60% of respondents, Republicans and Democrats, say president should be replaced, while 11% were unsure
A majority of voters want Joe Biden to stand down following his dismal debate performance, yet aren’t convinced there is a suitable alternative Democratic candidate, new polls have found.
In a Morning Consult poll, 60% of respondents, Republicans and Democrats, said the president should be replaced by his party for November’s election, while another 11% were unsure.
Continue reading...From a barbershop and a cigar bar in Atlanta, many Black voters say they remain undecided after an underwhelming debate
Inside a barbershop in Atlanta’s affluent Buckhead neighborhood, eight Black men gathered to talk politics on the day before the presidential debate. Most were business owners around town, social media stars and notable conservatives.
All but one.
Continue reading...The vice-president would be a logical choice if Biden does opt out, but some are already looking to other contenders
Joe Biden’s stumbling debate performance left Democrats so panicked some are searching for an alternative to replace the 81-year-old president as the party’s standard-bearer.
Biden has given no indication that he intends to exit the race, and his campaign has flatly dismissed the suggestion. But that has done little to silence critics who are openly questioning whether Biden is the right person to take on Donald Trump, a figure the president – and his party – view as a grave threat to American democracy.
Continue reading...Former president claims ‘no amount of rest or rigging could help’ Biden during victory lap at Virginia rally
Donald Trump wasted no time bringing up Thursday’s debate at a rally in Virginia on Friday.
“Hello, Virginia,” he opened to a crowd in Chesapeake. “Did anybody last night watch a thing called the debate?”
Continue reading...Attendees note ‘night and day’ difference between campaign stop in North Carolina and ‘lackluster’ debate showing
In what several supporters described as a “night and day” difference from his performance in last night’s debate, President Joe Biden on Friday vowed to keep fighting against what he framed as an existential threat to America.
In his first campaign stop following the debate, Biden showed off a louder and more dynamic voice at the North Carolina state fairgrounds in Raleigh.
Continue reading...Some call for rethink by Democrats and say continent must step up preparations for another Trump term
European politicians, already drowning in multiple crises of their own, were left shell-shocked and aghast at Joe Biden’s meandering performance in Thursday’s presidential debate, aware that a second Trump term had drawn that much nearer – with all that this implies for the rise of populism in the continent, the future of Nato, and for Ukraine and the Middle East.
The voices of despair came from across the mainstream political spectrum, interspersed with the odd call for Europe to prepare even more intensively for a Trump second coming.
Continue reading...Headlines echoed Democrats’ anxiety that Biden is too cognitively weak and physically frail for another term
US voters woke up to post-debate reviews of the first Biden-Trump debate with headlines that echoed Democrats’ anxiety that the incumbent president is too cognitively weak and physically frail to sustain another five months of political campaigning or another term in office.
Those anxieties, multiple outlets reported, were being reflected in pressure from Democratic donors and former Democratic officials who are now openly talking about replacing Biden with an alternative presidential candidate at the party’s convention in Chicago in August.
Continue reading...Independent candidate is polling at about 8%, but could be a spoiler in November contest between Trump and Biden
Robert F Kennedy Jr, the independent US presidential candidate polling at about 8%, won’t be at tonight’s Biden-Trump TV smackdown in Atlanta. But he’s not taking the diss quietly, and has accused debate host CNN of colluding with the major party campaigns to exclude him.
In an email statement on Wednesday, the Kennedy campaign claimed that 71% of Americans want to see him on the debate stage, and in an act of counter-programming he plans an alternative “real” debate on Elon’s Musk’s Twitter/X platform at the same time.
Continue reading...Leftwing groups write to top House Democrat Hakeem Jeffries raising ‘dire concerns’ about pro-Israel lobby group
Progressive groups reacted with disappointment and anger over Jamaal Bowman’s decisive primary loss to a moderate Democrat in New York’s 16th district, calling for the party to cut ties with pro-Israel lobbying groups they blame for the result.
In a letter to the House Democratic leader, Hakeem Jeffries, more than a dozen progressive organizations said they had “dire concerns” over the party’s continued association with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), “the future of the Democratic Party, the future of our multiracial democracy, and the future of our planet”.
Continue reading...Bitter intraparty fight is one of two elections that could help determine control of Congress in November
Despite a series of personal scandals, Lauren Boebert, a hard-right Colorado Republican who narrowly avoided defeat in 2022, won out over a crowded field of other Republican primary candidates in the fourth congressional district – previously led by Ken Buck – which leans more heavily Republican.
Boebert’s primary win is one of the most closely watched results of Colorado’s primary elections, which chose the winners in several bitter intra-party fights among the state’s Republicans, including in two competitive House districts that could help determine control of Congress in November.
Continue reading...This live blog is now closed. For the latest on Trump’s trial, read our full coverage here.
While his primary contest may be too close to call, the vote count thus far shows Republican congressman Bob Good trailing his challenger John McGuire by a small amount.
Good is now casting aspersions on the fairness of the election, NBC News reports:
Good claimed during an appearance on Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast Monday that Lynchburg “did not secure their drop boxes.”
“There’s no accountability for when those boxes were opened,” Good said. “They were apparently left to be stuffed for two or three days after the election.”
Continue reading...Former secretary of state, who has debated both men, says Trump ‘starts with nonsense and digresses into blather’
Hillary Clinton has said it would be a “waste of time” for Joe Biden to attempt to refute Donald Trump’s contentions in Thursday’s presidential debate because “it’s nearly impossible to identify what his arguments even are”.
The former secretary of state wrote in a New York Times opinion piece that Trump “starts with nonsense and then digresses into blather”.
Continue reading...Former US president made the claim in a fundraising email that advertised coffee mugs featuring his mugshot
Donald Trump has been met with a chorus of online mockery after claiming that he was “tortured” while being processed at the Fulton county jail in Georgia last August, an occasion that generated the mugshot that he has since turned into a money-making device as he campaigns for a second presidency.
The outlandish and unsubstantiated claim came in a fundraising email and drew at least one unflattering comparison with one of the former president’s political nemeses: John McCain, the former Republican senator for Arizona whose real experience of torture and incarceration during the Vietnam war was a target for Trump’s mockery.
Continue reading...Biden and Harris give forceful campaign statements blaming Trump for ending right to abortion access
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris marked the second anniversary of the US supreme court ruling that overturned Roe v Wade with forceful campaign statements that laid the blame squarely on Donald Trump for ending the national right to abortion.
In a video released on Monday, Biden pledged to restore the right to an abortion and “protect American freedom” if he is re-elected.
Continue reading...Political surrogates hit Sunday talkshows as candidates take different approaches before next week’s face-off
Presidential political surrogates fanned out across the Sunday talkshows to prepare the ground for next week’s televised debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, which could help the Democratic incumbent and his Republican predecessor focus the minds of undecided or unengaged voters on November’s election.
But the candidates themselves are taking strikingly different approaches. Biden is hunkered down at Camp David in debate preparation, reportedly with his personal attorney Bob Bauer standing in for Trump in mock exchanges.
Continue reading...After chaos in 2020, the switch from non-partisan overseer to commercial TV has some critics fearing a slippery slope
“Will you shut up, man?” It was hardly oratory worthy of Abraham Lincoln, but Joe Biden’s primal plea in the face of relentless interruptions and heckling from Donald Trump provided a defining soundbite of the 2020 presidential debates.
The two will face each other again on Thursday for the first of two head-to-head debates for the 2024 campaign, under new rules designed to prevent matters degenerating as they did four years ago. The US president and the former president will meet in a TV studio without the presence of a partisan audience, which some saw as an essential ingredient of Trump’s rabble-rousing approach. And to counteract the repeated butting-in that so irked Biden, the candidates will have their microphones muted when they are not speaking.
Continue reading...Sean O’Brien accepts invitation as union says its message ‘needs to be heard by as wide an audience as possible’
Sean O’Brien, the president of the Teamsters union, will speak at the Republican national convention in Milwaukee next month, a move that could spell trouble for Joe Biden’s support among blue-collar workers ahead of the November election.
Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, announced on Friday on his Truth Social platform that O’Brien had accepted his invitation to speak at the convention and that he was looking forward to seeing him represent the Teamsters.
Continue reading...Alvin Bragg has received onslaught of threats against him and other officials since guilty verdict in hush-money trial
Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney who prosecuted Donald Trump in his felony trial, has asked a judge to extend a gag order against the ex-president after an onslaught of threats and harassment against him and other officials since the guilty verdict.
The gag order was placed on Trump before the start of the felony trial. It prevented the former president from attacking witnesses, court staff, jurors and relatives of Judge Juan Merchan, who oversaw the trial.
Continue reading...Incumbent Bob Good, chair of far-right Freedom Caucus, appeals for patience as votes counted in congressional race
The conservative US representative Bob Good is asking for “patience from the people of Virginia’s fifth district over the coming weeks” as he hopes the final ballot count from Tuesday’s primary will allow him to fend off a fellow Republican challenger endorsed by former president Donald Trump.
Good, who chairs the hard-right House Freedom Caucus, currently trails state senator John McGuire by a little more than 300 votes as elections officials finalize their vote counts and mail-in ballots continue to trickle in.
Continue reading...Crypto tycoons claim Biden has ‘openly declared war against crypto’ in lengthy critique of administration policy
Cryptocurrency tycoons the Winklevoss twins have each donated $1m in bitcoin to Donald Trump’s campaign and pledged to vote for the former president in November, claiming Joe Biden had “openly declared war against crypto”.
Trump is “pro-Bitcoin, pro-crypto, pro-business”, Cameron Winklevoss declared on X, formerly Twitter, on Thursday. “And he will put an end to the Biden Administration’s war on crypto.”
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