Jonathan Martin: Biden an ‘Emergency, Break Glass Candidate’

July 31st, 2023 6:37 PM

On Monday’s Morning Joe, Politico’s Jonathan Martin joined host Jonathan Lemire to discuss the latter’s latest piece which detailed the real struggle Biden would have to win an election. The two Jonathans shockingly did not toe the party line and said that many voters, even some Democrats, did not want to vote for Biden or have him run again. The segment in an implicit way contradicted much of the traditional MSNBC shilling for Biden.

Lemire questioned Martin: “And Jay Martin, it’s a great piece. And you certainly hit on something here, where the real concerns about the two major leading candidates right now, including as you know even Democrats really think President Biden has done a good job, are sort of reluctant to vote for him again … So, when you look at the field and you see potential spoilers, who could they be?”

 

 

Lemire entered dangerous territory by bringing up the notion that Biden was anything but a perfect candidate, as his employer has routinely gone to any length to protect the current President from any bad press.

Martin responded: “Well, I think that with -- let's start with Democrats. I think with Biden, for a lot of Democrats and a lot of Independents and even Republicans who voted for him, John, the bargain was essentially, you know, he's an emergency, break glass candidate who gets Trump out of office, ends COVID, and mission accomplished.”

Wow. Here was a tacit admission by Martin that almost nobody actually liked Joe Biden, and only voted for Biden because he was their only chance to get rid of former President Trump. It must have pained him to admit that after all the relentless pro-Biden propaganda the media had vomited out.

But, he was quick to course correct and find some way to spin it back into the media narrative. He stated that the economy under Biden was “by every metric” improving, and that “head-to-head, he probably would beat Trump.” Yet he was still scared about Biden’s chances, moving on to the point that a third-party candidate taking away votes from Biden could cause Trump to win, and that “there’s going to be a lot of voters in the country who are effectively homeless.”

Martin and Lemire’s entertaining of the possibility that Democrats might need another candidate besides Biden or that third parties may peel off large swathes of voters from Biden underscored a positive reality that the liberal media’s false praise of Biden and endless propagandizing was failing with the American public. This should be taken as a good sign for conservatives, and shows how close the 2024 election will be.

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The transcript is below, click "expand" to read:

MSNBC’s Morning Joe

07/31/23

7:13 AM ET

(…)

JONATHAN LEMIRE: And Jay Martin, it’s a great piece. And you certainly hit on something here, where the real concerns about the two major leading candidates right now, including as you know even Democrats really think President Biden has done a good job, are sort of reluctant to vote for him again. 

JONATHAN MARTIN: Right. 

LEMIRE: So, when you look at the field and you see potential spoilers, who could they be? 

MARTIN: Well, I think that with -- let's start with Democrats. I think with Biden, for a lot of Democrats and a lot of Independents and even Republicans who voted for him, John, the bargain was essentially, you know, he's an emergency, break glass candidate who gets Trump out of office, ends COVID, and mission accomplished. And I think that there’s voters in this country who didn't think he'd run for a second term, by which time he was pushing into his mid-80’s. 

And so I think that's the fundamental challenge for Biden. Is that the economy, by every metric, is improving, but, yet, you don't see a corresponding balance with his numbers. Now, that may come later. It may be a sort of late developing metric. But right now, it's not there. If you're Democrats, that has to be concerning. And eventually, do you come to terms with the fact, John, that voters are judging Biden separately than they're judging the health of the economy? Because they've just moved on. 

And so I think that raises the question of, if Trump is the de facto nominee, and you put up those numbers on the screen. They're national numbers, they’re not Iowa numbers, grain of salt. But if Trump wins the first three or four states in February of next year and he is the de facto nominee in February of '24, I just think it is really difficult to see a scenario where there is not some kind of a moderate third party candidate who gets into the race. 

Because there's going to be a lot of voters in the country who are effectively homeless. They're not going to want to vote for somebody who’s facing federal trial or potentially convicted of felonies. And they're not going to want to vote for somebody who they believe is too old to be President. And so I think that's the real risk for Biden. 

Yeah, head-to-head, he probably would beat Trump. But in a four-person race, when he is facing the threat from the left in Cornell West, who’s taking a couple points from his left, and then facing potentially a kind of center/center-right candidate, former Republican governor or senator, I think that's a much tougher scenario for Biden to survive. 

(…)