Daily Kickoff
Good Monday morning.
In today’s Daily Kickoff, we look at the decisions facing Democrats following President Joe Biden’s poor showing in last week’s presidential debate — and how his performance might affect military calculations in Israel and Lebanon. We also report on Rep. Scott Perry’s sharing of an antisemitic meme, look at Rep. Colin Allred’s vote against sanctioning the International Criminal Court and talk to Joel Rubin, Sen. Bernie Sanders’ former director of Jewish outreach, about the antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment pervasive in some progressive circles. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Ken Marcus, Rep. Brad Schneider and U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
What We’re Watching
- We’re continuing to monitor the fallout from President Joe Biden’s debate performance on Thursday night. While numerous columnists, editorial boards and pundits have called for the president to step aside, not a single elected Democratic member of Congress has done the same (even as many are reportedly panicking privately). More below.
- We’re keeping an eye on French politics, with six days to go before the second and final round of parliamentary elections. Exit polls from the first round of elections showed Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally party — which has garnered support from broad swaths of the country’s Jewish community amid concerns over rising antisemitism on the left — in the lead.
- Secretary of State Tony Blinken will sit in conversation with Brookings’ Suzanne Maloney at 10:30 a.m. today for a conversation about the Biden administration’s foreign policy vision.
- How will the United States and its NATO allies respond to Turkey’s refusal to refuel an El Al flight, which made an emergency stop in Antalya to evacuate a passenger facing a medical situation? (After being stuck on the tarmac for hours, the plane eventually took off for Rhodes, where it refueled and later headed back to Israel.)
- In Georgia, Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) will hold an event alongside local faith leaders to discuss the recent uptick in antisemitism in the Peach State.
- The late Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) will be remembered tonight at an event at the Begin Center in Jerusalem. Among those who will reflect on the impact of the Connecticut politician, who died in March, are Gil Troy and Natan Sharansky.
What You Should Know
Democrats have no good options now that they’re realizing that having an 81-year-old nominee at the top of the ticket is a serious political hazard, Jewish Insider Editor-in-Chief Josh Kraushaar writes.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who’s been following the White House that President Joe Biden’s advanced age was his biggest vulnerability. For the last year, polls have consistently shown that a majority of voters didn’t think he was up to the job for another four years.
Biden’s senior struggles prevented himfrom effectively driving home the administration’s message, kept him away from agenda-driving press conferences or newsmaking interviews and have limited his daily schedule, including on the campaign trail.
But it took a historically bad showing at the first presidential debate to expose for tens of millions of Americans on live TV just how bad things have gotten. Biden lost his train of thought constantly, and was utterly unable to rebut former President Donald Trump’s attacks in real time.
The post-debate polling has been brutal for the president. A new CBS News/YouGov poll found nearly three-fourths of the country (72%) doesn’t think Biden has the cognitive wherewithal to be president — with the same share of voters believing he shouldn’t be running for president. By a whopping 40-point margin (56-16%), voters thought Trump won the debate.
The problem for Democrats is that if party leaders effectively pressured Biden to withdraw from the race, the party would run the risk of blowing up their ticket without much likelihood of political upside. Such a move would be an acknowledgment that Biden has next-to-no chance of defeating Trump — a stunning concession for a party that rallied around their aging nominee for months, and downplaying the concerns of those who raised questions about the president’s ability to serve.
If Biden were to step aside, Vice President Kamala Harris would likely be the replacement candidate, unless the party wanted to deny her the nomination on the convention floor — and risk alienating Black and progressive voters who make up her base of support. Harris’ numbers are weaker than Biden’s, her activist-oriented profile would likely turn off persuadable moderate voters and she’s got a long track record of political underperformance.
And even if Democrats could clean the slate and pick a brand-new ticket, a new candidate would have to build their national political profile on the fly, raise money from scratch and unite an increasingly fractious Democratic Party coalition, divided between progressives and moderates.
Empowering the DNC delegates at a contested convention could also end up being a disaster for the party. They are ideologically to the left of typical Democratic voters, and aren’t inclined to act in the interest of electability. Any anti-Israel contingent, for instance, could make a mess of the proceedings, and further damage the Democratic Party’s image.
It’s a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t situation for the party. And if you’re a Democratic lawmaker up for reelection, running with a wounded Biden on an anti-Trump message is probably still the safer move than to change the top of the ticket and risk everything falling apart. It’s telling that no members of Congress have publicly called for Biden to step aside, even as many privately are apoplectic about the situation he’s put them in.
Biden’s top staff are insisting the president isn’t going anywhere and are calling on supporters to hold the line, even as the evidence mounts that he’s facing long odds to win the 2024 election. But the precarious political situation Biden is in has been evident for a while. The biggest surprise is that it’s taken so long for prominent commentators and pundits to come to the conclusion many voters arrived at months ago.
progressive positions
Former Bernie Sanders operative laments that anti-Israel activism is now a litmus test in progressive circles

As much of the progressive left continues to center anti-Israel advocacy as a key issue — an approach that contributed to Rep. Jamaal Bowman’s (D-NY) primary loss last week — one Democratic Jewish political strategist with roots in the progressive world is speaking out about what he says are the missteps and problems plaguing the progressive world, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.
Speaking out: Joel Rubin led Jewish outreach for Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 202o presidential campaign, was a deputy assistant secretary of state in the Obama administration and ran for Congress in Maryland this year. Speaking to JI on Wednesday, Rubin said that Bowman’s race reflects serious strategy and messaging issues on the left, including significantly overestimating the electoral appeal of their anti-Israel messaging and ignoring Jewish voters.