All Things Biden: Is It Over Yet?

[NineBerry]

Well, it is not over. He does need to show up in public soon. Some kind of deadline for Kamala will be Aug 1. Past that it is too late to change.

The DNC is on August 19th. As far as I know the decision has to be made there by the elected delegates now that Biden has stood down.

[macdoc]

About time ....write in for Michelle please.

[tattuchu]

Trump and his minions were insisting that Biden was unfit to run for president again. So Biden dropped out of the race. And now Trump and his lackeys are furious that Biden dropped out of the race

[pErvinalia]

According to right wing twitter, he's either dead or very soon dead.

[Svartalf]

From natural causes of because they slipped polonium in his drink?

[pErvinalia]

George Soros had him taken out.

[Tero]

Elsewhere: Biden failed to criticize trump in a meaningful manner.

I think what got lost in all the Biden angst was optimism. I always said that the Democratic message should focus on moving forward versus looking back. But Biden’s long career made that more difficult. Now we can contrast a positive view of the country (everything’s getting better and it’s going to be even more awesome in the future) with the pessimistic view (it’s a hellhole that needs to be fixed).

Also, Biden's polls sank in the battleground states in the last few weeks. He would have lost most of them.

[Tero]

Biden will get new helicopter to leave office in January. It got tested at the convention trip.

https://news.yahoo.com/news/biden-takes ... 22909.html

[Tero]

Biden: passes torch, ends career of decades of boring but necessary politics

Fox: Biden gives late speech putting audience to sleep in 48 minutes that seemed like 48 hours. Sad Joe.

[Tero]

Trump voter gets valuable hat to eBay for at least $100.

[Tero]

Neither Biden or Harris explained what Biden did at the border. "Border czar" Harris did not do this. She can't sign executive orders.
NYT

A quick plunge
Author Headshot
By Hamed Aleaziz
(he covers immigration.)

For much of the Biden administration’s first three years in office, migration surged at the Mexican border. Administration officials frequently argued that the problem was beyond their control — a reflection not of U.S. policy but of global forces pushing people toward the border.
Then, starting in December, when the issue threatened President Biden’s re-election, he began a crackdown. The traffic of people crossing the border plummeted. Today, it remains near the lowest point since 2020 and not so different from levels during parts of the Trump and Obama administrations. This week, the Biden administration imposed tough new rules to keep it that way.

A bar chart that shows how the monthly encounters with U.S. Border Patrol along the Southwest border have declined this year.
Source: Department of Homeland Security | By The New York Times
(picture) (clicking link downloads the chart) https://ci3.googleusercontent.com/meips ... mbo-v2.png
In today’s newsletter, I’ll explain how the policy has had such a big effect and why it took so long for the administration to enact.

The crisis deepens
Border crossings reached record levels this past winter, with almost 250,000 migrant arrests in December alone. At one point, U.S. officials shut down rail crossings and one port of entry, frightening businesses that ship goods between the countries. Just 32 percent of Americans thought Biden was handling immigration wisely.

Two efforts this year by the Biden administration made a big difference.

First, it pushed Mexico to clamp down on the number of migrants headed to the southern border. Mexico had run out of money to deport those people to their home countries. Then the secretaries of state and homeland security visited in late December to ask for more enforcement. Soon, the authorities there found the money to bus migrants far away, to southern Mexico. Arrests at the U.S. border dropped by half in January and stayed steady for several months.

At the same time, Democrats in Congress were trying to pass an immigration bill to slow the number of arrivals and save Biden’s candidacy. Although Republicans had largely backed those objectives, they voted against the measure for political reasons, and it failed.

People walking on a dirt road seen from above.
Colombian asylum seekers in September after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. John Moore/Getty Images
After that, Biden made a second major decision. He issued an executive order that barred migrants from asylum if they crossed illegally, even if they were fleeing oppression back home — a measure similar to one part of the failed bill. It changed the way people could ask for asylum.

Before, when migrants got to the border, U.S. officials asked if they feared returning home. Government officials believed many were saying yes regardless of whether it was true — and also that smugglers were coaching them how to answer. Now, to qualify for asylum, a migrant had to volunteer his or her worries unprompted. Officials say many fewer did so.

Because fewer people could get asylum under the new rules, the Department of Homeland Security could deport them much more quickly. The process can take a day or two if someone is from Mexico and does not have an asylum claim.

