| | | | |  | | By Eugene Daniels, Rachael Bade and Ryan Lizza | | | With help from Eli Okun, Garrett Ross and Bethany Irvine
|  Ongoing concerns about President Joe Biden's candidacy cannot be written off just as Democratic “bedwetting.” | Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images | |  | DRIVING THE DAY | | A RARE GOOD POLL FOR BIDEN — Just in time for Presidents Day Weekend, the Presidential Greatness Project, a survey of historians and scholars, is out with the results of its latest ranking of the presidents. President JOE BIDEN “makes his debut in our rankings at No. 14, putting him in the top third of American presidents,” Justin Vaughn and Brandon Rottinghaus, two academics who lead the project, write in the L.A. Times. “[DONALD] TRUMP, meanwhile, maintains the position he held six years ago: dead last.” The authors note that this periodic survey “has seen a pronounced partisan dynamic emerge, arguably in response to the Trump presidency and the Trumpification of presidential politics.” In short: Recent Democratic presidents are moving up in the rankings, while their Republican contemporaries are sliding down. Full results SNAP BACK TO REALITY — Unfortunately for the president, in the polls that actually matter — those of the American voting public — he continues to lag behind Trump in the 2024 race, with support that verges on anemic. It’s to the point now that concerns about his candidacy cannot be written off as Democratic “bedwetting.” JON FAVREAU, the host of the influential “Pod Save America” podcast and former BARACK OBAMA speechwriter, hit this note in a thread on X yesterday: “The challenge is, we just don’t know — and will likely never know — if nominating Biden is riskier than letting Democratic activists and insiders pick a lesser-known and potentially weaker general election candidate at the convention with three months to go,” Favreau wrote. “Would it be as risky as the campaign we’re most likely about to face? Again, it’s just too hard to know for sure. “What Biden can do is take concerns about his age seriously, acknowledge that fears about his performance aren’t media creations or Democratic bedwetting, and focus single-mindedly on crisp, strong, energetic appearances, which we’ve seen he’s absolutely capable of (2023 SOTU, Jan 6th speeches, etc.),” Favreau concluded, linking to a sympathetic essay by NYT’s Ezra Klein, which has been making the rounds among Democratic insiders since being published Friday. From Klein’s piece: “I cannot point you to a moment where Biden faltered in his presidency because his age had slowed him. But here’s the thing. I can now point you to moments when he is faltering in his campaign for the presidency because his age is slowing him. This distinction between the job of the presidency and the job of running for the presidency keeps getting muddied, including by Biden himself. … “I was talking to JAMES CARVILLE, who’s one of the chief strategists behind BILL CLINTON’s 1992 campaign, and he put this really well to me. He said to me that a campaign has certain assets, but the most desirable asset is the candidate. And the Biden campaign does not deploy Biden like he is a desirable asset. Biden has done fewer interviews than any recent president, and it’s not close. By this point in their presidencies, Barack Obama had given more than 400 interviews and Trump had given more than 300. Biden has given fewer than 100. … “This is a strategic adaptation to Biden’s perceived limits as a candidate. And what’s worse, it may be a wise one. … Biden, as painful as this is, should find his way to stepping down as a hero.” There has been rising frustration among top Democratic operatives that nearly any recommendation to change course is met with a pat on the head and a response akin to “thanks for the advice, kiddo.” Within Biden’s inner circle, there is a self-assuredness that they’ve been doubted over and over again, and their approach will continue to work. That assessment is not shared across the broader Democratic coalition. But there are some people whose advice the inner circle will likely be unable to ignore — such as VP KAMALA HARRIS. In a deep dive this morning, CNN’s Edward-Isaac Dovere cites more than two dozen sources in reporting that “Harris has been gathering information to help her penetrate what she sometimes refers to as the ‘bubble’ of Biden campaign thinking, telling people she’s aiming to use that intelligence to push for changes in strategy and tactics that she hopes will put the ticket in better shape to win.” For her entire vice presidency, Harris has routinely met with clutches of advocates, operatives and constituency groups in her ceremonial office in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building or her home at the Naval Observatory. Those efforts have only increased in importance as the reelection effort has spurred into motion. “Multiple leading Democrats, anxious about a campaign they fear might be stumbling past a point of no return, say their conversations with Harris have been a surprising and welcome change, after months of feeling sloughed off by the White House and Biden campaign headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware.” Harris is reportedly quick to defend the president in the conversations, and “often says in one-on-one conversations and smaller group gatherings … that she doesn’t worry Biden will lose to Trump — but she does worry about losing ‘to the couch.’” The question for Biden now: What, if anything, can be done to boost enthusiasm for his own candidacy, rather than simply relying on the specter of Trump’s return to the White House to motivate voters? Good Sunday morning. Thanks for reading Playbook. How would you rank the presidents? Drop us a line: Rachael Bade, Eugene Daniels, Ryan Lizza.
