Wavering Unwavering Support.

Xi makes a move.

What follows is this morning’s note to Political News Items subscribers. If you would like to subscribe to Political Items. you can do so by clicking on this link. It’s our July 4th Holiday Special Sale! An amazing 30% off. Act now while supplies last.

---

---

1. Living in the Real World:

China detained a Taiwanese fishing boat and its crew, a move that risks worsening tensions with the island’s new president. The vessel was stopped by the Chinese Coast Guard on Tuesday evening near the Taiwanese island of Kinmen, maritime authorities in Taipei said in a statement. Kinmen is roughly 3 kilometers (1.9 miles) from China. Taiwan Coast Guard ships tried to stop the detention but “since our boat had penetrated deep into the other party’s territorial waters, in order to avoid escalating the conflict, the hot pursuit was stopped,” the authorities added. The fishing boat was taken to Weitou, a port in the Chinese city of Quanzhou, Fujian province, they said. The government department in Beijing that handles affairs related to Taiwan did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday. (Source: bloomberg.com)

---

2. The New York Times:

In the weeks and months before President Biden’s politically devastating performance on the debate stage in Atlanta, several current and former officials and others who encountered him behind closed doors noticed that he increasingly appeared confused or listless, or would lose the thread of conversations.

Like many people his age, Mr. Biden, 81, has long experienced instances in which he mangled a sentence, forgot a name or mixed up a few facts, even though he could be sharp and engaged most of the time. But in interviews, people in the room with him more recently said that the lapses seemed to be growing more frequent, more pronounced and more worrisome…

The recent moments of disorientation generated concern among advisers and allies alike. He seemed confused at points during a D-Day anniversary ceremony in France on June 6. The next day, he misstated the purpose of a new tranche of military aid to Ukraine when meeting with its president.

On June 10, he appeared to freeze up at an early celebration of the Juneteenth holiday. On June 18, his soft-spoken tone and brief struggle to summon the name of his homeland security secretary at an immigration event unnerved some of his allies at the event, who traded alarmed looks and later described themselves as “shaken up,” as one put it. Mr. Biden recovered, and named Alejandro N. Mayorkas. (Source: nytimes.com)

---

3. Peter Hamby:

A confidential polling memo circulating among anxious Democrats is confirming some of their worst fears: President Joe Biden’s support has started to tumble in key electoral battlegrounds in the wake of his disastrous debate performance in Atlanta, and Biden’s diminished standing is now putting previously noncompetitive states like New Hampshire, Virginia, and New Mexico in play for Donald Trump. What’s more, Biden has taken such a reputational hit that he is polling behind other alternative Democratic candidates—including Kamala Harris and Gretchen Whitmer—in hypothetical one-on-one matchups against Trump.

The memo was put together after the debate by OpenLabs, a progressive nonprofit that conducts polling and message-testing for a constellation of Democratic groups, including the 501(c)4 nonprofit associated with Future Forward, the preferred Super PAC for Biden’s reelection campaign. OpenLabs is something of a black box: Their website is mostly blank, they don’t seek publicity, and their client list is closely held. But their data-driven memos are trusted in Democratic circles, and typically passed around to a small group of clients and strategists. One of those Democrats forwarded me the OpenLabs document on Tuesday morning.

The poll—conducted online in the 72 hours after the debate and emailed to interested parties on Sunday—found that 40 percent of the Biden voters in 2020 that were surveyed now believe the president should end his campaign. That represents a significant shift from their last survey in May, which showed that only a quarter of Biden 2020 voters said he should drop out. Biden is also taking a major hit among swing voters: By a 2-to-1 margin, they believe Biden should exit the race. (Source: puck.news)