Attention to the Unseen

The New York Times reports: Representative Adam B. Schiff, the California Democrat who is running for Senate, warned during a private meeting with donors on Saturday that his party was likely to suffer overwhelming losses in November if President Biden remained at the top of the ticket, according to two people with direct knowledge of Mr. Schiff’s remarks at the meeting. If Mr. Biden remained, not only would he lose to former President Donald J. Trump, he could be enough…

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CNN reports: The public calls from Democrats asking President Joe Biden to bow out of the presidential race have quieted in recent days, but private efforts to nudge the president and his top aides continue, several Democratic sources told CNN. Among the efforts, these sources say, are repeated memos from a seasoned and respected Democratic pollster, Stanley Greenberg, sharing his take that Biden is on track to lose the election – and in a way that does deep damage to…

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Axios reports: The Democratic National Committee is quietly steaming ahead with plans to technically nominate President Biden weeks before the party’s convention next month, Axios has learned. Why it matters: It’s the latest effort by Biden’s team to stamp out the Democratic rebellion that’s been pushing for the president to step aside since his bad performance in the June 27 debate. Once Biden receives votes from a majority of the nearly 4,000 delegates, it will become exceedingly difficult to remove him from atop the Democratic presidential…

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Zack Beauchamp writes: I met Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), Donald Trump’s new choice for vice president, in the summer of 2022. I was covering a conservative conference in Israel, and Vance was the surprise VIP attraction. We chatted for a bit about the connections between right-wing movements across the world, and what American conservatives could learn from foreign peers. He was friendly, thoughtful, and smart — much smarter than the average politician I’ve interviewed. Yet his worldview is fundamentally incompatible with…

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NBC News reports: One Democratic strategist who has worked on multiple presidential campaigns and on Capitol Hill said that the physical targeting of Trump robs Biden of his main argument against the former president. Biden, the strategist pointed out, has tried to convince voters that Trump is so extreme that he presents a threat to democracy. “That message is dead,” the strategist said, after a gunman tried to kill the presumptive nominee of one of the two major parties. The…

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Axios reports: Congressional Democrats’ all-consuming angst over President Biden’s candidacy has taken an abrupt backseat in lawmakers’ minds in the wake of an assassination attempt against former President Trump. Why it matters: Democratic lawmakers say their immediate focus is on their personal security and that of their staffs, not on their party’s political woes, helping to allow a crucial cooldown period for the embattled president. “We’re all just focused on expressing condolences … and keeping our teams safe,” said one House Democrat who has been fiercely critical of Biden….

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ABC News reports: Former classmates of the suspected shooter described him to ABC News as a student who was “quiet” and did not have many friends. “He was somebody who came across as lonely a lot,” said Jameson Myers, who said he attended both elementary and high school with the suspect. Myers said that Crooks “tended to be more of an interesting one” and described him as “more socially reserved” and someone who “didn’t have a ton of friends.” But…

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