Tipsheet

Biden Faces More Than Bad Polling and a Total Dem Rebellion. His Campaign Is Running Out of Money.

Matt Vespa
Matt Vespa  |  July 18, 2024 1:30 PM

Madeline wrote earlier today that the Biden campaign has finally run aground. The president was diagnosed with COVID in Las Vegas yesterday, canceling scheduled events, including an address to UnidosUS. Biden flew back to Delaware, where he can recover in the comfort of his home and without visitor logs. 

Though not his fault, it was a brutal coincidence, especially since he had told BET that he’d exit the race if a medical episode arose, seemingly stepping back from his intransigent ‘I’m never leaving’ stance from a few weeks ago. Huddled in his COVID bunker, Biden is facing another issue besides a wholesale Democratic Party rebellion and bad polling: his campaign operation is running out of money. After Semafor posted the story, Biden’s main big money man, Jeffrey Katzenberg, said everything was fine. Yeah, are you sure about that (via Semafor): 

Joe Biden met privately in Las Vegas Wednesday with Jeffrey Katzenberg, the film producer and a top campaign adviser, who conveyed a warning: The president’s donors’ patience is wearing thin, and their cash soon will, too. 

Katzenberg, one of Biden’s closest counselors and a conduit to moneyed circles in media and finance, told the president that major donors, doubtful of his ability to win in November, have all but stopped writing the kind of big checks that sustain campaigns in the home stretch, people familiar with the meeting said. One of the people said the donor warning came in a broader discussion of other campaign topics. 

After this story was published, Katzenberg said in a statement that it was a “misread of a private meeting” and that he and Biden “talked about everything from the convention to new ads. And by the way, we will raise the money we need to run a winning campaign.” 

[…] 

“This I can confirm,” James Carville, a veteran of Democratic presidential campaigns including Bill Clinton and a respected voice among donors, told Semafor. “Donors in revolt.” 

[…] 

The freeze extends beyond Biden’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee to the web of super PACs and outside groups that make up the party’s infrastructure. 

“It’s a crisis,” said a top Democratic fundraiser. “The money isn’t moving.” 

Katzenberg directed Semafor’s questions to the Biden campaign, which declined to comment. 

[…] 

Biden’s campaign isn’t at immediate risk of running out of cash. But the final months of presidential races are dominated by expensive television campaigns in swing states — made all the more necessary by Biden’s inability to communicate regularly himself. That will only be exacerbated by the president testing positive for Covid on Wednesday. 

Bide also exposed Katzenberg to COVID. 

Carville has been one of the most vocal in wanting to dump Biden. ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos said that the walls were closing in on the president, where the dam likely broke last night during the Republican Convention. Stephanopoulos was the host from a major network to interview Biden about what was going to be his media rehab tour, which quickly and brutally careened off the cliff. He later was caught saying that he felt Biden couldn’t serve another four years, which prompted the former Clinton operative to apologize for telling the truth. 

It seemed like over the course of the past few days, top Democrats staged a political intervention on Biden, who refused to believe he was losing. That’s when this ‘death by a thousand’ cuts protocol by leaking details of these meetings were set into motion. If you’re a Democrat, it had to be done. They face a total wipeout with Biden at the top of the ticket.

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Of course, the Biden campaign is playing defense, but like the Alamo, the walls have been breached: