How the calendar favors Joe Biden

COUNTDOWN — Monday was a great day on Joe Biden’s post-debate redemption tour. The depth of his support within the Congressional Black and Hispanic caucuses became clear for the first time. Biden’s defiant and forceful responses to calls that he should bow out of the presidential race seemed to halt the slow bleed, at least temporarily.

Today was a different story. Another House battleground Democrat called for Biden’s withdrawal, bringing the total of House members who have directly called for him to step down to nine. New York’s Democratic lieutenant governor did the same. Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi fired an unwelcome signal flare, there were more signs of Biden’s shakiness on the swing state map, and a prominent donor — actor George Clooney, who just recently held a record-breaking fundraiser for Biden — penned a powerful New York Times op-ed urging the president to withdraw as the Democratic nominee.

Yet if today served as a reminder of how deep the unrest still runs, it’s possible that the window for action is closing more rapidly than Biden’s intraparty critics think. The president’s solo press conference set for Thursday afternoon could be the last significant hurdle standing in the way of his renomination, not because he has effectively made the case for how he will defeat Donald Trump, but as a result of the convergence of two powerful forces.

The first is a collective action problem. While an argument can be made for why Biden’s departure from the race is in the common interest of the party, rational self-interest for many Democratic officeholders — which includes, among other things, professional ambition, the electoral nature of their districts, fear of the Democratic base or even their assessment of Trump’s threat to win — is leading many of them in a different direction. The result has been paralysis.

Then there is the more practical consideration working in Biden’s favor — the calendar. It’s nearly universally agreed within the party that a convention challenge to the president would be both futile and undesirable. Biden has made clear in recent days he intends to be the nominee — and the most obvious hurdle standing in his way at the moment is another meltdown in a high-stakes situation. There aren’t many of those chances left before the Democratic convention kicks off in mid-August.

After Thursday’s press conference, Biden needs only to run out the clock. Next week, there is a televised interview with NBC News anchor Lester Holt scheduled for Monday, but Biden has already proved he can meet that bar. He didn’t receive rave reviews for his interview last week with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos, but it didn’t damage his cause.

In any case, starting this weekend, the media oxygen will be sucked up by the Republican National Convention and the rollout of Trump’s vice presidential nominee. And since Congress will be out of session, Democratic members will be out of town, diminishing opportunities to hatch a consensus plan designed to convince Biden to step aside.

While there are technically 40 days remaining until the convention formally begins, the window for replacing Biden is actually much tighter since the party plans to designate Biden as the nominee in a virtual roll call that takes place in advance of the actual convention. The exact date of that roll call hasn’t been established yet but it will be sometime after the DNC’s July 19 Rules Committee and July 21 Credentials Committee meetings take place. (The Democratic National Committee voted to move forward with a virtual roll call before the calamitous June 27 presidential debate, in response to a threat from Ohio Republicans that would have kept Biden off the ballot there).

It’s a homestretch that works to Biden’s advantage. With a minimum of potentially catalytic events on the horizon and the GOP convention on tap, the president has a chance to ride out the storm, even as he endures a daily trickle of defections, bad polling data and op-eds calling for him to bow out. But first he must get past the unscripted and chaotic nature of a solo press conference — which won’t be an easy hurdle for a president who’s done far fewer press conferences and media interviews than any of his recent predecessors.

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What'd I Miss?

— F-16s head to Ukraine to begin flights this summer: NATO countries have begun transferring American-made F-16s to Ukraine, with hopes that the fighter jets will quickly be in the skies to help Kyiv defend itself against Russian air onslaughts. The U.S., Denmark and the Netherlands announced during the NATO Summit in Washington today that the two latter countries had sent over the aircraft, though they did not say how many. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken also mentioned the news during a public forum.

— Feds poised to sue pharmacy gatekeepers over high drug costs: The Federal Trade Commission is getting ready to sue big health care companies, claiming that they are illegally maximizing profits by steering patients to high-cost drugs, according to four people with direct knowledge of the case discussions. The pending case would target large pharmaceutical intermediaries owned by UnitedHealth Group, CVS and Cigna, claiming that they pushed patients to brand-name drugs, including insulin, according to the four people.

