Democrats Plot Celebrity-Filled Game Plan to Replace Biden

As questions remain about Joe Biden’s fitness for the presidency after his disastrous debate less than two weeks ago, some Democrats are now floating a unique plan to replace him as the Democratic presidential nominee.

The plan would have Biden step down as the party nominee in the next couple of weeks, followed by the announcement of a “blitz primary” before the Democratic National Convention in August. Candidates would use the next few days to enter the race, and then pledge to run positive-only campaigns for a quick primary in the month or so before the convention.

The “blitz primary” would include candidate forums every week to engage voters, hosted by celebrities such as Michelle Obama, Oprah, and Taylor Swift, among others. The eventual nominee would be chosen by delegates using ranked choice voting before the convention begins on August 19.

“In the midst of malaise and crisis, we can forge an uplifting path,” said Ted Dintersmith, a Democratic philanthropist and one of the two architects of the plan. The other person behind the proposal is Rosa Brooks, a law professor at Georgetown University who served in the Obama and Clinton administrations and volunteered for Biden’s 2020 campaign.

Brooks and Dintersmith outlined their plan in a memo that they sent on Tuesday to donors, campaign officials, Biden appointees, and other powerful Democrats. But it remains to be seen if any such Democrats will sign on. Biden said in a Friday interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that only “the Lord Almighty” could persuade him to drop out.

In the past couple of days, the wagons appear to be circling. A group of Democratic senators led by Virginia’s Mark Warner is seeking to convince Biden to withdraw, and several top Democrats in Congress are making public calls for him to go. For the “blitz primary” plan to work, Biden would need to drop out quickly, but he’s clearly not there yet. Plus, while the GOP is more than happy with Biden as their opponent, they are already strategizing on how to handle a replacement nominee.

Nobody seems to trust Ted Cruz anymore.

The Texas senator’s simple hurricane warning message was ill received by state residents late Sunday, apparently reminding the Lone Star citizens of another one of his climate misfires.

Cruz reshared an emergency relief video made by local businessman Jim McIngvale, better known as Mattress Mack to Houstonites, offering help should the storm take a turn for the worse. Cruz urged people to stay safe, ahead of Hurricane Beryl’s landfall.

“Mack is an American hero,” Cruz wrote on X. “Stay safe & avoid high water as the hurricane makes landfall.”

But sending a message of care to Texas residents reminded too many critics of 2021, when Cruz ditched his constituents—and his dog—during a historic winter storm to take a conveniently timed trip to Cancun, Mexico. That record cold snap, and Texas’s failure to mitigate damage to critical infrastructure, resulted in the deaths of 246 people.

Cruz’s vacation mishap also led him to propose legislation to reallocate airport security toward high-powered officials, a move that would have made it significantly harder for the press to catch him (and other lawmakers or judges) in efforts to bail during future bad weather. Ultimately, Cruz’s amendment was blocked in April by Mississippi Representative Bennie Thompson.

“I’m glad that sanity prevailed and this provision—which almost no one really wanted—wasn’t included in the final FAA bill text,” Thompson said in a statement at the time. “Congress should be focusing on improving TSA and keeping our skies more secure, not burdening its workforce and potentially diminishing security.”

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene spent the Fourth of July weekend getting barbecued after boldly declaring that several people who did not sign the Declaration of Independence were signers of America’s most well-known document.

Among those Greene incorrectly claimed as signers of the Declaration of Independence was Alexander Hamilton, the subject of an extremely famous Broadway musical about his life prior to and after helping craft and sign the Constitution in 1787—more than a decade after the Declaration of Independence was adopted. In addition, Hamilton was 19 when the Declaration of Independence was signed, not 21 like Greene stated.

It’s unclear where Greene got this information, what prompted her to post it, or why, days after making it, she hasn’t taken it down or corrected it. One user mused that were Greene to have to take a citizenship test, as all immigrants to the United States seeking citizenship must do, she would likely fail, while others wondered how a sitting member of Congress could be so brazenly ill informed about U.S. history.

