true, though, that a second Trump term would be the kind of “five-alarm fire” that Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson warned about in her dissent in the Supreme Court’s immunity case, and if Democrats really believe that a Biden loss is inevitable, then their failure to speak up now and intervene with Biden cannot be squared with their rhetoric of the Trump apocalypse of a second term.

Perspective: Lots of understandable focus on Dems talking about Biden, but honestly having two governors of your own party — Georgia and Utah! — openly say they’re voting against you is really far more damning. https://t.co/lMxuNcqpMT

— Jesse Lee (@JesseCharlesLee) July 11, 2024

The Washington Post:

These GOP women begged the party to abandon abortion. Then came backlash.


The fight waged at the Texas Republican Convention highlights the deep divisions on abortion within the Republican Party.​

Republican leaders have struggled with how to address abortion since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade two years ago, faced with dueling political realities: While outlawing abortion has been an animating moral cause for the party for generations, new abortion restrictions are deeply unpopular. After appointing three conservative justices who helped topple Roe, former president Donald Trump has sought to distance himself from the issue, saying as little as possible and ultimately punting the question to the states.


But many on the right are resisting these efforts to leave the abortion issue behind. Christian conservatives, a key part of the party’s base, have continued to pressure Trump and other Republicans to crack down, arguing that fighting abortion is a core tenet of the Republican platform — and that the battle should continue until abortion is eradicated nationwide

The existential threat is real. At the same time, Republicans are still being split by the abortion question. That remains a Democratic issue to highlight, among others.