| | | | A message from American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers: EPA is set to finalize a regulation designed to end the sale of new gas and diesel cars regardless of what drivers want, need, and can afford. Polling shows that Americans think the Biden EPA is moving too far, too fast. President Biden: Stop the EPA’s car ban. Vehicle policies can’t just work for some of us. They should work for all of us. | | | NUKES IN SPACE? — In what is starting to sound like the plot of a James Bond film, America’s intelligence agencies are worried that Russia has plans to put a nuclear weapon into space, NYT’s David Sanger and Julian Barnes report. There’s not agreement among the agencies that Russian President VLADIMIR PUTIN would actually go that far, but the threat alone is plausible enough that it has sounded alarm bells across the federal government. How it would work: “Even if Russia does place a nuclear weapon in orbit, U.S. officials are in agreement in their assessment that the weapon would not be detonated. Instead, it would lurk as a time bomb in low orbit, a reminder from Mr. Putin that if he was pressed too hard with sanctions, or military opposition to his ambitions in Ukraine or beyond, he could destroy economies without targeting humans on earth. … “[G]lobal communications systems would fail, making everything from emergency services to cell phones to the regulation of generators and pumps go awry. Debris from the explosion would scatter throughout low-earth orbit and make navigation difficult if not impossible for everything from Starlink satellites, used for internet communications, to spy satellites.” And the issue is serious enough that Secretary of State ANTONY BLINKEN raised it during conversations with his Chinese and Indian counterparts at the Munich Security Conference. “Mr. Blinken’s message was blunt: Any nuclear detonation in space would take out not only American satellites but also those in Beijing and New Delhi.” SUNDAY BEST … — Rep. MIKE TURNER (R-Ohio) on why he sounded the public alarm about Russia’s space plans, on NBC’s “Meet the Press”: “We need to make certain that we avert what could be an international crisis. I was concerned that it appeared that the administration was sleepwalking into an international crisis. But it looks like now they’re going to be able to take action.” — CHARLAMAGNE THA GOD on whether Harris has met his expectations as VP, on ABC’s “This Week”: “She hasn’t … but I don’t think it’s too late for her to pivot. … I want to see her prosecute the case against Donald Trump in this country. I feel like she could go out there and really let the American people know what’s going on. I’d like to see her going on outlets like Fox News. I’d like to see her going in there and mixing it up.” — NIKKI HALEY on Trump’s (lack of) response to ALEXEI NAVALNY’s death, on “This Week”: “It’s actually pretty amazing that he, not only after making those comments that he would encourage Putin to invade NATO, but the fact that he won’t acknowledge anything with Navalny. Either he sides with Putin and thinks it’s cool that Putin killed one of his political opponents, or he just doesn’t think it’s that big of a deal. Either one of those is concerning. Either one of those is a problem.” More from David Cohen on Haley declining to say if she’d support Trump as the nominee — Sen. TIM SCOTT (R-S.C.) on the VP’s role on the day of congressional certification of the election, on CBS’ “Face the Nation”: “What I’m not going to do is answer questions that are hypothetical about the past. The one thing we know about the future is that the former president, fortunately, he’ll be successful in 2024, he won’t be facing that situation again. …” Robert Costa: “I’m not asking you a hypothetical question. I’m asking you a constitutional question. How do you see the role of vice president in terms of the congressional certification?” Scott: “The constitution is very clear. … I’m not changing my position.” TOP-EDS: A roundup of the week’s must-read opinion pieces.
| | | | A message from American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers:   | | | | | WHAT'S HAPPENING TODAY | | At the White House Biden and Harris have nothing on their public schedules.
