Elections 2024 live: Biden virtual nomination set before DNC despite dire new polling

Last month’s debate in Altanta, Georgia, was the president’s shot to bat away concerns about whether he can effectively serve a second term, one that would end well into his 80s.

Democratic sources who spoke to The Independent and a wide range of other media outlets immediately after the debate were in panic mode, with some openly fretting about whether it was possible for their party to do the unthinkable: replace a sitting, incumbent president on the ticket after he breezed through primary season virtually uncontested.

John Bowden looks at who might be able to replace Biden at the top of the ticket.

President Joe Biden is set to propose a major overhaul of the Supreme Court including term limits for justices and an enforceable code of ethics, at a time when the right-leaning institution has been plagued by scandals, controversial rulings, and concerns that the justices’ personal politics are holding too much sway.

Biden unveiled his plans during a Zoom call with the Congressional Progressive Caucus on Saturday.

Rachel Sharp Has the latest.

Here are the top findings of the BlueLabs polling memo circulating among Democrats today that is fueling calls for President Joe Biden to step aside.

• Alternative Democratic candidates run ahead of President Biden by an average of three points across the battleground states. Nearly every tested Democrat performs better than the President. This includes Vice President Harris who runs better than the President (but behind the average alternative).
• Some of the gains are coming from winning undecideds and those previously supporting a third party. However, alternative candidates are also pulling votes from Donald Trump. All candidates continue to hold the Democratic base.
• Voters are looking for a fresh face. Those more closely tied to the current administration perform relatively worse than other tested candidates.

Four candidates performed the strongest in the poll, outpacing Biden by approximately five points across battleground states.

• Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona
• Governor Wes Moore of Maryland
• Governor Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania
• Governor Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan

Nearly two-thirds of Democrats say President Joe Biden should withdraw from the presidential race and let his party nominate a different candidate, according to a new poll, sharply undercutting his post-debate claim that “average Democrats” are still with him even if some “big names” are turning on him.

The new survey by the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, conducted as Biden works to salvage his candidacy two weeks after his debate flop, also found that only about 3 in 10 Democrats are extremely or very confident that he has the mental capability to serve effectively as president, down slightly from 40% in an AP-NORC poll in February.

The findings underscore the challenges the 81-year-old president faces as he tries to silence calls from within his own party to leave the race and tries to convince Democrats that he’s the best candidate to defeat Donald Trump. The poll was conducted mostly before Saturday’s assassination attempt on Trump at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania. It’s unclear whether the shooting influenced people’s views of Biden, but the small number of poll interviews completed after the shooting provided no early indication that his prospects improved.

Meanwhile, as Vice President Kamala Harris receives additional scrutiny amid the talk about whether Biden should bow out, the poll found that her favorability rating is similar to his — but the share of Americans who have an unfavorable opinion of her is slightly lower.

The poll provides some evidence that Black Democrats are among Biden’s strongest supporters, with roughly half in the survey saying he should continue running, compared to about 3 in 10 white and Hispanic Democrats. Overall, seven in 10 Americans think Biden should drop out, with Democrats only slightly less likely than Republicans and independents to say that he should make way for a new nominee.

The poll of 1,253 adults was conducted July 11-15, 2024, using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the US population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 3.8 percentage points.

More follows…

The Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general says it is investigating the US Secret Service’s handling of security for former President Donald Trump on the day a gunman tried to assassinate him at a Pennsylvania rally.

The agency says in a brief notice on its website on Wednesday the objective is to evaluate the Secret Service’s “process for securing former President Trump’s July 13, 2024 campaign event.”

Democrats will look to hold a virtual vote to make President Joe Biden their party’s nominee in the first week of August, as Biden has rebuffed calls from some in his party to quit the race after his disastrous debate performance against Donald Trump.

The Democratic National Convention’s rules committee will meet on Friday to discuss its plans, according to a letter sent to members obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press, and will finalize them next week. The letter from co-chairs Bishop Leah D. Daughtry and Gov. Tim Walz states that the virtual vote won’t take place before Aug. 1 but that the party is still committed to holding a vote before Aug. 7, which had been Ohio’s filing deadline.

“We will not be implementing a rushed virtual voting process,” Daughtry and Walz wrote, “though we will begin our important consideration of how a virtual voting process would work.”

The party announced in May that it would hold an early roll call to ensure Biden would qualify for the ballot in Ohio, which originally had an Aug. 7 deadline, but the state has since changed its rules. The Biden campaign insists that the party must operate under Ohio’s initial rules to ensure Republican lawmakers can’t mount legal challenges to keep the president off the ballot.

The letter comes a day after a contingent of House Democrats wary of swiftly nominating Biden as the party’s pick for reelection circulated raising “serious concerns” about plans for a virtual roll call.

Their letter to the Democratic National Committee, which has not yet been sent, says it would be a “terrible idea” to stifle debate about the party’s nominee with the early roll call vote.

“It could deeply undermine the morale and unity of Democrats,” said the letter obtained by the AP.

Multiple law enforcement officials have told CNN that shooter Thomas Matthew Crooks would normally have been at work on Saturday when he went to Donald Trump’s rally and shot at the former president clipping his right ear.

Crooks told his boss that he had “something to do” and his coworkers that he would be back on Sunday. He was shot by a Secret Service sniper at around 6.10pm that evening after firing multiple shots toward Trump, killing a retired firefighter and badly wounding two others.

Before taking up his position on the roof of a nearby building, Crooks has already attracted attention, as CNN reports:

By 3 p.m. on Saturday, roughly three hours before the shooting, Crooks was at the security screening area for the rally. He first aroused suspicion when he passed through the magnetometers carrying a rangefinder, which looks similar to a small pair of binoculars and is used by hunters and target shooters to measure distances when setting up a long-range shot, according to a senior law enforcement official briefed on the investigation.

The rangefinder would not have prevented Crooks from getting through the security screening point, but it did attract the attention of security personnel who kept an eye on him until he left the secure area.

Investigators are unsure of where Crooks went after he left the screening area but the working theory is that he went to his car to retrieve the rifle.

Recapping JD Vance’s history of criticising Trump, the late-night host concluded: “Damn! If he can say all that and still get picked for vice president, I figure I got a chance for secretary of state at least.”

Here’s more from Lilith Foster-Collins.

The Democratic National Committee is moving ahead with a virtual nomination of Joe Biden in the coming weeks, CNN reports.

A note was sent out to members on Wednesday morning, stressing that it is “the wisest approach”.

The letter states that “no virtual voting will begin before August 1”.

In a letter to members of the Democratic National Convention rules committee, co-chairs say that a meeting that was previously scheduled for Friday will still proceed.

“Our discussion on Friday of how the Convention will operate will include discussion of a virtual voting element, which will end before the in-person Convention,” it states.

CNN reports that the letter stresses multiple times that the virtual roll call process will not be rushed but voting is expected to start next week.

There is still talk of a move by senior Democrats — most recently reported comments by Rep Adam Schiff of California — to replace Joe Biden at the top of the ticket.

Until Biden’s disastrous presidential debate against Donald Trump on June 27 both candidates had been running neck-and-neck.