It's President's Day. So, let's talk about the presidential contest. And other things.

Again: It's always darkest before it's totally black.

Another week has passed, and the presidential contest isn’t looking any better for the majority of Americans who don’t want a redux of the 2020 election.

Here are a few tidbits and a few thoughts:

1. Trump’s RNC takeover— and raiding of the RNC’s bank account

I’ve been on about this for some time, but it’s happening a little faster than I expected. Trump is reportedly set to make an ally and 2020 election denier Chair of the RNC, with his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, Co-Chair.

On Valentine’s Day, Matt Lewis reported that Lara Trump made this comment:

“Every single penny will go to the number one and the only job of the RNC. That is electing Donald J. Trump as the president of the United States." - Lara Trump

I want to make a couple of points here.

First, electing a Republican President is not the “only” job of the RNC— even when it is a presidential cycle. Trust me, I worked there during a presidential cycle— and a presidential cycle in which the RNC had to do a bunch of work that the actual presidential campaign normally would do (this is because John McCain, much as I loved the man, was not a fundraising juggernaut).

Despite this, in addition to having moved heaven and Earth to elect McCain, we did a bunch of other stuff at the RNC in 2008. Pounding a Democrat in an Illinois congressional race with a bunch of opposition research. Promoting Bobby Jindal, newly-elected GOP governor of Louisiana. Helping Saxby Chambliss win his runoff election. Even pushing GOP-favorable stuff into Connecticut in an effort to save the state’s one remaining GOP congressman, Chris Shays. Those are just a few examples.

Nothing like this is going to happen in 2024. If you are a candidate running down ballot from Trump, you are not going to get a dime. Not. A. Dime.

You’re not going to get five minutes of any RNC staffer’s attention or energy. Not. Five. Minutes.

This is moreover the case since Trump keeps racking up legal bills, fines, etc., etc.

Second, if you are a donor to the RNC, stop donating right now. I repeat: Stop. Donating. Right. Now.

Critically, before we found out about the $350 million fine handed down last week in the Trump fraud trial (subject to appeal, we’ll see if he actually has to pay it or not), Bloomberg was already reporting that Trump will have drained his campaign of all available cash for legal expenses by summer. Then, he will have to turn to the RNC or donors for cash.

Guess what he’ll do first? Drain the RNC. That’s why Lara is there!

This remains the one big thing that truly makes me wonder if Trump can win in 2024— the money situation. Because as crazy as the guy is, let’s admit it: The other guy (yes, the President) continues to flail about and it’s very much not clear how he would win re-election if the vote were held today.

This brings us to…

2. Biden

We’ve had a whole week now with furious Democratic Party elite spinning about how really, no, really, Biden is totally on top of his game and his brain has not turned to mush, despite that appalling press conference that he/his team actively decided to do, and despite a bunch of telltale signs that no, all is not well with grandpa.

But all is not well with grandpa, and Democrats are signaling this themselves.

One of the best items was this email, which for what it’s worth, I received no less than three times (protip: When a political operation sends the same email from the same surrogate three times, either it’s time to fire the junior staffer who can’t use the email send platform, or they’re really fucking melting down about something that they should be really fucking melting down about).

Here’s yesterday’s edition: CNN reporting that a bunch of supposed “2028” contenders (haha, yeah right, they’re all gearing up for 2024) have been hanging out with Kamala Harris and trashing the Biden operation:

At a session around Harris’ dining table last Saturday with six Democratic governors and their chiefs of staff, according to multiple people who were there or were told soon after, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer slammed the way the president and the campaign have been talking about abortion rights. Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker hammered Biden’s response to the migrant crisis and insisted that they need to quickly get much more aggressive about attacking Republicans and Trump for tanking the bipartisan immigration bill. Maryland Gov. Wes Moore complained that the campaign has been failing to get through to voters under 35 years old.

You just do not dish that level of dirt unless you want it known by pretty much everyone in the Democratic Party that you’re part of the group trying to take away the car keys and thus are a responsible person who can be trusted also with the nukes. (Interesting side question: Who shared the detail— Harris’ operation, the governors’ operation, or both?) (Additional side note: You know who wasn’t involved in this? Gavin Newsom, which I think improves his chances of getting the hand-off from Biden in the next few months— he doesn’t look like a disloyal traitor, but he benefits from all of this).

Here’s today’s edition, via Mike Allen at Axios (bad circling courtesy of my finger on my iPhone):

Biden is so on it and such a specimen of physical vitality that the White House is literally having to physically prepare the President to give an annual speech.

Seriously.

If these people actually believed what they were spinning— or indeed had a clue about how to spin— they would be saying the exact opposite to reporters like Mike. They’d be saying something like this: “We’re doing the same work on the State of the Union address as every other competent, normal President — that is to say NOT Donald Trump— has ever done. The President will, as usual, present his view of where America is, plus an array of policies designed to make it better.”

They’re not saying that. That is definitive proof that Biden’s own team knows he is exactly as feeble and aged as I think he is. They can’t even craft lines to feed to a reporter that indicate anything but that.

The Harris stuff, plus the leaking of the negative comments about Biden, wouldn’t be happening. The campaign definitely wouldn’t be repeat sending the same “my husband is absolutely compos mentis” email from Jill Biden.

All is not well. And it’s not “bedwetters” telegraphing it.

Expect to see the knives come out for Biden now, and from fellow Democrats. I believe they’ve concluded he can’t win, so they’ll move pretty swiftly to try to put him down and replace him in the hopes of salvaging 2024.

3. Biden and the Special Counsel

One interesting sidebar to this: As bad as the “Biden doesn’t have his wits about him” stuff has been, it might have been better than the alternative, which appears to be that actually, Biden knew full well he did fuck up on classified documents and as bad as “grandpa has lost the plot” is as a narrative, it’s better than “grandpa is a criminal.”

Have a look at this, and ponder it for a few minutes.

This is, shall we say, no bueno. Democrats know it.

4. A trend to keep watch of

There’s an important trend we should all keep watch of as we hurtle towards November: Never Trump Republicans who Biden should have had in his camp are fleeing and coming to the conclusion (at least for now) that Trump is the better of two abysmally terrible choices.

Yes, this is really a thing.

I don’t interact with a lot of big donors. That’s not my client base. I find it somewhat awkward talking to extremely rich people, and also often very tiring. A lot of them are dudes who have come to the conclusion that because they figured out how to build a [often technological thing Liz couldn’t and wouldn’t build] and make it a big household name, they are experts on a bunch of things beyond [often technological thing Liz couldn’t and wouldn’t build]— like, you know, politics (which I do know something about, and usually a lot more than they do). I find it exhausting trying to explain to people that just as I couldn’t and wouldn’t build whatever thing they built because I lack the relevant expertise, they shouldn’t figure they know best about how to achieve political results. Rather, they should pay smart people who do politics to achieve the outcomes they want.

But this is by the by. The point here is, to the extent that I do interact with big donors, I have found in the last few weeks that several prominent Never Trump Republicans who I assumed would line up behind Biden no matter how bad things got are now bailing and have decided they’d rather take Trump if they are forced to choose.

Why is this happening? My simple theory is this: Biden isn’t the man he used to be. His political instincts are not guiding policy, because he is no longer fully with us. He has hired and installed a coterie of very lefty advisers and activists in key government roles. People are seeing real leftward drift whereas they assumed in 2020 that with Biden, they would be getting the centrist Democrat who represented Delaware in the Senate.

People are starting to really consider that the 2024 election might be a choice between rapid drift towards socialism (and not the Western European version) or rapid drift towards light authoritarianism.

Maybe that’s an accurate assessment or maybe it’s not. But don’t tell me it won’t have an impact on this presidential race if Biden doesn’t stand down (and maybe also if he does, depending on who the replacement is!)

5. A note about UK politics

On the other side of the pond, things are not going great for my Conservative Party. By-election losses (the UK equivalent of special elections) are on everyone’s mind.

But I’d also just like to note that things aren’t going great for the Labour Party either in one key area: All the bevy of anti-Semitism problems rearing their ugly heads within the actual Labour candidate and MP pool are really not going to help put to bed the notion that the Party has moved on Jeremy Corbyn.

Have a look at this, the latest edition.

Now, I’d like to say this is the kind of thing that could give Conservatives a polling bump. If they can manage to message this as “yet more evidence that Labour is still the same as under Corbyn,” it might work. But unfortunately, as a standalone, I don’t think enough Britons are concerned about sticking up for Jews to view this trend as disqualifying.

Obviously, I do view it as disqualifying. But I’m not the target voter here.

The Tories need to start drawing firmer connections between this current trend and Corbyn; the fact that Labour rank-and-file elected Angela Rayner as Deputy Leader— and look where she is on economic issues (right in step with Corbyn); and above all, they need to start doing heavy opposition research on every single Labour candidate in a swing constituency and deploying it.

We’ve had over a decade of Tory Party rule. That is a situation begging for a “change” election. But this is not the Labour Party of 1997, and I believe there is a way to make this election look more like 1992 than 1997 as such.

The Tories need to figure out how to do this. By the way, if any of them are reading this, call me. We can help.