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I've been noodling the plausibility of the idea that Biden knew some time ago—days or maybe more than a week, who knows— that he's toast to the electorate and needs to pull out, but the party can't just take him off the ticket without any plan, so they are negotiating several things to make the transition seamless as possible, such as who's going to replace him (maybe not Kamala), what the ticket will look like, how certain top delegates can whip lesser delegates into line, how donors will react, things like that. They couldn't say out loud they're doing something like that because that would look even more chaotic than what we see looks. And Biden can't say he will pull out in such a scenario, so he continues to insist he is staying in the race, even as he understands he has to pull out, because that draws less fire than they are prepared to fight at this moment. I have no evidence of this, and I'm not saying that's what's happening, or that I believe it is actually happening. I'm speculating on the plausibility of it, which I think is enough that it lies within the range of outcomes.

Maybe if you had a dozen or so wives, they would have that stamina!

Actually, I think we do know where Trump stands. Hint: it has nothing to do with policy.

You're not even attacking him. You're attacking his arguments, which is what debate is. Apparently, in 2024 politics, that's bullying.

Two-thirds vote needed.

Come to Chicago. Riot-free since 2020.

Anyone have any serious idea what caused it?

A super high percentage of swing and fence voters don't know and have never heard that they are contradictory, and another big chunk of the rest may have heard that it is contradictory but don't understand why and so don't believe it.

And this mistake is demonstrably worse because Trump actually thinks—or else wants us to think, or else wants us to think he thinks, or all three—that Scott Walker is the governor of Wisconsin. But no serious, reasonable people can actually maintain that Biden truly believes Putin is the president of Ukraine, or that Trump is his vice president.

What can I say? It's my fate. 🤡

A lot of us liked the Scherzer trade when it happened, but I'm pretty sure none of us thought he'd land on a best athlete of the century list.

I know this week has been a low point for us this year and we all came to the conclusion yesterday that Biden is toast, but if there’s one takeaway from this speech, it’s that one horrific performance by Trump could put Biden right back in it, because we are very much a what-have-you-done-for-me-lately country. Was this the performance to do that? Maybe, maybe not. But this speech was the first good thing to happen for Biden since the debate. Eager to see whether they can somehow capitalize on that.

I think we might be giving Kimberley Guifoyle’s ignorance too much credit, and we shouldn’t sleep on it. I think she knew exactly what she was doing when she substituted “communists” for “Nazis”, precisely because none of the Oathkeeping Three-precenter Proud Boys are communists.

You Candidate Flaming Trousers is swooping in just in time to take credit for it? Why, I never …

For whichever (or whatever) reason, Charity Navigator has no information on Stand Up To Cancer, even though they have been around since 2008. https://www.charitynavigator.org/ein/884115555 STAND UP TO CANCER cannot currently be evaluated by our Impact & Measurement methodology because either (A) it is eligible, but we have not yet received data; (B) we have not yet developed an algorithm to estimate its programmatic impact; (C) its programs are not direct services; or (D) it is not heavily reliant on contributions from individual donors. Note: The absence of a score does not indicate a positive or negative assessment, it only indicates that we have not yet evaluated the organization. I find it interesting that a charity with as high a profile as this is completely absent from the most trusted charity aggregator website known. However, they do post an audit to their website as a charity. This one is from 2022: https://www.eifoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/2022-Audited-Financials-The-Entertainment-Industry-Foundation-FINAL.pdf Stand Up To Cancer is a subsidiary of a group called The Entertainment Industry Foundation, so named, I suppose, because Katie Couric and Sherry Lansing were among their the celebrity founders. In addition to Stand Up To Cancer, they also operate charities called Defy Disaster; and Delivering Jobs (for people with autism). I don't see where the audit breaks out expenditures by charity within, so it's basically impossible to gauge just how big the SU2C portion of it is, but they do have to break out their donations and expenditures by type, and by a mile, the leading assets that gets donated and spent is, I kid you not, in-kind donated media. Of the $410 million in reported donations in 2022, $354MM of it, or 86%, was donated media; $37MM was corporate contributions; and $19MM was direct contributions. Of the $398 million in reported functional expenses, $351MM (88%) was donated media; $29MM was grants to charities; and the remaining $18MM went to other expenses, chiefly payroll, professional services (I assume legal, accounting, and investing a big part of that), and other office-type expenses. So, removing the in-kind media out of the equation, Stand Up To Cancer appears to be one of three charities operated by The Entertainment Industry Foundation which, all together, took in roughly $56 million in cash contributions and gave $29MM in grants to actual charities. For a charity that is as high-profile as SU2C is, at least to us baseball fans, that seems underwhelming to me, but maybe I'm not assessing that correctly, I don't know. But I don't think the size of the in-kind media contributed and spent can be ignored because it is just so massive, way into the 80+ percent of the organization's activities. So one could be forgiven for feeling as though the main purpose of the enterprise is to generate attention for itself, with the actual grant aspect of it seeming to take a back seat. But again, maybe I'm not looking at all this the right way, so I'd be interested in the take of anyone who has actual experience working with charity finances, because I have practically none.

