Welcome to Thunderdome. It’s been clear since day one that Joe Biden was more scared of the progressive left than anyone else. His White House was incredibly fearful of a challenge from Bernie Sanders or a Squad member within the 2024 primary and the damage it would do to the Democratic coalition and his own re-election hopes. So the White House swung left — not just on economic policy, where he threw everything behind massive expenditures that pleased leftist politicians, pundits and people who have shrines to FDR in their houses, but on social policy as well, where he embraced the culture war issues of abortion and the trans agenda and hung on tight.

While the decision angers some smart Democrats — James Carville and David Axelrod for instance — with the risk it creates for losing moderate voters, the truth is that Biden’s steps were satisfying his base and not offending upper-class suburbanites who swung away from Trump and Republicans in the 2020 and 2022 elections. Biden has largely held on to them in part because concerns about the economy, the border and crime are more concentrated in the middle and working class — which is why his problems are with black and Hispanic voters in those categories swinging back towards Trump.

Now, though, Biden seems to have created a trifecta of problems that hit every group. For the working and middle class, and particularly voters with young kids, the problems of inflation are felt the most. The price of a McDonald’s cheeseburger is up 215 percent since the end of 2019 — something that may not matter to someone who DoorDashes an everything bagel and a cortado every morning, but definitely matters to a family of four. Grocery prices are in some cases even worse. People want to feel like they are constantly upgrading — if they have to go backwards, getting generic food and heading to discount grocery stores, it’s not going to improve their mood.

For the suburban voters, especially those around blue cities, it’s crime that sticks out to them. What’s the point of living in a ring county where you’re spending a ludicrous amount on taxes for a city you’re scared to enter? Carjackings in Washington, DC nearly doubled in 2023 and cities like New York are bursting at the seams with illegal migrants — not all of them shipped there by Greg Abbott. The border chaos mostly drives Republican voters, but its effect on major cities run by Democratic mayors who promised sanctuary until they actually had to deliver on it offers Biden no help with Independents.

And then there’s foreign policy. This is the realm of more narrow concern, sure, but it hits the upper-class voters most directly. These are people who were definitely anti-Trump and anti-GOP in the past two elections, tuned into the news, fed up with the chaos and diametrically opposed to socially conservative policies. Now Biden’s White House has created something that offends them as well. These are people who had Ukraine flags, and after October 7, Israeli flags too. They are a lot more likely to have Jewish friends. And they are a lot more likely to have as an alma mater, or currently be paying for a son or daughter to attend, a university whose campus is currently being occupied by absolutely nutty protesters. Canceling classes and graduations, taking over buildings, draping George Washington in terrorist garb — this stuff doesn’t fly with the upper class. They are paying a lot for their kid to go to school there, and these protesters are robbing them of the basic pride associated with it.

Biden’s reluctance to say or do anything about this, to just let things burn out, is offensive enough. Now he’s gone a step further, defying Congress’s aid vote and directly undermining Israel. (As one side effect of this, he’s reneged on a deal with Speaker Johnson that effectively ends any ability for them to work together.) And he did it before giving a much-promoted Holocaust Remembrance speech in an effort to get lauded by the press before backstabbing an ally. For supporters of Israel, it reads like hypocrisy and betrayal — and endorsement of the petulant children shouting in megaphones as they act like living, walking, unthinking clichés with a constantly increasing list of demands.

Democrat hopes that Donald Trump will have any court decisions go against him before November (beyond the ludicrous Stormy Daniels trial) are rapidly decaying. His political negatives are baked in. Biden, his White House and his foreign policy team have created a situation where he is surrounded on all sides by obvious failures — and his successes (if you can call them that) appeal to the faction most likely to turn off moderate and Independent voters. It’s a bold strategy, Cotton — let’s see if it pays off for them.

Veepstakes in full pandermode

It’s going to be fun to watch this play out.

When J.D. Vance went on CNN during the prime time hour last week, he may as well have had an audience of one.

Asked if he had concerns about serving as Donald Trump’s vice president given the hostile relationship the former president had with Mike Pence, Vance strenuously defended Trump. And he downplayed the January 6 riot at the Capitol, when Pence was forced to evacuate the building as rioters called for his hanging.

“Do we blame Donald Trump for every bad thing that’s ever been said by a participant in American democracy?” said Vance. “I think that’s an absurd standard.”

Vance and almost a dozen other vice presidential contenders have flooded cable and network news recently, with an eye toward serving as Trump’s running mate. Perhaps more importantly, Trump and top aides have been closely monitoring what they’ve been doing. As the former president decides whom to pick, he is specifically watching to see what they’re doing to help his campaign, according to a person close to Trump who was granted anonymity to describe internal deliberations. The former president is looking at how they perform in news interviews — both in terms of defending him and taking on President Joe Biden — and what steps they are taking to raise money for the campaign and widen Trump’s donor network.

