Welcome to Political Silly Season

Some political reporters think Democrats are panicking ... but it's way too early for that.

I’m Michael A. Cohen, and this is Truth and Consequences: A no-holds-barred look at the absurdities, hypocrisies, and surreality. If you were sent this email or are a free subscriber and would like to become a paid subscriber, you can sign up here.

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“Together More Or Less In Time”

I’m in San Francisco this weekend for the final three Dead & Company shows … I have a piece coming up on MSNBC on the Dead’s musical and cultural legacy and I’ll try to send it around this weekend.

Don’t Worry, Be Happy

Edward-Isaac Dovere had an odd piece yesterday detailing the panic in Democratic circles about Joe Biden’s allegedly sluggish reelection campaign. These three paragraphs stuck out.

The conversations keep happening – quiet whispers on the sidelines of events, texts, emails, furtive phone calls – as top Democrats and donors reach out to those seen as possible replacement presidential candidates.

Get ready, they urge, in conversations that aides to several of the people involved have described to CNN: Despite what he has said, despite the campaign that has been announced, President Joe Biden won’t actually be running for reelection.

They feel like time is already running out and that the lack of the more robust campaign activity they want to see is a sign that his heart isn’t really in it.

… Anxiety, complaints and apocalyptic thinking that have often defined Democrats in the Biden years are about to get their latest Rorschach test, with the disclosure of fundraising for the first few months of his campaign – which must be filed by Saturday.

… Some things are already clear: multiple big donors aren’t locking in. Grassroots emails are sometimes bringing in just a few thousand dollars.

Fast forward to today:

President Biden raised more than $72 million in the second quarter of 2023 for his reelection effort, his campaign announced Friday.

The figure accounts for all money raised since Biden launched his campaign for president in late April through June 30. The campaign said it has $77 million cash on hand.

… Biden vastly outraised Republicans running for president during the second quarter, in part because individuals can give larger sums to the DNC than they can to individual campaign accounts. Former president Donald Trump, who is running for the Republican nomination, raised more than $35 million in the second quarter, his campaign said.

I bring this up not to embarrass Dovere (though his reporting feels a tad credulous) but as a reminder that Democratic panic is as predictable as death and taxes. With not much substantive happening in politics these days, reporters are grasping at straws to write stories — and finding fretting Democrats is like shooting fish in a barrel. It’s possible that Joe Biden is in trouble or his reelection campaign is stuck in quicksand, but we are also 16 months until Election Day. Biden has no serious primary competitor; his likely general election opponent, Donald Trump, is the most toxic politician in America, and the incumbent is well-positioned to win reelection. Moreover, while Biden’s polls are currently not great, it’s a long way until Election Day and panicking over polls this far out is pointless.

The bottom line is that almost nothing that happens in July 2023 is going to dramatically affect the 2024 election. So my advice is to take the latest political news with a grain of salt and enjoy your summer.

One More Thing …