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Joe Biden tries to calm nerves of wealthy backers after debate debacle

Published

2 days ago

June 29, 2024

Joe Biden and top allies have sought to reassure Democratic donors that he can defeat Donald Trump, after a disastrous debate performance left wealthy backers divided over whether the US president should abandon his re-election bid.

Biden conceded that he “didn’t have a great night” as he met donors at a fundraiser in East Hampton, New York, on Saturday, where the cost of entry ranged from $3,300 to $250,000 per person, according to the invitation.

“I understand the concern about the debate. I get it,” Biden told supporters in the wealthy resort town.

But the president argued that “voters had a different reaction,” adding: “Since the debate, the polls show a little movement, moved us up actually.”

Few polls have been released since Thursday night’s debate, but betting markets moved dramatically against Biden during and after the showdown. A Morning Consult poll conducted on Friday found roughly half of Democratic voters said Biden should step aside in favour of another candidate.

Three donors familiar with the East Hampton fundraiser described the mood in the room as subdued, despite the president appearing stronger than he did on the debate stage on Thursday night.

Biden was expected to attend another fundraiser later on Saturday in Red Bank, New Jersey, hosted by the state’s Democratic governor, Phil Murphy.

Senior Democratic lawmakers and party grandees have also reached out to donors in recent days. Chuck Schumer, the most senior Democrat on Capitol Hill, has tried to reassure several backers about Biden’s candidacy since the debate, said two party fundraisers.

There have been mounting calls for the president to step aside and allow another Democrat to be the party’s nominee for the White House ahead of November’s election.

At 81 years old, Biden has faced questions for months about his age and fitness for office. But any concerns that Democratic insiders had privately about the incumbent president spilled out into the open on Thursday night, after nearly 50mn Americans watched Biden struggle through a live, televised debate against Trump. The president rambled, appeared to lose his train of thought and struggled to complete sentences.

Biden has insisted that he will stay in the race, and campaign officials say he will participate in a second presidential debate planned for September.

The campaign has touted what it says has been a record influx of grassroots, or small-dollar, donations, since Thursday. A campaign official said on Saturday morning that the campaign had raised more than $27mn between the debate and Friday evening.

“It wasn’t his greatest debate. But it is 90 minutes . . . in a campaign and in an administration, where he has achieved enormous things,” Anita Dunn, a longtime senior adviser to Biden, said on MSNBC on Saturday. “Maybe it wasn’t a great debate. But he has been a great president.”

Asked if Biden’s inner circle had discussed him dropping out after the debate, Dunn replied: “No, the conversation we had is, ‘OK, what do we do next?”

Jen O’Malley Dillon, chair of the Biden campaign, accused the “beltway class” of “counting Joe Biden out”.

“If we do see changes in polling in the coming weeks, it will not be the first time that overblown media narratives have driven temporary dips in the polls,” O’Malley Dillon said.

But the White House assurances have done little to quell public unease. Late Friday, the influential New York Times editorial board published a leader urging Biden to step aside.

On Saturday in East Hampton, reporters travelling with the president saw a group of onlookers holding signs that read: “Please drop out for US,” and “Step down for democracy,” and: “We love you but it’s time.”

The debate fallout has divided Democratic donors, whose support is critical to fund a campaign that is set to spend hundreds of millions of dollars in an effort to secure another four years in the White House. Biden’s long fundraising advantage over Trump has eroded in recent months. Trump outraised Biden in both April and May amid a swell of support following his conviction on 34 criminal charges in New York last month.

While some donors have redoubled their efforts to rally people around Biden, others are more skittish. One Democratic fundraiser noted some Wall Street megadonors intend to keep bankrolling the Biden campaign while trying to convince him to make way for another candidate. Another camp intends to withhold their donations altogether.

Still, several high-profile Democratic donors have come to Biden’s full-throated defence.

LinkedIn founder and billionaire Democratic donor Reid Hoffman sought to calm fellow deep-pocketed Biden supporters in a letter on Friday in which he acknowledged that the president had a “very bad debate performance”. But he added that it would be a ‘bad idea” to launch a public campaign to get him to step aside.

“This election is very close, and I don’t know who will win,” Hoffman wrote. “But as a political philanthropist, with 129 days until the election, I am doubling down on my bet that America will choose Biden’s decency, care, and proven success over Trump’s violence, lies, and chaos.”

Trump narrowly leads Biden in national opinion polls, according to the latest FiveThirtyEight average, as well as in most of the key swing states that will decide the outcome of November’s election.

One Democratic fundraiser said donors would be looking at polling in the coming days to plot their next move.

Several are already contemplating who they would throw their weight behind if Biden were to step aside, with Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer among the most popular names being floated. Three donors and bundlers also said Democratic House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries was gaining interest from Wall Street elites.

“The results of those polls will help donors decide what to do next . . . if the result is negative there will be consequences,” the fundraiser said.

But the Biden campaign showed little outward signs of concern about the polls at the weekend.

Geoff Garin, president of Hart Research and a pollster for the Biden campaign, said in a post on X Saturday evening that two surveys he had conducted in battleground states following the debate showed it had “no effect on the vote choice”.

“The election was extremely close and competitive before the debate, and it is still extremely close and competitive today,” Garin said.

Additional reporting by Alex Rogers in Washington

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UK polls point to a big Labour win. The party fears voter complacency

Published

3 hours ago

July 2, 2024

Holly Ellyatt

Labour leader Keir Starmer poses for photos as he visits the Vale Inn on June 27, 2024 in Macclesfield, United Kingdom. In the final week of campaigning, Labour outlined its plans to expand opportunities for young people.

Cameron Smith | Getty Images News | Getty Images

LONDON — There’s been one main narrative since the U.K.’s Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak called a general election back in May — that the opposing Labour Party would win the vote with a landslide.

While voter polls may have differed in scale and methodology, the results have pointed in one direction, showing that the center-left Labour Party has around a 20-point lead on the Conservatives. Labour is on track to win around 40% of the vote while roughly 20% of the support is projected to go to the Tories, according to a Sky News poll tracker.

Reform UK, led by arch-Brexiteer Nigel Farage, is seen with 16% of the vote, after eating away at Tory support, while the Liberal Democrats are seen gaining around 11% and the Greens with 6%. The Scottish National Party is predicted to win 2.9% of the vote.

Labour candidates and leader Keir Starmer have been keen to play down the level of support that the party enjoys, fearing voter complacency and the appearance of “having it in the bag” — a stance that could prompt voter apathy and a lower turnout of supporters at the polls, or a backlash from Conservative-inclined sections of the electorate.

“The Labour Party wants to be able to be convince voters that it’s absolutely central that they turn out and vote, because otherwise the Tories will win, and the Tories are desperate for people to think that they have still got a chance, and therefore it’s worth turning up,” Britain’s top polling expert John Curtice told CNBC.

Question marks have risen in the past over the accuracy of British voter polls, with previous projections over or underestimating support for various political parties. The errors have often come about because of inadequate sampling or of factors that are harder to control, such as voters being “shy” when polled on which party they intended to support.

Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer speaks ahead of the U.K.’s general election on July 4, 2024.

Anthony Devlin | Getty Images News | Getty Images

This year, however, experts tend to agree that the polls show such a swing to Labour that, even if the scale of support were wrong, the overall result would be the same: a convincing win for the opposition party.

“My attitude is [that] a poll should be taken but not inhaled,” Curtice said wryly. “The point is, you shouldn’t be looking at them to provide you with pinpoint accuracy, they should give you a reasonable indication of the direction of travel.”

“It just so happens that because this is an election in which apparently one party is so far ahead, much as [it was] in 1997, the polls could be quite a bit out — but nobody will notice,” he noted, referencing the year when the Labour Party won a landslide against the Conservatives, ending the latter party’s then 18-year rule.

Labour ‘spin’?

The Labour Party itself is understandably keen to downplay the polls, with a spokesperson telling CNBC that the party doesn’t comment on projections, “as they vary and fluctuate.”

“Instead, we’re working hard to take our message of change to voters ahead of the only poll that matters, on 4 July,” the spokesperson stated.

On Monday, Keir Starmer said no vote should be taken for granted, asking his supporters to continue campaigning until polls closed on Thursday.

“The fight for change is for you, but change will only happen if you vote for it. That is the message we have to take to every doorstep these last few hours and days until 10 o’clock on Thursday night.”

“Nothing must be taken for granted, every vote has to be earned. The polls don’t predict the future, we have to get out there,” he told campaign supporters in Hitchin.

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer during a visit to Hitchin, Hertfordshire, while on the General Election campaign trail. Picture date: Monday July 1, 2024.

Stefan Rousseau – Pa Images | Pa Images | Getty Images

Labour’s former campaign and communications directors, Alastair Campbell, one of the chief strategists behind the rebranding of the party in the 1990s as ‘New Labour’ ahead of its monumental election win in 1997, told CNBC that he doubts current voter polls.

