So, yesterday the NYT published an op-ed from George Clooney titled “I Love Joe Biden. But We Need a New Nominee.” I paid it precisely zero attention because . . . who the hell cares what George Clooney thinks? I mean, he seems like a bright and likable guy, but he’s pretty far down the list of people whose opinions on American politics I care about.
But, as is often the case, I’m an outlier on this one. The fact that a famous actor who’s also a prominent Democratic fundraiser is speaking out apparently matters to a lot of people.
Slate‘s Heather Schwedel says, “Unfortunately, the George Clooney Op-Ed Was Really Good.“
At the risk of revealing Americans to be as shallow as the rest of the world thinks we are, recent history shows that in this country, a celebrity cameo is sometimes what it takes to make a news story feel, well, real. In early March 2020, for example, the COVID pandemic started to seem a whole lot less far away and notional for some of us after we learned that national treasure Tom Hanks and his wife, Rita Wilson, were sick with the virus. So maybe it’s a good sign that as Democrats scramble and squabble over the question of whether Joe Biden should stay in the presidential race, George Clooney has entered the fray.
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Without any of the word-mincing that has characterized Democrats’ sound bites over the past few days, Clooney writes, in no uncertain terms, that Biden has got to go, in prose that at times sounds right out of a fragment-happy screenplay.
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Clooney’s perspective as a star may be less valuable than another perspective he brings to the piece: that of a party insider. He has held some of the top fundraisers for Democrats.
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When he says he’s been part of these behind-closed-doors conversations that only the rich and powerful are privy to, we believe him. Clooney, who has interacted with Biden for years, tells us that he has seen for himself a clear difference in the president’s appearance and behavior, and not just at the debate but at fundraisers as well. Other people in the position to know such things haven’t gone on the record, but George Clooney, of all people, now has.
Indeed, aside from his personal observations of Biden from a recent fundraiser (more on that shortly), perhaps the key passage in Clooney’s op-ed is this:
We are not going to win in November with this president. On top of that, we won’t win the House, and we’re going to lose the Senate. This isn’t only my opinion; this is the opinion of every senator and Congress member and governor who I’ve spoken with in private. Every single one, irrespective of what he or she is saying publicly. [emphasis mine]
We love to talk about how the Republican Party has ceded all power, and all of the traits that made it so formidable with Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, to a single person who seeks to hold on to the presidency, and yet most of our members of Congress are opting to wait and see if the dam breaks. But the dam has broken. We can put our heads in the sand and pray for a miracle in November, or we can speak the truth.
While I don’t know how many Members and governors Clooney has talked to about the subject, it’s likely at least a handful. And it seems to confirm what I’ve suspected since the debate: significantly more Democratic officials privately hope that Biden will step aside than the ten who have gone on the record. There is also a report out this morning that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is privately open to the idea, despite his public “I’m with Joe” stance.
WSJ reporters Erich Schwarzel, who covers the Hollywood beat, and Sarah Krouse, the LA bureau chief, recount “The Night President Biden Lost George Clooney’s Support.”
Clooney’s words recast memories of a major fundraiser he hosted weeks earlier with other Hollywood stars, a campaign stop that should have been a highlight of the 2024 cycle. Biden joined Barack Obama on stage for a conversation with comedian Jimmy Kimmel.
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The president received a standing ovation when he took the stage. But for some audience members, the mood changed when he started taking questions.
To some in the audience, Biden appeared at times to struggle through answers or keep up with the conversationalists, a harbinger of what millions of Americans would see in the debate weeks later.
A Biden campaign spokesperson said journalists in attendance at the event didn’t characterize the president’s performance that way in their reporting at the time.
Clooney on Wednesday added himself to the growing list of prominent Democrats who said he had concerns over Biden’s at-times frail condition, well before it spilled into public view at the debate.
“It’s devastating to say it, but the Joe Biden I was with three weeks ago at the fund-raiser was not the Joe ‘big F—ing deal’ Biden of 2010. He wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020,” he wrote.
Campaign officials sought to intervene to prevent the piece from publishing, according to a person familiar with the discussions.
