Dear Commons Community,

Donald Trump encouraged Joe Biden to stay in the race in a post on Truth Social yesterday.

“Crooked Joe Biden should ignore his many critics and move forward, with alacrity and strength, with his powerful and far reaching campaign,” Trump said in his post.

The call from Trump comes amidst just over a week of tension among Democrats in the aftermath of a shaky debate performance last Thursday. Biden sounded raspy and stumbled over his words during the CNN debate, which set off questions among Democrats as to whether he should remain the party’s candidate. Representative Angie Craig (D-Minn.) added herself to a growing list of Democrats calling upon President Joe Biden to drop out of his re-election campaign, saying, “There is only a small window left to make sure we have a candidate best equipped to make the case and win,” according to The Washington Post.

I wonder if Trump feels more confident in winning the election with Biden as the Democratic nominee versus someone else like Kamala Harris.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The World Artificial Intelligence Conference in China is showcasing (see video below) hundreds of AI-related products and innovations. Around 25 robots are catching the eye of visitors, including some humanoid models that have never been seen before. By hosting this conference, China is demonstrating a leading position in AI and robotics.

Tony

Courtesy of Charles A. Smith/JSU

Dear Commons Community,

A newly published working paper examines the fallout on science research as relations between the United States and China have deteriorated.  This is a sad situation in that both countries have a lot to offer each other that would benefit the entire world.  I was part of a group of thirty Americans who visited China in 2001 and again in 2006.  We hosted our Chinese counterparts here in the United States in 2003 and 2008. The exchanges of ideas between us were the most stimulating of my career.  It is sad to see that this type of cooperation has diminished.  Below is a short recap of the paper, courtesy of The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Tony

———————————————-

The Chronicle of Higher Education

July 3, 2024

From: Karin Fischer

Subject: Latitudes: Tensions with China are hurting U.S. science. A new paper explains how

Tensions between the United States and China have disrupted international scientific collaboration, as well as the mobility of graduate students and early-career researchers, and led to reduced productivity among scientists of Chinese descent in America.

A newly published working paper examines the fallout as relations between the two countries deteriorated between 2016 and 2019, and finds that the impact on science is multidimensional: The number of ethnically Chinese international students studying in doctoral programs in the United States dropped by 16 percent, and those who did come were less likely to stay in the United States after they earned their degrees.

Over the same period, Chinese citations of American science declined sharply. And the productivity of researchers of Chinese descent in the United States decreased between 2 and 6 percent, amid growing anti-Chinese sentiment.

“Increasing isolationism and geopolitical tension lead to reduced talent and knowledge flows between the U.S. and China, which are likely to be particularly damaging to international science,” the authors conclude. “The effects on productivity are still small but are likely to only grow as nationalistic and isolationist policies also escalate. The results as a whole strongly suggest the presence of a ‘chilling effect.’”

The paper, published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, was written by Britta Glennon, an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania, and Raviv Murciano-Goroff, an assistant professor at Boston University, along with two Ph.D. students, Robert Flynn of BU and Jiusi Xiao of Claremont Graduate University.

Dear Commons Community,

Last night, Joe Biden sat down with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos for a 22-minute interview which many Democrats were watching to see if the President was in good command of his faculties as opposed to his disastrous debate performance with Donald Trump. Many observers felt that the survival of his candidacy was in question pending this interview.  My own take was that he was better than during the debate and appeared a bit stronger.  However, he still appeared a bit flustered and his last comment about how he would feel if Donald Trump became president was not inspiring.  My conclusion is that he was not as bad as during the debate, not as good as some of us were hoping, and not enough to quell calls for him to bow out of the presidential race.

Below is a summary of key takeaways from the interview courtesy of The Associated Press.

Tony

——————————–

The 22-minute sit-down came a full eight days after Biden’s disastrous debate performance, in which more than 50 million people watched the 81-year-old struggle to complete sentences or respond to basic questions about his campaign. Far fewer people watched the ABC interview, of course, but the audience included many of the elected officials, donors and political strategists who are actively deciding whether to help rescue — or end — Biden’s candidacy in the coming days. Top Biden aides have been pressing elected Democrats not to go public with their concerns.