A turnaround
With all those moves together, immigration to the U.S. changed quickly. Arrests in September fell to around 54,000, the lowest figure in years. And with fewer people entering the asylum system, it was easier for the government to deport them.

In the first few years of the administration, detention centers were often overwhelmed, so officials released people with notices to appear in immigration court years down the line. Policymakers think that word of these strains spread into Latin America and induced more people to come illegally. “There was a message of, ‘this is not permissible,’ but everybody was being permitted to do it. So there was this kind of juxtaposition of public statement and then action,” said Matthew Hudak, a former U.S. Border Patrol official.

Now, as strains on the system have eased, officials react differently. Detention centers have space to hold people while they wait to see if they’ll be deported.

Democrats have traveled a long arc in the last four years. When Biden took office, he spoke warmly of migrants seeking asylum and even tried to pause deportations altogether. (A court said no.) As his political fortunes sank, he turned toward deterring migrants. Finally, in June, he took a hard line. Now Kamala Harris says she would make sure Biden’s order is kept in place.

Related: Immigration is a major issue in this election. Watch a video version of The Daily, where Michael Barbaro and Times correspondents discuss the state of the race.

[Sean Hayden]

Just 32 percent of Americans thought Biden was handling immigration wisely.

lol there aren’t that many Americans who can discuss any policy, so what’s our opinion worth anyway?

[Tero]

Just 32 percent of Americans thought Biden was handling immigration wisely.

lol there aren’t that many Americans who can discuss any policy, so what’s our opinion worth anyway?

50% believe these illegals are clones of Hannibal Lecter runnning over the border. The males anyway.

[rainbow]

Just 32 percent of Americans thought Biden was handling immigration wisely.

lol there aren’t that many Americans who can discuss any policy, so what’s our opinion worth anyway?

50% believe these illegals are clones of Hannibal Lecter runnning over the border. The males anyway.

Trump's wives were illegals.

[Tero]

NYT

"The people closest to President Biden were well aware that he had changed. He talked more slowly than he had just a few years before, needed to hoist himself out of his seat in the presidential limousine and walked with a halting gait.

“Your biggest issue is the perception of age,” Mike Donilon, the president’s longtime strategist, told him in mid-2022, according to three close aides who heard it. That bit of feedback, delivered repeatedly by Mr. Donilon, was the sort of blunt talk that did not often make its way to a man who had spent a half-century in politics prizing loyalty and deference.

"Mr. Biden acknowledged the concerns, but the warnings only ignited his defiant, competitive streak. In April 2023, without convening his family or having long deliberations with aides, he announced he was running again."

"They rearranged meetings to make sure Mr. Biden was in a better mood — a strategy one person close to him described as how aides should handle any president. At times, they delayed sharing information with him, including negative polling data, as they debated the best way to frame it. They surrounded him with aides when he walked from the White House to the waiting presidential helicopter on the South Lawn so that news cameras could not capture his awkward bearing."
"Six key people protected the president.

"Jill Biden, the first lady, and Hunter Biden, his surviving son, fervently believed in his ability to win. Mr. Donilon and Steve Ricchetti, the counselor to Mr. Biden, knew when and how to deliver information, along with Annie Tomasini, the deputy chief of staff. She and Anthony Bernal, the first lady’s most senior aide, took tight control over the president’s public schedule."

'And all were convinced that he was the only one who could beat Mr. Trump."

Then there was the investigation of the classified documents found at Biden's Delaware residence. A special counsel was appointed.
"Robert K. Hur, the special counsel, ultimately concluded there was insufficient evidence to charge Mr. Biden, but described him in a devastating report in as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” A transcript of Mr. Biden’s five hours of interviews with investigators released a month later showed that he occasionally fumbled dates and the sequence of events but at most other points appeared clearheaded.

"Still, the damage was done. It had not helped that Mr. Biden, furious about Mr. Hur’s report, had stormed to the White House lectern to say he was up for the job — and then confused the presidents of Mexico and Egypt in response to a question about hostages held by Hamas."

Eventually it was Biden's performance at the June 2024 presidential debate with Donald Trump that precipitated the decision to withdraw from the race. Aides acknowledge that the debate had been preceded with too much presidential travel to Europe and various parts of the U.S.

"He will never know what shape he would be in as an 86-year-old, two-term president. His advisers say that if anyone had sensed an opportunity to beat Mr. Biden — the only Democrat who has defeated Mr. Trump — they would have mounted a primary threat when there was still time."