— Judge signals he’s likely to dismiss Rudy Giuliani’s bankruptcy case: A New York federal judge is poised to dismiss Rudy Giuliani’s bankruptcy case, expressing concern today that Giuliani has used the proceedings to obfuscate his assets and delay paying a massive defamation penalty to two Georgia election workers. “I’m leaning toward dismissal, frankly, because I am concerned that the past is prologue,” U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Sean Lane said during a tense hearing, raising concerns that “the difficulties that we’ve encountered in this case in terms of transparency will continue and dog the case.”

Nightly Road to 2024

PASS IT ALONG — House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has told lawmakers in private meetings that he’ll relay concerns regarding the president’s electability to Joe Biden, according to two people familiar with the situation, as more Democrats call for him to step aside.

Jeffries has convened listening sessions in recent days with rattled members of the caucus, including members of the centrist New Democrat Coalition, to discuss how having Biden at the top of the ticket could impact incumbents in battleground districts. Meanwhile, Speaker emerita Nancy Pelosi, whom rank-and-file Democrats have sought out for advice, has been having her own private conversations with Democrats to listen to their concerns, according to two people familiar with those discussions.

CLOONEY’S CALL — Actor George Clooney, a longtime fundraiser for the Democratic party, called for a new nominee to replace Joe Biden and revealed the president he saw at a fundraiser in June “was the same man we all witnessed at the debate.”

In an op-ed published in The New York Times today, Clooney writes the Biden he was with last month “was not the Joe ‘big F-ing deal’ Biden of 2010” or “even the Joe Biden of 2020.” In the face of concerns over a second Donald Trump presidential term, he says the Democratic party has “opted to ignore every warning sign.”

RUNNING AHEAD — Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown attempted to ease some down-ballot anxiety amid concerns over President Joe Biden’s electability in a private call with hundreds of Democratic donors Tuesday night — saying battleground Senate candidates and incumbents are running ahead of the top of the ticket.

“I know that there’s some nervousness now, but I look at all of these candidates running ahead of the national ticket. As all the five targeted incumbents are,” Brown said at a virtual fundraiser for five non-incumbent Senate candidates on Tuesday night, according to audio obtained by POLITICO.

AROUND THE WORLD

UNDER A NEW NAME — A new far-right group, Europe of Sovereign Nations, has been founded in the European Parliament, its newly-elected leader said today.

The alliance, which counts 25 MEPs among its ranks, is led by Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) and Poland’s Confederation, and is also comprised of MEPs from Bulgaria’s Revival, France’s Reconquête, Slovakia’s Republic Movement, Hungary’s Our Home Movement, Lithuania’s People and Justice Union, and the Czech Republic’s Freedom and Direct Democracy.

That means two new far-right groups have been founded in the Parliament in the space of a few days. On Monday, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally and Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz joined forces to create the Patriots for Europe group, which largely replaced the Identity & Democracy group, which is now disbanded.

Europe of Sovereign Nations promises to be more radical than the Patriots.

LET’S COMPETE — Instead of slapping duties on Chinese electric vehicles, the EU should look into a bloc-wide scheme to support production and demand, Hungary’s National Economy Minister Márton Nagy said as he hosted his EU counterparts.

An informal meeting of industry ministers was the first such gathering of Budapest’s six-month presidency of the Council of the EU. It came as Prime Minister Viktor Orbán danced out of line by courting President Xi Jinping, days after the EU executive slapped punitive tariffs of up to 38 percent on Chinese EVs to keep out heavily subsidized imports.

“We are very against these tariffs,” Nagy told reporters at a press conference on the banks of the Danube. “We don’t believe in [them]. Protectionism is not a solution. We need more competition.”

Nightly Number

RADAR SWEEP

MINING FOR TROUBLE — In the town of Granbury, Texas — home to about 10,000 — residents began complaining about a low but audible hum. Many of them then came down with strange health conditions like migraines or consistent nausea. As it turned out, the humming, and according to residents, the health conditions, were a result of a Bitcoin mine that began operating in the area. For TIME Magazine, Andrew Chow took a deep dive into the incident and how Bitcoin mining can be dangerous.

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