For years, Clooney has been among the entertainment industry’s most prominent Democrats. Now, he is in a growing fraternity of donors calling for the president to step down as their nominee in time for a new candidate to take the top of the ticket, which they say is the best path forward toward beating former President Trump. Clooney’s L.A. event last month raised more than $30 million for the campaign.
Time with Biden at the event was a turning point in his support, Clooney wrote.
“The one battle he cannot win is the fight against time,” Clooney wrote of the 81-year-old president, in an essay published in the New York Times.
When Kimmel joked at the Los Angeles’s Peacock Theater that he had given his son, Billy, a stuffed animal of the president’s dog, “and it bit Billy’s toe off,” the president didn’t register an immediate response—but Obama chimed in with a reference to his Affordable Care Act, quipping, “Fortunately he’s covered!”
In a video taken at the event, Biden is halting in his delivery of some responses.
For the most part, the conversation flows, but to some in the room Biden, who had just returned from the G-7 summit in Europe, seemed to have a hard time keeping up with Kimmel’s quick patter. Obama seemed to pick up loose threads in Biden’s responses, and filled in gaps. One attendee who sat near the stage said it was clear to him by the end of the evening that the president wasn’t as sharp as he once was.
The POLITICO Playbook gang adds this bit of news:
Before Hollywood icon and Democratic donor GEORGE CLOONEY published his buzzy and brutal NYT op-ed yesterday calling on Biden to step aide as the nominee, we’re told he reached out to former President BARACK OBAMA to give him a heads-up. The two men, who are friendly, both attended the L.A. fundraiser Clooney referenced in his piece, where the actor said he’d beheld a diminished Biden and that the leader he interacted with was “the same man we all witnessed at the debate.”
While Obama did not encourage or advise Clooney to say what he said, he also didn’t object to it, we’re told from people familiar with their exchange. The lack of pushback is an eye-popping revelation given that the former president was one of the first big voices defending Biden following his abysmal debate performance (while many of his former aides have been some of the incumbent’s biggest critics).
That’s honestly stunning. One would think that Obama would object to adding more fuel to the “Biden’s too old and must step aside” fire unless he share the assessment. And, if he does, one would certainly think he would have privately tried to persuade his former understudy in that direction.
Another Democratic elder has joined the fray in her inimitable style.
NYT (“Pelosi Suggests That Biden Could Reconsider Decision to Stay in the Race“):
Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the former speaker, suggested on Wednesday that President Biden still could reconsider his decision to remain in the presidential race, the strongest public signal yet from a senior member of his party that the matter is not yet settled.
Despite mounting concerns that his candidacy could cost Democrats not only the White House but both chambers of Congress, Mr. Biden has been unequivocal about his intention to seek a second term, telling members of Congress in a letter on Monday that his mind is made up and “I’m firmly committed to staying in this race.” On Wednesday, Ms. Pelosi said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that the president should continue to weigh his options.
“It’s up to the president to decide if he is going to run,” she said. “We’re all encouraging him to to make that decision. Because time is running short.”
When pressed on whether she wanted him to seek re-election, Ms. Pelosi said: “I want him to do whatever he decides to do. And that’s the way it is. Whatever he decides, we go with.”
Her comments amounted to a bombshell among Democrats who are puzzling over Mr. Biden’s future, but the former speaker quickly moved to walk back any suggestion that she was suggesting he should exit the race.
“The president is great, and there are some misrepresentations of what I have said,” she said in a statement to The New York Times. “I never said he should reconsider his decision. The decision is the president’s. I don’t know what’s happened to The New York Times that they make up news. It isn’t true.”
In the interview, Ms. Pelosi said she wanted to delay the conversations about Mr. Biden’s future until after the NATO summit he is hosting this week in Washington, which on Thursday will include the president’s first news conference since his disastrous debate performance, which raised questions about his mental acuity and fitness to remain in the race.
“Let’s just hold off,” she said. “Whatever you’re thinking, either tell somebody privately, but you don’t have to put that out on the table until we see how we go this week.”
Pelosi is three years older than Biden but there’s no sign she’s lost her fastball. That she nonetheless willingly stepped aside to allow a younger generation to take the reins is telling. And, despite her jab at the NYT, she knew damn well what she was doing.