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If the Trumps can’t borrow from banks in the Empire State, their operations around the world would be significantly hampered. | Paul Sancya/AP Photo | 9 THINGS FOR YOUR RADAR 1. TRUMP INC.: The massive New York civil business fraud judgment against Trump continued to rattle him yesterday, and the restrictions on his ability to conduct business could be especially tough, WSJ’s James Fanelli, Corinne Ramey and Jacob Gershman report. If the Trumps can’t borrow from banks in the Empire State, their operations around the world would be significantly hampered — even though Justice ARTHUR ENGORON didn’t go quite as far as AG TISH JAMES had asked for, and Trump still plans to appeal. Trump spent much of a campaign rally in Michigan last night excoriating Engoron and claiming, without evidence, that the trial had politically targeted him, The Detroit News’ Craig Mauger and Chad Livengood report. One Trump supporter launched a GoFundMe to help Trump cover the $355 million penalty, per the N.Y. Daily News, though it’s raised just $220,000 so far. Meanwhile, as the civil fraud trial undercut a core element of Trump’s businessman persona, his brand is suffering in NYC, where condos bearing his name have underperformed in value since 2016, NYT’s Rukmini Callimachi reports. 2. TRUMP’S SECOND TERM: “Trump’s anger at courts, frayed alliances could upend approach to judicial issues,” by WaPo’s Josh Dawsey and Marianne LeVine: “Trump has broken with many of the leaders and allies of the Federalist Society … The implications of his shift could be significant — from potentially imperiling a long-observed firewall between the White House and the Justice Department, to appointing lawyers in his administration willing to approve novel approaches to the law and dare courts to stop them, to shifting the nation’s courts further to the right.” 3. MIDDLE EAST LATEST: The U.S. is still pressing ahead on trying to strike a cease-fire/hostage release deal in the Israel-Hamas war, but Israel continues to bombard Gaza for now, reportedly killing 18 more people overnight and today, AP’s Wafaa Shurafa, Samy Magdy and Tia Goldenberg report. And U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. LINDA THOMAS-GREENFIELD said last night that she’ll veto the latest Security Council resolution calling for a cease-fire. At the same time, American visions of the Palestinian Authority governing Gaza after the war are imperiled by the group’s financial straits, WSJ’s Vivian Salama reports, leading the Biden administration to try to find ways to get money to the organization. One area that’s easing up: Iranian-backed militias in the region have pulled back on their attacks on U.S. troops in recent weeks, at the direction of an Iranian commander, Reuters’ Ahmed Rasheed, Parisa Hafezi and Timour Azhari report. Tehran wants to avert a broader conflagration after a fatal attack on Americans in Jordan sparked U.S. reprisals. 4. CAPTAIN KIRK: “Conservative activist Charlie Kirk helped oust Ronna McDaniel at the RNC. Now the knives are out for him,” by NBC’s Allan Smith, Henry Gomez, Matt Dixon and Vaughn Hillyard: “In recent weeks, at least three people, including [RONNA] McDANIEL herself, have privately warned Trump about [CHARLIE] KIRK’s conduct … ‘That boy’s a racist right there,’ [said DARRELL SCOTT]. … Trump allies offered conflicting accounts of whether he was bothered by any of the issues raised to him.”
| | | | A message from American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers:   | | | 5. ALL IN THE FAMILY: “Biden’s brother used his name to promote a hospital chain. Then it collapsed,” by Ben Schreckinger: “JIM BIDEN’s role at Americore was larger than previously reported: In some internal documents and investor materials his name is included among its top handful of leaders. … Joe Biden’s name and inner circle were more involved with the company than has been understood … Jim Biden has not been accused of criminal wrongdoing. … POLITICO’s investigation did not find that Joe Biden involved himself in the firm or took actions on its behalf. However, Joe Biden did benefit indirectly from his brother’s work with the firm.” 6. THE ROBERT MALLEY SAGA: The latest twist in one of diplomatic Washington’s biggest ongoing mysteries: The State Department IG is now probing the suspension of Malley, Biden’s special envoy to Iran, Semafor’s Jay Solomon reports. The internal watchdog’s investigation follows Malley’s nearly yearlong revocation of his security clearance, which has still gone largely unexplained. Some lawmakers “hoped the new investigation could explain why. They’re also fixated on learning the specific infractions he may have committed.” 7. BORDER SONG: “The Trials of Alejandro Mayorkas,” by The New Yorker’s Jonathan Blitzer: “[D]uring a White House meeting in late spring [2021], Biden’s chief of staff, RON KLAIN, raised the possibility of firing [DHS Secretary ALEJANDRO] MAYORKAS, just to reset the Administration’s message. (‘I never suggested firing Secretary Mayorkas,’ Klain told me.) … The irony was that Mayorkas, who had witnessed the surge in unaccompanied minors in 2014, as Deputy Secretary, was perhaps the least convenient fall guy. Among the Administration’s highest-ranking members, he had the most experience with the matter.” 8. DEPT. OF LONG SHOTS: Nebraska independent DAN OSBORN, a union mechanic who led a big Kellogg’s strike in 2021, is trying to unseat GOP Sen. DEB FISCHER with an unusual and difficult bid in November, NYT’s Jonathan Weisman reports in Omaha. Democrats are likely to endorse him and put up no candidate of their own, and one left-leaning poll raised excitement about his prospects, though Fischer is surely the heavy favorite as a red-state incumbent. Osborn’s campaign “will test whether the rising power of an energized union movement can translate to high elective office,” as he tries to break through with a populist message to reach typical GOP voters. 9. BIDEN’S COALITION CONUNDRUM: The president is still struggling to keep the groups that elected him in 2020 on board for 2024, as two new insightful stories lay out: Across Northampton County, Pennsylvania, AP’s Gary Fields finds voters saying that Biden’s save-democracy pitch won’t be enough to earn their support, as they worry more about economic/housing issues and consider third-party options. And Zack Colman reports on young climate activists’ dilemma, caught between supporting a president who passed historic climate investments and needing him to go further.