Other users skewered Greene by building on her list of signers detached from reality, adding names like Karl Marx, Gandalf, Kermit the Frog, and Beethoven.

Only two of the people Greene named actually signed the Declaration of Independence: Thomas Jefferson, who wrote it, and John Hancock, who was the first to sign it. Here’s the full list of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, and here’s an explainer about the differences between the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and the Constitution.

Senator Marco Rubio ran a flimsy defense for Donald Trump Sunday, after the former president tried to distance himself from a conservative think tank’s fascist plan for Trump’s potential presidential takeover.

During an interview on CNN’s State of the Union, Dana Bash played the Florida Republican a clip of Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation. The far-right think tank is behind Project 2025, a sweeping 180-page shadow platform that explains how to roll back rights and tear apart the administrative state and replace civil servants with loyal Trump sycophants.

Bash played a clip of Roberts making a chilling warning during an appearance on the far-right network Real America’s Voice last week. “We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless—if the left allows it to be,” he said.

“Are you comfortable with that?” Bash asked Rubio.  

“Well, he’s not running for president, is he?” Rubio said. “I mean, our candidate’s Donald Trump. I didn’t see Donald Trump say that.”

“Donald Trump’s running on common sense, on restoring common sense versus the lunacy of the last four years, on the far left, and the shadow government that now is running our country with Joe Biden as its figurehead. That’s what he’s running against.

“Think tanks do think-tank stuff,” Rubio said, as nonchalantly as one might say, “Fascists do fascist stuff.”

“Look, I like the Heritage Foundation, I agree with some of the things they stand for,” but, Rubio said, the group has a lot of different projects. 

“And Donald Trump is running on restoring common sense, working-class values, and making our decision on the basis of that, and not on ideological lunacy, which is what we’ve seen over the last four years under Joe Biden.”

“Is that what Project 2025 is, is ideological lunacy?” Bash asked. 

“No, I think it’s the work of a think tank. Of a center-right think tank, and that’s what think tanks do,” Rubio said, going on to argue that plenty of “left-wing think tanks” and “opinion writers” had now become the policy of the Biden administration. How that point could possibly help his argument that Project 2025 should not concern voters is unclear.

Since Roberts’s cryptic threat last week, Trump has tried to claim that he doesn’t know what Project 2025 even is, although it was written by several former members of his administration. 

More top Democrats are vehemently shifting away from President Joe Biden after a disastrous debate performance last month revealed key issues with the chief executive’s age.

The number of lawmakers who believed that Biden should throw in the towel in the 2024 race outweighed the number backing his decision to stay in, during a Democratic leadership call on Sunday afternoon. At least four more prominent Democratic representatives joined a growing chorus urging Biden to step out, reported NBC News. Those lawmakers included New York Representatives Jerry Nadler and Joe Morelle, California Representative Mark Takano, and Washington Representative Adam Smith. All four men serve as the ranking members on powerful House committees.

But even lawmakers who didn’t outright agree that the former president’s place on the November ballot was compromised thoroughly questioned his ability to retake the White House for a second term. Maryland Representative Jamie Raskin, Virginia Representative Don Beyer, and Connecticut Representative Jim Himes expressed concerns that Biden was not the strongest candidate the party could put forward.

Most lawmakers on the call believed that Vice President Kamala Harris would be a stronger option at the top of the ticket, calling her the obvious choice to replace Biden should he leave the race.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries held the hour-long call with the Democratic brass but did not weigh in with his opinion on the movement to oust Biden, according to CNN.

Last week, Representatives Lloyd Doggett, Raúl Grijalva, and Seth Moulton formally called on the president to exit the race. But many more have signaled their preference in subtler ways, including legacy politicians such as Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the latter of whom suggested that growing concern over both candidates’ ages was a “legitimate question.”

Panic over Biden’s age and ability has consumed the Democratic Party since the president’s abysmal debate performance last week, during which he appeared dumbfounded and frail through the majority of his first 2024 matchup against Donald Trump. Since the face-off, droves of private-sector leaders, donors, and consultants have urged Biden to call it quits, looking for spontaneous alternatives to a candidate that they openly describe as “comatose” and “dead.”