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**JANUARY 10, 2024**

On the Prospect website

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Cenk Uygur Fights the Natural-Born Citizen Restriction

He argues that the 14th Amendment allows him, a naturalized citizen,
to serve as president. There's a larger question at stake here about
perfecting our Constitution. BY DAVID DAYEN

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Trump's Lawyers Invite Biden to Assassinate Him

And it'll be fine, so long as Biden doesn't get impeached, they
implied. BY RYAN COOPER

First They Came for Harvard

The right's long and all-too-unanswered war on liberal institutions
claims a big one. BY RICK PERLSTEIN

Kuttner on TAP

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**** The Biden Box

Must America go down with the Biden campaign?

Reports of a private conversation between former President Obama and
President Biden expressing Obama's anguish about Biden losing the 2024
election are only the latest sign of well-informed panic in senior
Democratic ranks. Several of us at the

**Prospect** have entertained the thought that Biden is doomed and that
the Democrats need to get another candidate
.

Here's the argument: A fresh face, a generation younger than Biden,
would take the age issue off the table, and the geezer would be Trump. A
new candidate would presumably be free of at least some of Biden's
baggage, namely a bout of inflation (that wasn't Biden's fault) and
two Biden wars that have become quagmires. Almost any of several
possible alternatives is better than Biden speaking off the cuff.

Having entertained that fantasy, I need to say that there is no
plausible scenario for replacing Biden with someone who would do better
against Trump. If Biden were to stumble badly in the January 23 New
Hampshire primary, where he is running an awkward write-in campaign,
there would be a free-for-all. If Biden were to pull out after several
key primary deadlines, if would fall to the Democratic National
Committee to find a nominee. Good luck with that. Either scenario is a
train wreck.

And who might that nominee be? If it were someone other than Kamala
Harris, there would be an even worse falloff in Black votes. But
nominating Harris would leave Democrats with an even weaker candidate
than Biden.

If the voters or the DNC decided to displace Harris, my own favorite
would be Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. But with two foreign military
crises dominating the news, will voters support someone with no
foreign-policy experience? Possibly, but getting to Whitmer would be
quite a feat.

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Just to add to the gloom, we have several third-party candidates. As a
group, they are more likely to pull votes from Biden than from Trump.

The Biden people, and the reliably irritating Simon Rosenberg
, are whistling past the graveyard,
touting good economic news that is lost on working-class voters, and
claiming that current polls don't matter because once voters focus on
the real choice of Biden or Trump, the swing voters will shift to Biden.

But this leaves out the fact that the real swing voters are those who
decide to turn out or to stay home. And Biden's overly ardent embrace
of Netanyahu's laying waste to Gaza is costing the Democrats dearly
with young voters and voters of color.

So is nothing to be done other than explore the rules for emigrating to
Canada? We can't take 20 years off Biden, but there are actually
several things to be done.

For starters, as Obama suggested
,
Biden needs a campaign team that is not the same as his top White House
staffers.

Second, he needs to stop touting his economic successes and make the
campaign about Trump. His Valley Forge speech

was a good start.

I thought the Charleston speech
,
aimed at rallying the Black vote, was less effective because it lacked
Obama's touch at uniting Black and white voters. The "cease-fire now"
interruptions were a reminder that there is more than one way to depress
the Black vote.

Third, Biden needs to end the two wars that are dragging down his
credibility as a leader. Netanyahu (who would rather have Trump) is
making a fool out of Biden. The U.S. needs to use its leverage to set
explicit humanitarian conditions and move Israel to an early cease-fire
and peace plan. Even the most pro-Israel Jewish voters (and donors) are
fed up.

There is also a deal to be had to end the Ukraine War. The deal is some
land in exchange for a cease-fire and NATO guarantees of Ukrainian
sovereignty.

Biden will always be an aging leader who is at risk when he is
off-script. But at least he can be a better version of himself.

~ ROBERT KUTTNER

Follow Robert Kuttner on Twitter

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