An Uncertain Reboot.

A kind of miracle.

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1. President Biden abruptly ended his reelection campaign Sunday, sending shock waves through the political world and plunging the Democratic Party into an unprecedented scramble to choose a new nominee to face former president Donald Trump. “It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve as your President,” Biden, 81, wrote in a letter he posted to social media Sunday afternoon. “And while it has been my intention to seek reelection, I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as President for the remainder of my term.” In a separate social media post Sunday, Biden endorsed his vice president, Kamala D. Harris, to replace him as the Democratic Party’s standard-bearer ahead of its national convention Aug. 19-22. (Source: washingtonpost.com)

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2. Powerful leaders of the Democratic establishment quickly embraced Vice President Kamala Harris yesterday after President Biden’s shocking exit from the race, hoping that a seamless succession could end a month of damaging chaos and transform a contest widely believed to be tipping toward Republicans. Ms. Harris now appears to have a glide path to the nomination: No other top Democrats announced plans to challenge her, though some stopped short of an endorsement, including the party’s top congressional leaders and former President Barack Obama. With breathtaking speed, she has taken control of Mr. Biden’s enormous political operation and contacted Democratic leaders in Congress and state houses to ask for their support. The Biden campaign formally renamed itself “Harris for President,” giving her immediate access to an account that had $96 million in cash at the end of June. On an internal call, the Biden campaign’s leaders told staff members that they would now work for Ms. Harris. (Source: nytimes.com)

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3. Former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton posted a statement on social media yesterday endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris to take President Biden’s place as the party’s nominee for November. “We are honored to join the President in endorsing Vice President Harris and will do whatever we can to support her,” they wrote in the statement, which was posted within 90 minutes of Mr. Biden announcing that he would leave the race and back Ms. Harris as his replacement in the race against former President Donald J. Trump. “We’ve lived through many ups and downs,” the Clintons said, “but nothing has made us more worried for our country than the threat posed by a second Trump term.” (Source: nytimes.com)

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4. Former President Barack Obama endorsed an open Democratic primary process at the convention next month — less than an hour after former President Bill Clinton endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for president. “I have extraordinary confidence that the leaders of our party will be able to create a process from which an outstanding nominee emerges,” Obama said in a statement, which did not mention Harris. “I believe that Joe Biden’s vision of a generous, prosperous, and united America that provides opportunity for everyone will be on full display at the Democratic Convention in August.” (Sources: politico.com, barackobama.medium.com)

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5. How the Democratic Party came to the brink of nominating a candidate with an obvious flaw is a story of allies eager to look the other way, Biden advisers who worked to stamp out doubts about his vigor and a party apparatus that boxed out alternative candidates. The result is an epic, years-long miscalculation that has Democrats racing to mount an uncertain reboot of their campaign against former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee who is fresh off a unifying party convention that was galvanized by an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate him on July 13. The drawbacks of Biden’s age were clear to voters, with polls showing that nearly three-quarters of them last year deemed him too old to seek another term. Yet inside the party’s uppermost ranks, revelations about the toll aging has taken on the president seemed to catch many people by surprise in recent months. (Source: wsj.com, italics mine)

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6. David Von Drehle:

Those who will not make way for the next generation will be swept away. President Biden had hoped to slip past this iron rule of both biology and politics masked by time-defying Ray-Ban aviators. But the voters knew better; they could read a calendar, and they’ve been asking to turn the page for a year or more…

What happens next, in other words, is what should have happened months ago, and what had to happen sooner or later. The Democratic Party is rebooting; the rest of its gerontocracy will soon follow Biden into retirement. A month from now, the party will have updated software running on new hardware. (Source: washingtonpost.com)

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7. Eurointelligence:

The US elections are too close to call, because the outcome depends only on a few counties in a few states. What the EU needs to do is not to prepare for an uncertain outcome at a particular election, but to prepare for a certain one – which is that US politics is shifting, both on the side of the Republicans and of the Democrats. Our interests are diverging. Unlike Europe, the US is militarily not under even a hypothetical threat. It is largely self-sufficient on energy. As fiscal constraints kick in, the US will become even more reluctant to engage in international adventures that carry no political pay-off at home. As Biden discovered, even a successful economic policy, on the terms on which this notion is classically defined, does not guarantee popular support. It makes less and less sense for the US to play the roles of world policeman, global lender of last resort, and protector of the global financial system. Especially for a part of the world that is less demographically relevant to the US, as fewer immigrants, and second or third-generation Americans, come from Europe, and more come from the rest of the world. 

The discussion about Europe’s self-sufficiency usually narrows down to defense spending. This is certainly one important aspect, but we are not sure it is the most important one. Far more important is Europe’s reliance on US technology, and the fragmentation of almost all relevant aspects of economic policy, including capital markets and most areas of services. Europe was allowed to live in the delusion of national sovereignty because of US protection. We ourselves concluded some time ago, that Europe’s nation states are not viable entities in a US/China dominated world. (Source: eurointelligence.com)

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