The president and his team were hopeful that this first interview would help rally his party and generate momentum for the long road ahead. It’s unclear if he was successful.

Here are some key takeaways:

Biden faced a low bar after his debate

At this point, every Biden answer, interview and speech will serve as a Rorschach test of sorts to voters, who consistently tell pollsters that they’re worried about his age. And if people were looking for further signs of trouble, they were easy to find.

Biden performed better than he did on the debate stage. There were also flashes of strength as the president talked up his record, vowed not to leave the race and took shots at Donald Trump, whom he repeatedly described as a “pathological liar.” Biden also referred to Trump at one point as a “congenital liar.”

But he needed to do much more than clear the incredibly low bar he set on national television last week. And the ABC interview had several examples of awkward pauses, garbled words and moments where he meandered.

In one of the opening answers of the interview, Biden struggled to explain clearly whether he was aware of how bad his debate performance was as it was happening in real time. He jumped from his preparation to polling to Trump’s lies during the debate to not blaming anyone.

Trump allies seized on another Biden response suggesting he wasn’t sure if he rewatched his debate performance. “I don’t think so,” Biden said.

He said only ‘the Almighty’ could talk him out of running

Pressed over and over on whether he would step aside, Biden didn’t offer the slightest hint that he might bow to pressure within his party and leave the presidential race.

He refused even to entertain the possibility. Actually, he offered only one exception: “If the Lord Almighty comes down and tells me that, I might do that.”

That’s even as Stephanopoulos presented him with various data points and shared “the prevailing sentiment” from his conversations with party officials. “They are worried about you and the country. And they don’t think you can win. They want you to go with grace,” the journalist said.

Biden pushed back.

“The vast majority are not where those folks are,” he said. “Have you ever seen a time when elected officials running for office aren’t a little worried?”

He took the blame — and dismissed questions about his health

The bottom line is that Biden does not have a good explanation for his dismal debate performance.

In the interview, he called it “a bad episode,” but said there was no indication of a “more serious condition.” Instead, he said he simply had “a really bad cold.” When pressed again, he said, “I just had a bad night.”

He also didn’t blame anyone but himself, even as whispers have surfaced in recent days about his staff and those who coordinated his preparations.

Such an answer, of course, may do little to win over those who are deeply concerned about his physical and mental competence. He also refused to agree to undergo any medical testing that might further assuage such concerns.

Specifically, Stephanopoulos asked whether Biden would agree to an “independent medical evaluation that included neurological and cognitive tests.” He asked more than once when Biden didn’t answer directly.

“Look, I have a cognitive test every single day. Every day I have that test,” Biden said. “Everything I do. Not only am I campaigning, but I’m running the world.”

It was not an easy interview

If Biden’s aides picked Stephanopoulos for the president’s first major post-debate interview hoping he might go easy on him, they were wrong.

Stephanopoulos, who worked as an aide to former President Bill Clinton decades ago, peppered the Democratic president with tough questions and blunt truths, albeit with a soft tone.

When Biden suggested he had recently drawn big crowds, Stephanopoulos retorted: “I don’t think you want to play the crowd game. Donald Trump can draw big crowds.”

Biden appeared flustered at times.

The president paused for an extra beat when Stephanopoulos asked whether he knew “how badly it was going” during the debate. Later, he paused again when Stephanopoulos asked whether he was acting like Trump by “putting his personal interests ahead of the national interest” by staying in the race.

In another exchange, Biden asked Stephanopoulos whether polling is accurate as it used to be.

It was meant to be a rhetorical question. But the interviewer quickly answered.

“I don’t think so, but I think when you look at all the polling data right now, it shows that he’s certainly ahead in the popular vote, probably even more ahead in the battleground states,” Stephanopoulos said of Trump. “And one of the other key factors there is, it shows that in many of the battleground states, the Democrats who are running for Senate and the House are doing better than you are.”

Biden didn’t ask many other rhetorical questions.

One interview won’t fix the damage

Even before the interview was over, it was clear it would take much more to win over a party that is suddenly open to Biden alternatives just four months before Election Day.

