Good evening, New Portland tonight, and it confirms what many debate watchers suspected.

The Democratic presidential race is shifting to a combo of Harris's benefit and a Joe Biden's

expense.

We'll have more in that shortly, but we begin with the incumbent president and get more

evidence from his G20 trip to these happier talking attirements than Democratic heads of

state like himself.

Now before going any further, we should know what his defenders say that hard-headed diplomacy

often requires dealing with less than savory characters, even outright thugs.

And if that were what the president has been doing, it would still be controversial, but

it would also be for good purpose or even a definable purpose.

Instead though, his critics, and they spanned the political spectrum, worry that this president

has turned what used to be a diplomatic necessity for advancing the interests of the United

States and the democracies into something else.

Such as failing to rebut Vladimir Putin's claim that Western-style liberalism is in his

words obsolete.

The president did not do what Ronald Reagan never failed to do with Mikhail Gorbachev.

He didn't do what John F. Kennedy did when he confronted Nikita Khrushchev.

He didn't verbally defend what NATO was formed to defend militarily.

Instead, he confused Western-style liberalism, meaning the centuries-old tradition of freedom

and democracy with a political opposition in California.

I don't know what they're thinking, but when you look at Los Angeles, when you look at

San Francisco, when you look at some of the other cities, and not a lot, not a lot, but

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