Welcome to Thunderdome, where this week I want you to consider: what’s the biggest 2024 question for Democrats?

You might assume that it’s Joe Biden’s age, infirmity and feeblemindedness — particularly after the Robert Hur report dropped last week. It certainly set the White House and the Biden campaign on edge — and now they’re dealing with the thorny question of whether they should release the transcript of Hur’s interviews with the president. On the one hand, it could provide information useful to Democrats pushing back against critics — see, he was just distracted by Israel, he just botched a few dates, Joe’s fine! But it also could provide a trove of examples useful to Republicans, especially if — as reports like this one from NBC News indicate — the president is personally lying about what he was asked and what he told the special counsel: 

President Joe Biden lashed out at Robert Hur last week over one particular line in the special counsel’s report on his handling of classified documents: that Biden “did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died.”

“How in the hell dare he raise that?” Biden told reporters in an impromptu White House press conference. “Frankly, when I was asked the question, I thought to myself, it wasn’t any of their damn business.”

But Hur never asked that question, according to two people familiar with Hur’s five-hour interview with the president over two days last October. It was the president, not Hur or his team, who first introduced Beau Biden’s death, they said.

Biden raised his son’s death after being asked about his workflow at a Virginia rental home from 2016 to 2018, the sources said, when a ghostwriter was helping him write a memoir about losing Beau to brain cancer in 2015. Investigators had a 2017 recording showing that Biden had told the ghostwriter he had found “classified stuff” in that home, the report says.

Biden began trying to recall that period by discussing what else was happening in his life, and it was at that point in the interview that he appeared confused about when Beau died, the sources said. Biden got the date — May 30 — correct, but not the year.

Yet at a certain point, Biden’s age and lack of mental acuity is just baked in politically. If it didn’t move a voter before, it’s not going to move them however many verbal slip-ups he has. It’s kind of like Donald Trump’s social media: if it didn’t already turn you off, it’s not going to lose your vote now.

So what’s the biggest question for Democrats, then? It’s the border, in bright screaming red klaxons. And that’s why you see multiple reports out today — there’s one here in Politico, another in Semafor — that the Tom Suozzi win in New York’s special election wasn’t about a blizzard that kept day-of voters home from the polls on election day, or a neophyte candidate who only recently became a Republican, but about Suozzi’s tough on the border messaging. 

As spin, this is clearly designed to get the word out to the Democratic side that they’ve figured out how to message on this issue, and successful candidates should follow this deceptive playbook. With the help of their allies in the media, Democrats are pushing the idea that the bipartisan border bill was somehow incredibly tough, and that Republicans’ decision to spike it means they are the barrier to enforcing the law, despite just holding a barely there majority in the House.

As far as the facts go, this framing is, of course, nonsense. The border bill was decried as unserious by anyone who knows anything about border policy and it was DOA from the moment that it dropped a wall requirement. You didn’t just have hardliners turning against it — you had moderates and leadership as well. When a gettable vote like Tim Scott is a “Hades no” on something like this, it’s an absolute non-starter. But Democrats can reasonably rely on the media to echo their claims, as Kaitlan Collins did yesterday on CNN when cutting off Congressman Mike Collins’s feed before he could respond.

Will this pivot — actually, we’re the tough-on-border party, it’s those Republicans who aren’t letting us enforce the laws! — be enough to save Democrats on the big question? Or will they suffer too many losses with progressives who are irked by this messaging? The answer could depend on just how much worse the migrant crisis becomes in blue cities — so I’d expect more busses headed in that direction from red states in the months to come.

We’ll get to the biggest question for Republicans after the South Carolina primary, which I’ll be covering next week. 

Nikki Haley struggles at home

Mark Sanford talks about that South Carolina race:

It’s a mixed bag. To her advantage is the fact that a lot of the folks moving to the coast of South Carolina, in particular — and to a lesser degree, the upstate of South Carolina — are formerly urban, more affluent retirees. You’ve got a major influx of people who, unlike the Bible Belt of our state, would fit the Rockefeller Republican profile of being less stringent on social issues and still caring about finance. A retiree on Kiawah is probably an ideal Haley voter, versus somebody who’s been indigenous to the state, who’s maybe blue-collar and probably more of a Trump voter.

[But] muscle memory counts in politics. And it’s been ten-plus years since anybody’s actually pulled a lever for Nikki. That’s a long time in the world of politics.

Politico: Why is the state political establishment almost universally aligned against her? How much of that is about Trump, and how much of that is about Haley herself?

Probably a 60-40 split. Most of it is Trump. People see that if that’s the train leaving the station, then that’s the one that they want in on. The name of the game for most people in politics is staying in the game. And therefore, they’re going to tend toward the candidacy that they perceive to be the winning one versus not.

I’m not blaming her, but many around the state would argue she hasn’t kept in touch or maintained the relationships that people like in the world of politics. It’s telling that somebody like Mikee Johnson, who grew up not that far from Nikki, a longtime personal friend, who ran both of her inaugurals, ended up being finance chair for Tim Scott. How in the world does that happen?

Look at the people that were raising money for Tim — the political infrastructure of our state shifted from Nikki over to Tim. I think a variety of things contributed to that. But I’d call it relationship management 101.

Democrats target RFK’s third party effort

Lending credence to polls showing that in states like Michigan, RFK Jr.’s support could be the difference between a Biden win and loss, Lis Smith is deployed by the DNC to stop democracy before it can happen to you:

The Democratic National Committee has taken multiple steps in recent days to portray Kennedy as a spoiler who would help Republican frontrunner Donald Trump defeat President Joe Biden, arguing Kennedy is funded primarily by wealthy donors aligned with the former president.

Last week, the DNC filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission alleging that Kennedy’s campaign had illegally coordinated with American Values 2024, a PAC backing his White House bid. Kennedy’s campaign has denied coordinating with the group.

In a call with reporters outlining the complaint, DNC advisor Ramsey Reid blamed Trump and his donors for turning Kennedy into a “stalking horse” by funding the PAC.

“We’re concerned that Donald Trump is disrespecting the democratic process. It’s pretty clear that Trump and his megadonors are propping up RFK Jr. as a stalking horse,” Reid said…

DNC advisor Lis Smith told CNN the party’s latest efforts are meant to educate voters on the connections between Trump and Kennedy, while acknowledging the critical role Kennedy could play in the general election.

“It’s clear that Donald Trump and his allies view him as a useful stalking horse who could help throw the election to Trump in November,” Smith said.

Will Fani Willis doom the Georgia case?

It could be an astounding end to a politically motivated case that could have been the biggest threat to Donald Trump’s 2024 chances.

At a hearing on Thursday, Judge Scott McAfee will gather evidence on the relationship between Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis and special prosecutor Nathan Wade as the judge considers a bid by Trump and his co-defendants to toss the prosecutors from the case.

Disqualifying the prosecutors probably wouldn’t end the case, but it would likely cause months of delays and disruptions, at a minimum. A brand new top prosecutor would have to be appointed by the head of a state prosecutors’ council, according to Clark Cunningham, a legal ethics expert at Georgia State University College of Law.

The disqualification bid likely will hinge on whether McAfee concludes that Willis and Wade derived improper benefits from their work on the Trump case after Willis hired Wade as a contract attorney to help run the case. Defense lawyers have alleged that Wade used income he earned under the contract with Willis’ office to pay for vacations he took with Willis.

The alleged benefits, defense lawyers say, represent a conflict of interest that calls into question whether Willis and Wade can prosecute the case fairly. Disqualifying Willis would mean her entire office would be removed from the case, Cunningham said.

One more thing

My latest article in the dead-tree edition of The Spectator focuses on Trump 2.0’s potential foreign policy shifts, and whether he really intends to abandon NATO or not. I hope you’ll give it a read and share it with a friend — and do remember to subscribe to the magazine, it’s really great!