At roughly the same time ABC released the first interview clip, Rep. Mike Quigley, D-Ill., became the fourth Democratic member of Congress to call on Biden to leave the race.

“To prevent utter catastrophe,” Quigley said on MSNBC, “step down and let someone else do this.”

Democrats are being encouraged by the White House and the president’s campaign not to go public with their concerns about Biden’s viability or electability, according to a Democrat granted anonymity to discuss the matter.

Another Democrat who watched said they found Biden to be shaky and predicted more will call on him to leave the race.

Biden, for his part, refused to entertain the possibility that congressional leaders might confront him in the coming days and ask him to step aside. But as Stephanopoulos said repeatedly, that is indeed a very real possibility. Earlier this week, Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia reached out to fellow senators to discuss whether to ask Biden to exit the race.

Biden said Warner “is a good man” but brought up the Virginian’s own previous considerations for a presidential run.

Asked how he would feel come next January if he ultimately lost the race, Biden’s answer may not inspire confidence.

“As long as I gave it my all and I did the goodest job as I know I can do, that’s what this is about,” he said.

Keir Starmer. Courtesy of CBS News.

Dear Commons Community,

Keir Starmer will become Prime Minister after sweeping away a 14-year era of Conservative rule and leading the Labour Party to a massive landslide victory in Britain’s general election.

British rejected the Conservatives by a historic margin, and Starmer will be a very powerful prime minister.

But there are urgent issues needing his attention. And as the final results of the election are counted, a number of eye-opening trends are becoming clear.  As reported by CNN.

Here’s what you need to know.

Labour’s huge, but fragile, landslide

Labour’s victory was seismic. It was very nearly unprecedented; only Tony Blair’s Labour Party has ever won more seats in an election.

As the sun rose over London, Keir Starmer told a buoyant victory rally that a burden has been “finally removed form the shoulders of this great nation.”

“Change begins now,” he said.

But Labour’s win was also fragile. The vote breakdown made clear that the election was as much, if not more, about the public’s anger towards the Conservatives as it was about excitement for Labour’s offer.

Keir Starmer’s party only increased its vote share by a few percentage points from its dismal 2019 showing, even though it may end up with almost twice as many seats. Starmer won a smaller vote share than his predecessor Jeremy Corbyn did in 2017, an election that Labour also lost. It was helped in seat after seat by a strong showing from populists Reform UK, who tore votes away from the Conservatives.

Those stats highlight the oddities of Britain’s first-past-the-post voting system, but also the dangers facing Starmer. He will govern with a powerful majority in parliament, but the public coalition he has built will not afford him a long honeymoon period.

He will be opposed by the Conservatives, but also by Reform, which challenged Labour candidates in several seats around the country. And a throng of left-wing support will also attempt to detract attention from Starmer; his predecessor Corbyn, who had been expelled by the party, won as an independent in Islington North and will become the face of that opposition.

Starmer was far more popular than Sunak, opinion polls showed, but he has never enjoyed the healthy approval ratings that Blair and Boris Johnson once did, lacking the natural charisma or campaigning prowess of those leaders.

“Election victories don’t fall from the sky. They’re hard won, and hard fought for,” he acknowledged in his victory speech. Starmer has promised “a decade of national renewal,” a pledge that nods to the deep-seated problems in Britain’s public services but also the lengthy stint he intends to spend in government. Whether or not he completes that goal could depend heavily on the early impression he leaves on the public as Prime Minister.

In a sign of the potential fragility of Labour’s landslide, turnout is on track to be the lowest for more than 20 years. Of the seats declared by early Friday morning, turnout is hovering just below 60% – down from 67.3% at the last election in 2019.

A devastating Conservative defeat

Unlike Labour’s victory, there are no two sides to the Conservatives’ performance. This was a woeful showing, after a dreadful campaign, and it has consigned the Tories not just to opposition but on the cusp on irrelevance.

Senior Conservatives fell like dominoes in seat after seat; the party was decimated by Labour and Reform in the so-called Red Wall swathe of battleground seats across North England and the Midlands, and by the Liberal Democrats in affluent areas in southern England that it had previously controlled for decades.