“I get really worried about about the way that these election debates are now unfolding, virtually everything in the debate at the moment is about these opinion polls,” he told CNBC two weeks ago.

“Apart from a few postal votes, nobody’s voted yet. And I just do not for one second believe that the Conservatives are going to get virtually wiped out, I just don’t believe it,” he said.

“I just think there’s something going very, very wrong with these polls, I could be completely wrong, and it’s true that Labour have been consistently ahead. But I just wish that, in our election periods, we would talk less about polls and more about what the parties are saying.”

'Something's going very wrong': Alastair Campbell casts doubt on UK opinion polls

Polling expert Matt Beech, director of the Centre for British Politics at the University of Hull, said Campbell’s position was designed to persuade Labour-inclined voters to cast their ballots.

“They want to make sure that they get as big a majority as possible. They’re all very much aware of [the lead-up to the election in] 1992 with the phenomenon of ‘shy Tories,’ when the polls said Labour would win and they didn’t …. [But] they’re not actually that genuinely worried about that. What they want to have a 1997-like landslide tsunami,” Beech told CNBC.

He added, “So if you keep banging on that drum [that the polls are not correct], you’re going to say to Labour-inclined voters, ‘please go out and vote.’ But it’s not that ‘we’re actually scared we’re not going to win, we are going to win comfortably. But we want a majority that enables us to push our agenda and we want this win to mean that we’re there for two terms.’“

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Business

Ad-supported Murdoch Netflix rival to launch in the UK

Published

5 hours ago

July 2, 2024

João da Silva

Rupert Murdoch’s Fox Corporation is entering the UK’s highly competitive free, ad-supported video streaming market.

Tubi will compete with the likes of Netflix, Disney+, ITVX, Channel 4’s streaming platform as well as the BBC iPlayer.

The platform has been quickly gaining market share in the US where, according to Fox, it has almost 80 million monthly active users.

In the UK, Tubi says it will offer more than 20,000 films and TV series, including content from Disney, Lionsgate, NBCUniversal and Sony Pictures Entertainment.

The platform will also include a selection of British, Indian and Nigerian content.

UK viewers will be able to access content on the Tubi webpage and via a smartphone app.

Fox Corporation bought Tubi in 2020 for $440m (£348m) as the US media giant looked to attract younger audiences.

In recent years, streaming companies like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Disney+ have launched ad-supported services and raised subscription prices as they tried to boost revenues.

The moves came as they faced pressure to spend more money to grow their libraries of content as they try to attract more customers in an increasingly competitive market.

In March, Mr Murdoch’s TalkTV network announced that it would stop broadcasting as a terrestrial television channel and became a strictly online service.

The network launched in 2022 but struggled to attract viewers on its linear platform.

Mr Murdoch had hoped the network would shake up the broadcasting establishment by offering an opinion-led alternative to established outlets.

The media tycoon played a pivotal role in the development of the UK’s broadcasting industry by launching Sky in 1984.

Some commentators saw TalkTV as an attempt by Mr Murdoch to recreate his success with Sky.

Mr Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox sold its 39% stake in Sky to NBCUniversal’s owner Comcast in 2018 after losing a battle for control of the network.

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Biden knocks Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity By Reuters

Published

9 hours ago

July 1, 2024

Reuters

By Andrea Shalal

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President Joe Biden on Monday criticized the Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity that was seen as a win for his rival, former President Donald Trump, in forceful remarks from the White House.

The U.S. Supreme Court found on Monday that Trump cannot be prosecuted for any actions that were within his constitutional powers as president, but can be for private acts, in a landmark ruling recognizing for the first time any form of presidential immunity from prosecution.

“This nation was founded on the principle that there are no kings in America,” Biden said, adding that no one is above the law. With the Supreme Court decision, he said, “That fundamentally changed.”

Biden is running for re-election against Trump and has been sharply critical of his rival’s actions related to the Jan. 6, 2021, raid on the U.S. Capitol by Trump’s supporters, who believed Trump’s false claims that he had won the 2020 election.

© Reuters. U.S. President Joe Biden delivers remarks during the Stonewall National Monument Visitor Center Grand Opening Ceremony at the Stonewall Inn to mark the 55th anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall riots in Greenwich Village, New York, U.S., June 28, 2024. REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz

Biden, 81, was making his first set of remarks at the White House since his shaky debate against Trump last week led to calls for him to step aside as the Democratic Party’s standard-bearer for the election.

After he stumbled over his words on the Atlanta debate stage, his remarks and comportment will be scrutinized for signs that he is up to the job of running for re-election and of governing the country for four more years.

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