If it's a for-sure thing that Biden is stepping down—and that is looking increasingly certain—then it is good we are escalating this story now so we can steal some attention away from the Unified Reich rally. In the any-publicity-is-good-publicity era, that's a plus, because it would serve to divide people's attention and undermine the efforts to make anyone who is not a hardcore-D voter fall completely in love with Trump the Badass Strongman that Mark Violets' bullet couldn't fell. But as I posted yesterday, I think the Democrats could completely win this news cycle by announcing the change today, in advance of Agent Orange taking the stage. That's doubly important because you just know Trump is going to steal attention and win every news cycle during the Democratic Convention next month. Fight future fire with proactive fire, I say. Of course, announcing it today is completely dependent on Democrats having their **** pulled together on the whole thing. If they don't—and there's a better chance than not that they still don't—and they were to half-ass an announcement today, I believe it would completely blow up in their face. They would have to thread the needle to get it just right, and there are a lot of ways it could go wrong. But if they get it just right, then oh boy, we are back in this thing. I put the likelihood of announcing it today in the 10% or so range.

Maybe we all need a group hug here.

Will Leitch has obviously not watched the Tigers this month, apparently not even when we were playing the Dodgers, which, really, I'm not surprised. He appears to be getting his input strictly from topline season data. At least he's aware TORK! was sent down, although he clearly has no idea how badly TORK! has been doing there and that he might be down for the rest of the season. https://www.mlb.com/news/mlb-power-rankings-for-week-of-july-14?partnerId=it-20240718-10493459-mlb-1-A&utm_id=it-20240718-10493459-mlb-1-A&lctg=4019258656 23. Tigers (previously: 24) Season high: 7 | Season low: 24 The Tigers have had some excellent pitching atop their rotation this year from Tarik Skubal and Jack Flaherty, but the offense just hasn’t been there – again. There are still young players to have hope for in the future. But one hopes those hitters emerge in time for the pitching to still be there. Reasonable Expectation: Signs of progress from their young bats, including Spencer Torkelson once he returns to the bigs.

Don't know why, it's a pretty hilarious Twitter feed, at least for the first 30 or so seconds.

As far as you're concerned, Biden dropping out would be an unmitigated disaster no matter who were to replace him, but that's a different topic than I am contemplating here. I have not said I want Biden to be replaced—or even that I don't want that, for that matter. The only thing I want for sure is for Trump to lose, and despite the thirty or forty or whatever it is percent of total polls that are flooding the zone out there showing that Biden is tied or ahead or at least holding ground versus last week, I am not confident that Biden is the guy who has the best chance to do so. He might be, but I truly have no sense of it either way. What I am saying is that if a change were to be made, I do believe that the party's best chance to beat Trump this fall would be Gretchen Whitmer. I'm not interested in discussing the weeds about how she would build a team, or get donors on her side, or any of that, because I am talking in terms of "if", not "I want". If I were coming from "I want", I would have to contemplate it. Instead, all I am saying here is, if Biden were to be replaced, then based on articles I have seen that have discussed various possible replacements, I believe Gretchen Whitmer would have the best chance of beating Trump in a general election. (That's setting aside Michelle Obama, of course, who, while polls I have seen show that Democrats believe she would be the runaway favorite among all options to beat Trump in a general, she is not a serious option in any way to replace Biden.)

That’s not my theory, and I don’t know where you got that.

As concerned as I would be that the electorate is still in a place in which a major party's candidate being a woman would siphon off enough marginal votes to be decisive, if a change were to be made, I do believe that the party's best chance to beat Trump this fall would be Gretchen Whitmer.

Come here then ... thaaat's it ... shh shh shhhhh ... it's OK, buddy ... don't worry, it's gonna be all right ... you're safe now ... the black helicopters can't hurt you anymore ...

That’s not my theory. I don’t know where you got that. But what I don’t understand is how you could leave out the most important piece of the puzzle from your source:

Yeaaaahh, I don’t think that was a gaffe …