Free Republic

Top aides to President Joe Biden say that the publishing of a draft majority opinion on abortion rights from Justice Samuel Alito has made their jobs easier: Even if the final decision ends up backtracking from the full overturning of Roe v. Wade, there’s no hiding the Supreme Court’s intent. Advisers to the President who were divided about how hard to lean into talking about abortion rights as a top issue are now united. Democrats around the country are lit up. And the political response, as well as the limited executive actions, that Biden aides had been planning for months...

(CNN)Worn out by what they see as entrenched dysfunction and lack of focus, key West Wing aides have largely thrown up their hands at Vice President Kamala Harris and her staff -- deciding there simply isn't time to deal with them right now, especially at a moment when President Joe Biden faces quickly multiplying legislative and political concerns. The exasperation runs both ways. Interviews with nearly three dozen former and current Harris aides, administration officials, Democratic operatives, donors and outside advisers -- who spoke extensively to CNN -- reveal a complex reality inside the White House. Many in the vice...

The Atlantic magazine published a profile piece on Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg Tuesday and plotted his path to the presidency that would involve him replacing incumbent President Joe Biden. Writer Edward-Isaac Dovere wrote the glowing report about Buttigieg’s attempts to gather support for a massive “infrastructure” spending bill that redefines traditional infrastructure to include elder care and electric vehicles.

President Joe Biden accused former President Donald Trump of campaigning on the idea that black Americans were taking jobs from the white working class, in an interview published Tuesday. Biden spoke to Atlantic reporter Edward-Isaac Dovere about Trump’s campaign message in an Oval Office interview.

Vice President Joe Biden once again dodged questions from the press Sunday, walking from Mass to his motorcade while a pool reporter yelled “Mr. Vice President, come back to us!”Biden dodging media interactions is not surprising, even if it is very strange for a modern political campaign. What is unusual are some of the people who are defending his dodging of reporters and difficult questions, among them The Atlantic’s Edward-Isaac Dovere, who claimed Biden was visiting his son’s grave and shamed the President Donald Trump’s campaign for criticizing Biden. Worse still than flacking for Biden when he is supposed...

Susan Rice is reportedly on Joe Biden’s shortlist to be his running mate, and because of this, she’s clearly trying to get ahead of negative stories that are bound to come up should she be selected. The most significant story is the role she played as chief propagandist for the Obama administration after the 2012 terrorist attack on the U.S consulate in Benghazi. [SNIP] In an interview with The Atlantic’s Edward-Isaac Dovere, she addressed this liability head on. Dovere: The Sunday-show appearances around the Benghazi attack have become so much of your public identity. Your mother actually warned you not...

Presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden raised eyebrows on Monday when he echoed rhetoric that was famously used by Chinese communist dictator Mao Zedong, according to reports. Biden held a digital fundraiser featuring former President Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett. According to The Atlantic's Edward-Isaac Dovere, the former vice president "cited an old Chinese proverb" while discussing economic relief for women during a Q&A session. “We’ve got to get real economic relief into women’s hands now,” Biden reportedly said, later saying that “women hold up half the sky.”

He’s old. He worked with Barack Obama. He’s generally seen as a decent guy. If you know more than that about Joe Biden, you know more than many voters. Growing up in Scranton, Pennsylvania, or having to move because his father lost his job? Writing the Violence Against Women Act? The tragedies he’s lived through, his years as a single father, how he rode the train back to Delaware each night when he was a senator? Even his supposed vulnerabilities, like helping to write the 1994 crime bill, running the Anita Hill hearings, protecting Delaware’s financial industry, or blundering on...

Former Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina revealed in a new interview that she will likely vote for former Vice President Joe Biden in the 2020 election, opting to cast her ballot for the presumptive Democratic nominee over her 2016 GOP primary opponent and the incumbent president. “I’ve been very clear that I can’t support Donald Trump. And, you know, elections are binary choices,” Fiorina told The Atlantic on an episode of “The Ticket” podcast released Thursday. After Fiorina dropped out of the primary in February 2016, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz announced two months later that he would select her as...

Republicans who say Donald Trump should lose in November but insist they won’t vote for Joe Biden aren’t being honest, Carly Fiorina argues. Fiorina was a Republican candidate for president just four years ago, and was briefly Ted Cruz’s prospective running mate. Trump needs to go, she says—and that means she’s voting for Biden. Fiorina is not going to keep quiet, write in another candidate, or vote third-party. “I’ve been very clear that I can’t support Donald Trump,” she told me, in an interview that can be heard in full on the latest episode of The Ticket. “And elections are...

The pandering depths to which presidential candidate Kirsten Gillibrand will sink are so hilariously low that even a left-leaning publication such as The Atlantic magazine finds it impossible to avoid her desperation. We can see that Gillibrand stands out even in a large field of Democrat candidates noted for going into extreme pander mode. Staff writer Edward-Isaac Dovere (formerly of Politico) can only observe in amazement as Gillibrand gives new meaning to the word "vapid" in his June 16 article, "This Isn’t Going According to Plan for Kirsten Gillibrand." However, before we get to Dovere's article, you need to experience a...

Before there was Jill Stein, there was Ralph Nader. Before there was Nader, there was Ross Perot. None won. All argued that the Republican Party and the Democratic Party were basically the same, and the only way to make real change was to ditch them both. Each was blamed for siphoning off enough votes to throw the presidential elections. These days, the difference between the parties is starker than it’s ever been in modern times. Yet here comes Howard Schultz, a billionaire who feels that he might be the answer to American politics, and that he’d run for president as...

Bernie Sanders’ top operatives formed “Our Revolution” after he lost the 2016 primaries to keep his army organized and motivated — and potentially prepare for another presidential run in 2020. But an extensive review of the Sanders-inspired group depicts an organization in disarray — operating primarily as a promotional vehicle for its leader and sometimes even snubbing candidates aligned with Sanders. Our Revolution has shown no ability to tip a major Democratic election in its favor — despite possessing Sanders’ email list, the envy of the Democratic Party — and can claim no major wins in 2018 as its own....

There’s no strategist pulling the strings, and no collection of burn-it-all-down aides egging him on. At the heart of the rage against Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party, the campaign aides closest to him say, is Bernie Sanders. It was the Vermont senator who personally rewrote his campaign manager’s shorter statement after the chaos at the Nevada state party convention and blamed the political establishment for inciting the violence. He was the one who made the choice to go after Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz after his wife read him a transcript of her blasting him on television....

Joe Biden has been making his 2016 deliberations all about his late son since August. Aug. 1, to be exact — the day renowned Hillary Clinton-critic Maureen Dowd published a column that marked a turning point in the presidential speculation.

LAS VEGAS — There are the people on his side on the Iran deal, President Barack Obama said Monday evening. Then there are “the crazies.” Back from a notably uneventful and restful two-week vacation in Martha’s Vineyard, Obama was immediately on the road for a short trip here, first to speak at a green energy conference hosted by retiring Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, then to raise money for his preferred successor, former Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto. Ruddy from the sun, Obama described himself as “refreshed, renewed, recharged — a little feisty.” And he delivered, recounting the ride...

NAIROBI, Kenya – President Barack Obama and Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta sparred over support for gay rights here Saturday, with Obama urging fast changes and Kenyatta saying it was not something Kenyan culture or society would “accept.” Linking LGBT discrimination in Africa to the history of Jim Crow laws in America, Obama said ensuring gay rights must be a priority on a continent — and in a country — where bias against gays is accepted, and violence against gays is common. Standing by Obama’s side at a joint press conference here in front of the Kenyan state house, Kenyatta repeated...