Insights, analysis and must reads from CNN's Fareed Zakaria and the Global Public Square team, compiled by Global Briefing editor Chris Good Seeing this newsletter as a forward? Sign up here. July 18, 2024 |
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The Biden–Trump 'Split Screen' |
The Biden story is back. After an interlude of universal focus on former President Donald Trump's near-assassination, attention has turned back to Democrats calling for President Joe Biden to drop from the 2024 race.
Suffering from a case of Covid-19, Biden is isolating at his Delaware home. At the same time, pressure to step aside has increased. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told Biden that polls show he can't win in November, CNN's MJ Lee, Jamie Gangel and Jeff Zeleny report, citing four unnamed sources. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) went to see Biden and urged him to drop out, ABC's Jonathan Karl reports, noting Schumer's office did not deny it. Neither did the office of House Speaker Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), who reportedly conveyed similar sentiments, ABC's Karl writes. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) added his prominent name to public calls for Biden to drop.
The attempt on Trump's life "disrupted the effort within the party to replace Mr Biden as its nominee," The Economist writes. But after a few quiet days, pressure is "rapidly mounting. Even assuming that [Biden] remains the Democrats' nominee, he will have to consider how, in the aftermath of last Saturday's attack, he can continue to call out Mr Trump over the threat that his restoration to the White House would pose to American democracy. Republicans led by [vice-presidential candidate] J.D. Vance immediately blamed Mr Biden's campaign messaging for fostering the assassination attempt."
At the Financial Times, columnist Edward Luce writes: "If the US election were held now, Trump would probably win. It is hard to see how that will dramatically change for Biden in the next 15 weeks." Even previously Democratic leaning Virginia looks like a toss-up. In a New York Times guest opinion essay, former John McCain strategist Mike Murphy writes: "[H]ave no doubt, Mr. Biden is losing this race." The president "now faces that grim reaper of politics: If you are perceived as a certain loser, you will become one."
On the other side of a "split screen," as the FT's Luce puts it, Republicans are buoyant at their convention in Milwaukee. The contrast is stark. At The Wall Street Journal, Alex Leary and John McCormick write that the assassination attempt has tightened Trump's grip on a Republican Party united behind him despite his 2020 loss and more recent felony convictions. At the Financial Times, Joshua Chaffin, Oliver Roeder, Claire Bushey and Christopher Grimes pen a deep examination of what Trump's ardent faithful find appealing about him. As the FT reporters see it, the key elements are perceptions of Trump's "unapologetic, unreformed masculinity"; the enthralling "spectacle" of his rallies; "nostalgia" for a past America; Trump's appeals to Christian identity; and the economic shock of high prices during Biden's tenure. |
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Keen Ukraine-war observer Michael Kofman notes in the latest War on the Rocks podcast episode that Kyiv appears to have successfully addressed its key weaknesses in manpower, fortifications, and munitions supply. The Economist, in turn, suggests Russia's army is struggling.
A Russian offensive on the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, begun in May, "is fizzling out," the magazine writes. Russia's "advances elsewhere … especially in the Donbas region, have been both strategically trivial and achieved only at huge cost. The question now is less whether Ukraine can stay in the fight and more how long can Russia keep up its current tempo of operations."
Southern Illinois University political-science professor Valery Dzutsati writes for The Jamestown Foundation that heavy troop losses may be taking their toll on ethnically non-Russian regions of Russia from which Moscow often draws recruits. To The Economist, however, Russia's main problem is weaponry.
"[F]or all the talk of Russia having become a war economy, with some 8% of its GDP devoted to military spending, it is able to replace its staggering losses of tanks, armoured infantry vehicles and artillery only by drawing out of storage and refurbishing stocks built up in the Soviet era," the magazine writes. "Huge though these stocks are, they are not infinite." Components previously acquired from Europe are now unavailable, due to sanctions. Moscow has had to repurpose old artillery barrels. Experts see Russian weaponry being exhausted sometime next year. Michael Gjerstad, an analyst with the International Institute for Strategic Studies, suggests to The Economist that as its weapon stocks dwindle, Russia may be forced to take a more defensive posture by the end of this year.
That could weigh on the war's ultimate outcome. Aside from larger factors like weapon supplies and troop mobilization, Eugene Chausovsky of the Newlines Institute argues in Foreign Policy that the shape of an eventual ceasefire or peace agreement could be determined by territorial control in the four Ukrainian regions Moscow claims to have annexed. |
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In China, 'Vigilantes' Wanted |
In a quirky display of China's party-state recruiting citizens to help with the work of government, ChinaFile's Jessica Batke last month highlighted the appearance of social-media videos promoting groups of citizen-volunteer "vigilantes," which showed young people walking in uniform to stirring music. The groups supplement local police, Batke wrote—and, according to one voiceover narrator, they "embody the volunteer spirit of communal governance."
"In some ways, 'vigilantes' are the opposite of what their name suggests: rather than rogue agents meting out street justice, they are individuals deemed trustworthy by authorities, working under the guidance of local police forces, deputized to surveil their fellow citizens," Batke wrote. "In recent years, as Beijing has encouraged the 'masses' to take a greater role in public safety, vigilante groups—and their close cousins, 'safety promotion associations'—have sprung up across the country, working with the police to conduct traffic stops, mediate disputes, or even 'catch [suspects] on the spot.'" |
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