| | | | | PLAYBOOKERS | | Rashida Tlaib backed the “uncommitted” Michigan primary protest vote against Joe Biden. Donald Trump rolled out a new line of $399 “Never Surrender High-Tops” at Sneaker Con. George Santos sued Jimmy Kimmel over Cameos. Jimmy Carter has now survived a year in hospice care. Katie Porter is pulling the same kind of political trick for which she condemned Adam Schiff. IN MEMORIAM — “Ross Gelbspan, Who Exposed Roots of Climate Change Deniers, Dies at 84,” by NYT’s Trip Gabriel: “A longtime investigative journalist, he wrote books and articles that documented a campaign of disinformation intended to sow doubt about global warming.” — Family and friends gathered yesterday to remember the late Bob Brooks at a celebration of life, and Arkansas AG Tim Griffin announced that an iconic tower in Little Rock that’s being renovated to house the AG’s office will be renamed the Bob R. Brooks Jr. Justice Building. Attendees at the service included Dave Olander, Mac Campbell, John Raffaelli, Jim McCrery, Richard Hunt, Mac Abrams, Drew Smith, Jon Traub, Anthony Hulen, Brad Todd, John and Terri Fish, Amy Overton, Paul and Janet Kavinoky, Mike Gallagher and Ted Dickey. OUT AND ABOUT — Franklin Foer and Abby Greensfelder hosted a party for Jeffrey Rosen’s new book, “The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America” ($28.99). J. Michael Luttig gave a toast, and in a surprise, French Ambassador Laurent Bili knighted Rosen as a chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. SPOTTED: Ruth Marcus and Jon Leibowitz, Olivia Nuzzi, Matt Cooper, Denise Couture, Marc Rotenberg, Lauren Coyle Rosen, Mike Kinsley, E.J. Dionne, Tom Griffith, Atul Gawande, Sid and Jackie Blumenthal, Joan Biskupic, Toby Stock, Ceci Gallogly, Abby Nugent, Samson Mostashari, Moira Bagley Smith, Jacob Heilbrunn, Rafe Sagalyn, and Esther and Bert Foer. WEEKEND WEDDING — Cory Claussen, senior director for government affairs at the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority and a CFTC and Senate Agriculture alum, and Thomas Cluderay, general counsel for the National Wildlife Federation and an Aspen Institute alum, got married yesterday at the Whittemore House. They met on OkCupid and celebrated 10 years together in December. Pic, via Jon Fleming Photography … Another pic HAPPY BIRTHDAY: Reps. Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.) (6-0), Steve Womack (R-Ark.) and Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) (6-0) … Keith Urbahn … James Hohmann … Rachel Martin … Bill Bertles … Kiara Pesante Haughton … Al Quinlan … FT’s Janan Ganesh … Marc Lampkin … Abby Blunt … NBC’s Rebecca Kaplan … Angela Chiappetta … Elizabeth Kanick … Matt Burgess … Adam Prather … Jesse Purdon … former Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) … Ben Wofford … former Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner … Commerce’s Ayodele Okeowo … SBA’s Aneysha Bhat … Lucien Zeigler … Denise Dunckel Morse Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here. Send Playbookers tips to playbook@politico.com or text us at 202-556-3307. Playbook couldn’t happen without our editor Mike DeBonis, deputy editor Zack Stanton and Playbook Daily Briefing producer Callan Tansill-Suddath. Correction: Yesterday’s Playbook misspelled Lydia Grizzell’s name.
| | | | A message from American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers: EPA is set to finalize a regulation designed to end the sale of new gas and diesel cars. This proposal would force automakers to phase out internal combustion engine vehicles – the most widely available, accessible, and affordable cars driven by the majority of Americans. The Biden EPA is rushing to do this before we are ready, and regardless of what American drivers want, need, and can afford.
Even worse, phasing out gas and diesel-powered vehicles for electric vehicles jeopardizes our hard-won American energy security, which is built on American-made and American-grown fuels. Instead, we will be reliant on China, the dominant player in the electric vehicle supply chain now and for the foreseeable future.
President Biden: It’s not too late to act. Stop the EPA’s misguided car ban. We need vehicle policies that work for all Americans, our economy, and our energy security. | | | | | | | Follow us on Twitter | | | | Subscribe to the POLITICO Playbook family Playbook | Playbook PM | California Playbook | Florida Playbook | Illinois Playbook | Massachusetts Playbook | New Jersey Playbook | New York Playbook | Ottawa Playbook | Brussels Playbook | London Playbook View all our political and policy newsletters | | Follow us | | | | |
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