Can Biden Survive?

WSJ Opinion: Free Expression

Gerard Baker, Editor at Large, The Wall Street Journal

Society & Culture, News

4.6 • 591 Ratings

🗓️ 10 July 2024

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In what is the most important week of Joe Biden's presidency, Democrats are in disarray about the man at the top of the ticket for November's election. Despite strong pushback from the White House to calls for him to step down, the drumbeat demanding change is growing louder. Several members of Congress have called for him to go and many more are privately expressing despair about the party's prospects - in congressional elections as well as at the presidential level - if he remains the candidate. On this episode of the Free Expression podcast, Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA), the president's most vocal supporter in the Senate, explains why he thinks Biden is the only plausible candidate, excoriates those in his party refusing to unite behind him, and talks about his passionate support for Israel and why so many in his party no longer seem to share it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Boardrooms love buzzwords.
0:02.0	AI, climate, resilience.
0:03.8	But what do they actually mean for CFOs and execs trying to survive the next earnings call?
0:08.3	That's where the pre-read comes in.
0:09.9	Real experts and real talk.
0:11.7	Subscribe to the pre-read, presented by Workieva.
0:17.2	From the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, this is Free Expression with Jerry Baker.
0:24.9	Hello and welcome to Free Expression from the Wall Street Journal. I'm Jerry Baker, editor at large of the journal.
0:30.1	If you're not already a subscriber to Free Expression, please do sign up wherever you do your podcast listening.
0:35.1	This week, is Joe Biden out of the woods yet? Immediately after his
0:38.8	catastrophic debate performance against Donald Trump two weeks ago, it looked as though demands
0:43.3	from some Democrats that President Biden should step aside as their nominee for this year's election
0:48.0	would prevail. With polls indicating the president's already faltering chances of winning another
0:52.7	term slipping further, a handful of members of Congress went public with calls for the president's already faltering chances of winning another term slipping further,
0:54.9	a handful of members of Congress went public with calls for the president to step down.
0:59.6	Many more whispered anonymously to reporters and to people like me that Biden had to go.
1:05.6	And for a while it seemed that the pressure might be enough to break the dam.
1:09.0	But Biden and his campaign fought back to hold back
1:12.4	the tide. Last Friday, in a hastily arranged interview with ABC News, he said he would never
1:17.0	willingly quit. All weekend, his team's deployed appeals to quell the panic, with aides calling
1:22.5	members of Congress to cool it. And on Monday, Biden issued a letter to Democrats insisting he would stay on,
1:28.5	and reminding them in not so subtle terms how difficult it would be for them to remove him
	...

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