Indeed, that’s the theme of a SEMAFOR report (“‘She knows he’s watching’: Nancy Pelosi fuels doubt around President Biden’s nomination“):
This isn’t over.
That was the message Nancy Pelosi delivered subtly, but also loud and clear, in an appearance on Biden’s favorite news show on Wednesday. Refusing to directly endorse Biden’s continued candidacy, she instead pressed him to make a decision on his path that he publicly has already made.
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The former speaker’s appearance was a clear shot in the arm for those skeptics amid calls from pro-Biden Democrats to unite behind him immediately or risk damaging the eventual nominee. It also appeared designed for maximum visibility with the president himself.
“Morning Joe is the President’s favorite show,” one senior Democratic aide said. “She knows he’s watching. She’s not an idiot. She chose those words carefully.”
“Pelosi is getting at what many, many, many people think and feel,” a senior aide to a member in a swing district texted. “Frontliners and lower profile members can only do so much. But they know that Biden won’t listen to their concerns.”
Rep. Lloyd Doggett, the very first Democrat to call on Biden to withdraw after the debate, told The Hill that the former speaker’s comments were “keeping the situation very open, very fluid.”
It was similarly interpreted as a move to extend the conflict by Democrats hoping to put the issue behind them.
“I don’t think it moves members, but I think it compromises the goal to solidify support for Biden/move forward,” another senior Democratic aide said. “Why should anyone else fall back if she doesn’t?”
“She seemed to cast more doubt than members yesterday,” a fourth senior Democratic aide said. “I don’t think this is what they want … seemed like the page was starting to turn and this will complicate it.”
Other Democrats have previously used Pelosi’s framing of the race as unsettled, with many obliquely saying they’ll support Biden’s “decision” regardless of where it ends up. That continued after her appearance as well.
“I can’t speak to Speaker Emerita’s thinking, but all of us acknowledge that the decision here is President Biden’s to make,” Rep. Jared Huffman, D-Calif. told Semafor. “He has made it for now, but we all know that decisions can change, and if there is new information or changed circumstances, sometimes decisions should change. We’ll have to see what happens.”
Open opposition to Biden, while still rare, also continued to spread on Wednesday.
Rep. Pat Ryan of New York became the eighth House member to call for him to exit the race just hours after Pelosi’s interview. “I’d be doing a grave disservice if I said he was the best candidate to serve this fall,” he told The New York Times.
The Playbook gang offers this background:
She carefully ironed out what she wanted to say yesterday on “Morning Joe,” Biden’s appointment viewing — keeping Democratic leaders abreast of her intentions.
[…]
Those comments were meant to serve as a subtle green light, one person close with Pelosi said, meant to encourage members to speak up about their desire to see change atop the ticket — and to warn Biden to reconsider staying in the race.
But that’s not all Pelosi has been up to: In private conversations with lawmakers, we’re told, the former speaker hasn’t tried to hide her disdain for the situation that party now finds itself in. She’s suggested to people that Biden won’t win this November and should step aside, according to about a half-dozen lawmakers and others who have spoken with her or are familiar with these conversations.
In fact, she’s advised some Democrats in swing districts to do whatever they have to do to secure their own reelections — even if it means asking Biden to relinquish his place atop the ticket.
Pelosi has advised those members, however, to wait until this week’s NATO Summit is finished out of respect for Biden and national security writ large. Some members, we’re told, have already started drafting statements of what they want to say, ready to drop once foreign leaders leave town.
For members who aren’t in swing districts, Pelosi has encouraged them to take their pleas for Biden to step aside directly to the White House or the campaign so as to minimize public fighting. We’re told that some have tried but have not been able to get through to the president.
The speaker emerita, who has publicly said she supports whatever Biden chooses, denied pretty much all of this reporting through a spokesman last night, including that she told anyone Biden should step aside. “Publicly and privately, Speaker Pelosi has acknowledged the concerns that many have expressed in recent days but has repeatedly said that she fully supports whatever President Biden decides to do,” a spox said in a statement to Playbook.
At the end of the day, this doesn’t change anything. Pelosi is right that it’s his decision. Biden is dug in and party rules bind the delegates to nominate him unless he releases them. But the pressure on him to do so is certainly mounting.