And a line of high-profile figures – the faces of a 14-year era of power – stunningly lost their seats. Penny Mourdant, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Robert Buckland, Alex Chalk and others were dumped from power. The outgoing chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, narrowly clung on.

And the most sensational defeat was saved until last: shortly after 6 a.m., in one of the final seats to declare, former Prime Minister Liz Truss lost her previously ultra-safe seat.

She refused to speak after her defeat, leaving the stage with her fellow candidates instead, attempting to retain a steely look on her face.

“I’m sorry,” Sunak told activists and voters after winning his count. There was not much more he could say.

Before this election, only three Cabinet ministers had lost their seat this century, and all were Lib Dems serving in coalition with the Conservatives.

It opened up a furious and bitter backlash within the party about what went wrong. “Our renewal as a party and a country will not be achieved by us talking to an ever-smaller slice of ourselves, but by being guided by the people of this country,” Mordaunt said after losing her seat, implicitly taking aim at the populist wing of the party, which has recently sought to pull it towards the right on issues such as migration.

Buckland was blunter. “I’m fed up with performance art politics,” Buckland told the BBC. “I’ve watched colleagues in the Conservative Party strike poses, write inflammatory op-eds and say stupid things they have no evidence for instead of concentrating on doing the job that they were elected to do.

“I think we’ve seen in this election astonishing ill-discipline within the party,” he added.

A battle for control of the Tories

For some of the Conservative lawmakers who survived the wipeout on Friday morning, there was little time for mourning.

A battle to seize the leadership of the party is already underway. Senior MPs who ran in the two recent elections for the post were pointed in their speeches, doing little to hide their ambitions.

And the fight could be bitter. Two wings have split the party over the course of the last parliament, and will seek to control it now – a populist bloc who have employed tough rhetoric on migration and sought to battle Reform for votes, and a moderate wing eager to drag the party back to its “One Nation” roots.

“I’m sorry that my party didn’t listen to you,” Britain’s former hardline Home Secretary Suella Braverman said at her count, in a speech that could well have been addressed purely to the party members that will select its next leader.

“(The) Conservative Party has let you down. You – the great British people – voted for us over 14 years and we did not keep our promises,” she said. “We’ve acted as if we’re entitled to your vote regardless of what we did, regardless of what we didn’t do, despite promising time after time that we would do those things and we need to learn our lesson because if we don’t, bad as tonight has been for my party, we’ll have many worse nights to come.”

Kemi Badenoch will enter the leadership race as the favorite, if she runs. But the outgoing business and trade minister didn’t reveal much about her intentions in her speech, choosing instead to congratulate Labour.

The rise of Reform

The exit poll threw up a huge surprise, signalling 13 seats for Reform — but the real results weren’t as kind.

The insurgent bloc didn’t pick up all of the seats it was forecast, but it was a disruptive force throughout the night, leaping the Conservatives into second place in dozens of seats up and down the country.

Nigel Farage, the group’s leader who had tried seven times to win election to parliament, succeeded on the eight attempt and will become a noisy and trouble-making presence in Westminster.

“It’s not just disappointment with the Conservative Party. There is a massive gap on the center right of British politics and my job is to fill it. And that’s exactly what I’m going to do,” Farage said after winning the seat.

He pledged to “challenge the general election properly in 2029,” and promised to turn his rhetoric towards Labour as they prepare to enter government. Farage said the “Labour government will be in trouble very, very quickly and we will now be targeting Labour votes. We’re coming for Labour – be in no doubt about that.”

But in the short term, Farage will also be a prominent outside voice as the Conservatives decide on their next direction as the new opposition party.

Reform’s relative success follows a tone of populist fury across Europe, though it will remain a minor party in parliament. They benefited hugely from the Conservatives’ failure to control legal and illegal migration, an issue it nonetheless placed at the center of their campaign.

Cheerio for Labour!

