DEAR DEMOCRATS: YOU KNOW PEOPLE CAN HEAR YOU, RIGHT? (updated)

Headline at The New York Times right now:

On Capitol Hill, Democrats Panic About Biden but Do Nothing

Perfect. That's the Democratic Party in a nutshell.

It's been thirteen days since the June 27 debate. On each of those thirteen days, the top news story in America -- not just in the monomaniacal New York Times, but everywhere -- has been "Christ, That Joe Biden Is Really, Really Old. He Can't Possibly Win. He Has to Step Aside. Has He Done It Yet?" Other stories, including stories that could have been very damaging to Donald Trump, were fully or partly buried. And still Democrats can't muscle Biden out, persuade him to leave the race, or stop talking about it and get behind him.

The latest: George Clooney has written an op-ed asking Biden to quit the race -- no, really. What possible good can this do? Biden is the least starstruck Democratic president since Jimmy Carter. He doesn't care what George Clooney thinks. But this will be yet another highly visible expression of no confidence in Biden. Even if voters never read the op-ed (which is in The New York Times, naturally), they'll learn about it, because Clooney is a movie star. (I know that Clooney isn't a Democratic officeholder or official, but he hobnobs with prominent Democrats. Couldn't one of them have talked him out of trying to publish this? Maybe that Obama guy?)

I think Democrats believe it's okay for this to play out in public for two weeks -- two weeks of bad headlines for the man who now seems certain to be the nominee -- because of a fundamental misunderstanding of politics that hurts them in other areas as well. They think this is fine because they think voters pay attention to politics only in the last couple of months before an election. That's the reason most Democrats don't bother with messaging unless it's election season, while Republicans engage in messaging every day of every year. Democrats are right to conclude that many people tune out politics unless an election is imminent, but Republicans know that they can get messages across, even to people outside their base, if they work hard enough, or if the mainstream media picks up on what they're saying. They've been working the "Biden is old" angle since before the 2020 election. They didn't stop after Election Day 2020 or Inauguration Day 2021. The Republican National Committee just kept posting "Biden is old" videos on social media. And lo and behold, while Democrats were napping, that idea took root.

And now a new idea has taken root: Biden is so old and decrepit that even Democrats admit it to one another. It's taken root because, even though it's not quite Labor Day and many Americans are avoiding political news, incessant discussions of this subject by Democrats that have been leaked to the press by Democrats have made Biden's age such a huge story that even people who don't care much about politics can't avoid it.

Politico reports:

SO WHAT HAPPENED? Put simply, Biden’s allies appeared to have outmaneuvered his skeptics. Many Hill Democrats, well-apprised sources told us, were expecting dozens of lawmakers — especially vulnerable swing-district frontliners — to come out of the woodwork and force their leaders to confront the president or his campaign.

So all that very public hand-wringing, which began on the night of the debate (CNN, MSNBC, and other news organizations reported on Democratic dismay in their post-debate broadcasts), happened without clear evidence that a massive groundswell would follow? The Democrats who trashed Biden in conversations with their favorite cable reporters that night should have shut up and waited to go public until they'd built a sizable movement behind the scenes. If they couldn't do that, they should have shut up permanently.

*****

UPDATE, THURSDAY: Politico tells us that George Clooney ran that op-ed by Barack Obama -- who never raised an objection:

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).

From the Politico piece, it appears that Obama and Nancy Pelosi have strong doubts about Biden but believe it's fine if this drags on for another few days (or a week or ...). But it needs to stop.