Those familiar with the deliberations say Trump is also examining the various candidates for potential positions in his administration, should he win. On the occasions that prospective vice presidential candidates appear at his rallies, Trump is looking at how they perform as surrogates and how the crowds react to their speeches.

“A number of the top VP prospects are working especially hard and both the president and his team, I am sure, are watching closely,” said Steve Witkoff, a close friend of Trump and Florida real-estate executive. “It makes a big difference when they are helping to raise money and also going into the lion’s den to do the tough work, including voter reach out and interviews on TV.”

The jockeying to be Trump’s No. 2 is ramping up. This past Sunday, a handful of vice presidential contenders, including Arkansas senator Tom Cotton, North Dakota governor Doug Burgum, Florida senator Marco Rubio, South Carolina senator Tim Scott and New York representative Elise Stefanik, fanned out on television programs. Each received strong reviews from the former president’s team, the person said.

One potential VP who was fanning out across television this week was South Dakota governor Kristi Noem — but we know how that went. I think it’s safe to say her chances of being on the ticket are as high as Cricket’s (RIP).

The end of the Tea Party era

FreedomWorks was once one of the most powerful activist think tanks in the country. It was at the center of the Tea Party movement, arguing for small government, against Obamacare, in favor of a kinder, gentler version of libertarian policy agenda on a host of issues and allied with the likes of Mike Lee, Rand Paul, Ted Cruz and a host of new Tea Party-backed House members, they drove the conversation in Washington and across the country.

Now, they’re shutting down, effective immediately. Here’s Dave Weigel’s analysis.

The end of FreedomWorks comes a few months after Americans for Prosperity — the other libertarian group created by the 2004 split — abandoned its effort to beat Donald Trump in the GOP presidential primary. Neither organization was part of the Republican Party per se. But their retreats confirmed one of the biggest Trump-led changes in the party: The victory of right-wing populism over big-tent libertarianism.

FreedomWorks veterans told me today that the 2023 reboot, backed by polling and demographic research, was doomed by the group’s longtime identification with the conservative movement.

It was stymied when it actually reached out to independents and Democrats, who looked up what the group stood for, and saw stories about its work to elect Republicans (true) and its association with the most-demonized conservative donors in America (false, It was famously born from a 2004 split in the Koch donor network, which backed AFP). The group got too close to Trump and “MAGA-world,” I was told; after the Trump presidency and the 2020 election, that baggage was simply too much for non-Republicans, who’d found plenty of other ways to advocate for “individual liberty.”

Meanwhile, campaigners for “small government” and entitlement reform were losing market share inside the GOP. Libertarians hoped that the Tea Party movement would create a political constituency for across-the-board spending cuts and the dismantling of the administrative state. The Trump administration made big strides on that second priority, rolling back consumer and environmental rules and appointing judges poised to take power away from federal regulators.

But House and Senate Republicans failed to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and Trump ruled out any changes to Social Security and Medicare; he won the nomination this year while accusing the AFP-backed Nikki Haley of wanting to rip benefits away from seniors.

Anti-immigration politics, which libertarians winced at, were far more potent. One of the stars of the 9/12/2009 FreedomWorks rally in Washington was Jenny Beth Martin, the co-founder of Tea Party Patriots. On Wednesday, as FreedomWorks closed down, Martin joined House Speaker Mike Johnson at a press conference about legislation that would bar non-citizens from voting – already illegal in federal elections, but a more potent issue for Republicans than entitlement reform.

Hillary cries: ‘Lock Him Up!’

How the turn tables… have turned.

Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton warned Thursday that voters might head to the polls this November before former President Donald Trump’s trials are resolved.

The presumptive GOP presidential nominee is facing multiple court battles while campaigning in the 2024 election, with some of his trials getting delayed. Clinton argued that if these trials are continually delayed leading up to the election on November 5, it could make it so that voters are not informed of Trump’s charges.

“Justice delayed is justice denied, and the people in our country, it looks as though, will most likely go to vote without knowing the outcome of these other serious trials,” Clinton said. “And the one that is going on now currently in New York is really about election interference. It is about trying to prevent the people of our country from having relevant information that may have influenced how they could have voted in 2016 or whether they would have voted.”

One more thing

We have a special edition of the Thunderdome podcast this week, and it’s about… a completely different kind of thunderdome. Amber Duke, Ross Anderson and yours truly chat at length about the hit Amazon show Fallout. I hope you’ll tune in. Perhaps we can avoid a nuclear apocalypse yet!