Tony

Former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden. (Brendan McDermid and Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters)

Dear Commons Community,

With President Joe Biden’s 2024 campaign in crisis mode following last week’s disastrous debate performance, and polls showing a small but significant swing in former President Donald Trump’s direction, many dismayed Democrats and other critics have complained about what they perceive as a double standard on the question of the candidates’ fitness to hold office.  As reported by Yahoo News and Reuters.

“Given who Republicans have chosen as their nominee, it’s pretty ironic that it’s Democrats who are worried about their choice of candidate,” MSNBC host Rachel Maddow said this week.

Maddow then proceeded to list all of Trump’s legal troubles, including his recent convictions on New York felony charges of falsifying business records.

In the hours after the debate had wrapped up, a Biden campaign memo declared that Biden had won and that “the more they saw of Donald Trump’s erratic and vindictive behavior, the more they remembered why they voted against him in 2020.”

Top Biden surrogates like former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi also sought to shift attention away from Biden’s performance and onto Trump’s.

“How can you have a legitimate debate when somebody’s totally lying and you have to dispel their falsehoods?” Pelosi said.

While many outlets, including Yahoo News, conducted fact-checks of what each candidate said at the debate, Biden’s halting and confused delivery became the story. Several leading editorial boards promptly called for Biden, 81, to step aside so Democrats could have a better chance of defeating Trump.

“To Serve His Country, President Biden Should Leave the Race,” the New York Times wrote.

The Philadelphia Inquirer’s editorial board embraced the same frame to make the opposite argument. “To serve his country, Donald Trump should leave the race,” it wrote back.

“President Joe Biden’s debate performancewas a disaster. His disjointed responses and dazed look sparked callsfor him to drop out of the presidential race,” the paper said. “But lost in the hand wringing was Donald Trump’s usual bombastic litany of lies, hyperbole, bigotry, ignorance, and fear mongering. His performance demonstrated once again that he is a danger to democracy and unfit for office.”

YES!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Last night, Macy’s had its annual July 4th fireworks display (see video below).  It is always a good show.  This year, it was returned to the Hudson River between 14th and 34th Streets after a ten-year hiatus.  As a child, my older brother, Donald, took me to see the Macy’s fireworks every year. Back then they were held further north around 86th Street. Video is courtesy of The New York Walking Show.

Enjoy!

Tony

Robert DeNiro.  (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

Dear Commons Community,

Over the weekend, one CNN commentator echoed actor Robert De Niro’s line  that President Biden “on a gurney” is still better than another four years of Trump in the Oval Office.

In December 2023, when asked in a Rolling Stone interview if Biden is the “right guy” to take on Trump, De Niro answered, “I think that if Biden was on a gurney and couldn’t move anything but his eyes to blink ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ he’s our person. There’s no way that he’s not the guy to take Trump down.”

In a call to action, De Niro says he hopes everybody gets out to vote.

Sitting down with the Rolling Stone, De Niro, 80, covered a wide range of topics from politics, to the actor’s strike to welcoming his seventh child and losing his 19-year-old grandson to a drug overdose.

“It’s a lot,” he told Rolling Stones while choking up. “I have no choice but to plow through. And my biggest concern now, with everything else, is us getting out of this situation with a monster in Trump. This is a classic grift. This is unreal.”

“If you look at other totalitarian countries like Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union, it will affect everybody in ways you can’t even imagine,” De Niro added.

The actor said he did not think Trump was a “monster” when he was first elected, but his thoughts have since shifted towards the former president.

“I thought, ‘Maybe he’ll straighten out.’ Now, this guy is beyond dangerous and I just hope people can realize it,” he said. “Once you go down that road, it won’t be easy to come back.”

In December, Trump railed against De Niro after the actor criticized the former president in a speech last month at the Gotham Awards. Trump responded, arguing De Niro “should focus on his life, which is a mess, rather than the lives of others.”

Asked about Trump’s response to the speech, De Niro said, “The problem is people respond to him. God forbid he did become president — this is a road where, if we go down it, it will be very hard to turn around.”

De Niro even quoted former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), a staunch critic of Trump, telling Rolling Stone, “As Liz Cheney said, ‘He will not leave,’” and later called the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and Trump’s alleged efforts to stay in power “unbelievable.”

