But The New York Times still hates Biden, in part because he won't kiss A.G. Sulzberger's ring and in part because he doesn't want to build the America hedge-fund managers want. Here's the Times headline:
Yeah, Joe, Democrats are just like us -- they can't wait to get rid of you. That's the message.
I'm annoyed by that. For a different reason, I'm annoyed by this Times piece about tonight's key convention speaker:
Why does Kamala Harris need Obama to "resurrect a movement"? She already has a movement, at least in the sense that Obama did in 2008. (After he won that first election, he didn't actually keep the "movement" going.)
Occasionally you'll read a headline that was chosen poorly and doesn't really reflect the story below it. That's not the case here. In the story, David Sanger writes:
... Mr. Obama’s mission on Tuesday evening will be far larger than what he sought to accomplish in 2016. Then, he was handing off a baton, with the strength of the presidency behind him. This time, it will be his job to resurrect, and then reassemble, the kind of movement that propelled him to the White House.No, it isn't his job. He can certainly help get the job done -- but it's the job of the candidate, her running mate, and the entire party to give undecided and wavering voters a reason to vote Democratic. They've been doing a great job without Obama for several weeks now.
And after President Biden’s farewell speech to the party on Monday, it is Mr. Obama’s job to separate Ms. Harris from the Biden years, while making the case that she was central enough to the Biden administration to slip seamlessly into the job — essentially the argument he made about Mrs. Clinton’s role in his own administration. And then he must seek to transfer to Ms. Harris the sense of endless horizons that surrounded his own first run for the presidency.
The next sentence makes clear what we're reading:
It will be a tricky combination, people close to Mr. Obama said, a transition moment that the convention planners deliberately placed in the hands of the party’s greatest living orator.David Sanger has the byline, but this story was dictated to Sanger by Obama bros -- "people close to Mr. Obama." Sanger didn't have to give us their version of the story, but that's what he chose to do.
Sanger quotes David Axelrod saying a whole lot of nothing:
“President Obama spoke as an incumbent in 2016 in favor of one of the most familiar brands in American politics,” said David Axelrod, Mr. Obama’s chief strategist for his political campaigns and a senior adviser who sat just down the hall from the Oval Office, where Mr. Obama would sometimes come in, in his stocking feet, to mull the political quandaries of the moment.Then Sanger tells us:
“He will speak Tuesday as someone who also once was a turn-the-page candidate, just as the party is showing signs of renewed energy behind Kamala Harris,” Mr. Axelrod said. “It’s a very different scenario.”
The Democrats are betting that if anyone can pull it off, it will be the man who burst into the consciousness of many Americans at the 2004 convention in Boston.Actually, Democrats are betting that it will be a joint effort. AOC will help. Shawn Fain will help. Many, many other politicians and operatives and volunteers and staffers will help. Obama will help a lot -- I'm sure he'll deliver a barn-burner of a speech tonight. But he's not the main character right now, even if he will be for a moment tonight. (And Michelle Obama, who's also speaking tonight, will be just as well received.)
In the remarkable week of July 21, Kamala Harris's campaign began to catch fire days before Obama deigned to endorse her. So please, bros, don't tell us she can't do this without him.
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