De Niro has been a vocal critic of Trump in recent years and recently has upped his warning against another White House term for Trump, saying, “Democracy won’t survive the return of a wannabe dictator.”

In a statement in October, De Niro said he spent a lot of time studying criminals, saying, “I’ve examined their characteristics, their mannerisms, the utter banality of their cruelty. Yet there’s something different about Donald Trump,” adding, “When I look at him, I don’t see a bad man. Truly. I see an evil one.”

Evil indeed!

Tony

Joe Biden and Lloyd Doggett.  Courtesy of CNN.

Dear Commons Community,

A growing number of Democratic leaders are saying they want Joe Biden to step aside for the good of the party – and the country. As reported by CNN.

Democratic Representative Lloyd Doggett of Texas was the first to break ranks.

“I represent the heart of a congressional district once represented by Lyndon Johnson. Under very different circumstances, he made the painful decision to withdraw. President Biden should do the same,” Doggett said in his statement Tuesday.

“There’s a large and increasing group of House Democrats concerned about the president’s candidacy, representing a broad swath of the caucus,” another House Democratic lawmaker told CNN on condition of anonymity to speak candidly. “We are deeply concerned about his trajectory and his ability to win. We want to give him space to make a decision [to step aside], but we will be increasingly vocal about our concerns if he doesn’t.”

Biden is expected to meet today with Democratic governors and congressional leaders, the White House said yesterday. The announcement came after CNN reported that some governors expressed concerns about the president’s debate performance. The governors, one source said, were worried about going public with their concerns out of fear it would lead to Biden digging in further.

CNN talked to more than two dozen current and former Democratic officials, as well as donors and longtime Biden allies, all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid alienating Biden. Many of these people say they have already made up their minds that the president should quit his campaign, a decision some of them think he needs to announce this week.

They have held off going to Biden directly, hoping he would make the decision himself, but patience is wearing thin, multiple Democrats told CNN, amid signs that Biden has taken no steps to seriously consider the mounting concerns. He is poised to travel to swing states this weekend, aides said, a sign that he has no plans of changing course. Yesterday, ABC News announced Biden will sit down with George Stephanopoulos for his first TV interview since the debate, with clips airing on Friday.

Initially, there was hope that the president’s family would convince him to step aside, given how badly the debate went. However, at a Biden retreat Sunday at Camp David, it became apparent the president’s family rallied around his decision to continue his campaign, blaming staff for his missteps.

“One word you know about Biden: stubborn,” said one senior Democratic official who has publicly supported Biden in the past but who privately thinks he needs to step aside. “They are trying to give him the space to realize what a disaster this is.”

And while the Biden campaign has insisted the debate was just a bad night for the 81-year-old president, the Democrats who want him to step aside say it was not a one-off incident that can be fixed.

“This is not like Obama being rusty for a debate,” said a senior Democratic official, referring to former President Barack Obama’s lackluster performance in his first debate against Republican opponent Mitt Romney in 2012.

“[Biden] might be able to survive this if this was the only incident. But it won’t be the only incident,” said a senior Capitol Hill Democratic official.

“We have to be honest with ourselves that it wasn’t just a horrible night,” Illinois Rep. Mike Quigley told Kasie Hunt on “CNN This Morning” yesterday. “He clearly has to understand, I think, what you’re getting to here is that his decision not only impacts who’s going to serve in the White House the next four years but who’s going to serve in the Senate, who’s going to serve in the House, and it will have implications for decades to come.”

During an interview on MSNBC on Tuesday, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called on Biden to participate in multiple interviews with journalists in the aftermath of his debate performance.

The California Democrat, who emphasized it is Biden’s decision about whether to step aside, said she has heard “mixed” responses to the debate from donors and others in her Democratic network.

“I think it’s a legitimate question to say, is this an episode or is this a condition?” Pelosi said, referring to Biden’s debate performance. She quickly added that this was a legitimate question for former President Donald Trump as well, citing his repeated lies during the debate.

Do the right thing, Joe.  Step aside!

Tony