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‘Pipe down’: Biden allies step up calls for Dems to rally around president

Allies of President Biden are stepping up calls for Democrats to rally around the president, following negative commentary and splits from inside the party over whether he should forgo reelection.

Former President Obama’s senior adviser David Axelrod has been the most notable Democrat to cause a ruckus when he suggested earlier this month that Biden step aside and further advised that the president has a “50-50 shot” of winning in 2024.

But some Democrats say comments like Axelrod’s aren’t helping especially as Biden continues to face poor polling numbers, encouraging the party to instead coalesce around the president to give him a boost.

“We gotta pipe down the moaning and groaning and all the whining. There’s too much of that,” said former Rep. Joe Crowley (D-N.Y.), a former House Democratic Caucus chair. “I think that leaches into the psyche of the voters as well. That’s got to stop and I think at that point, you’ll start to see Biden’s numbers improve, certainly amongst Democrats, but I think voter-wide they’ll start to improve.”

Steve Elmendorf, deputy campaign manager for John Kerry’s 2004 presidential run, said that there are clear challenges with Biden’s reelection campaign but Democrats complaining doesn’t help.

“I’m not like, oh everything they do is great over there. Obviously, they need to constantly refine the message and figure out what works and there are challenges with various groups of voters and they need to figure those out. But I don’t think it’s helpful as a party for people to sort of run around publicly and complain.”

The calls for Democrats to cut down on the negativity comes as Biden has been hit with a slew of bad polls in recent months. Former President Trump’s lead over Biden is also growing in a hypothetical 2024 matchup, with Trump receiving 48 percent support compared to Biden’s 41 percent, according to a Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll survey. 

That followed a New York Times and Siena College poll earlier this month that found Trump leading Biden in critical battleground states. But some say Biden has plenty of time to make up for his shortfalls.

“You have to be concerned, but you also have to take it with the understanding that a year of politics, especially in an election, is a lifetime,” said former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.). “Things just change dramatically over that time. We don’t know what the next 12 months will entail. Is it concerning? Of course, but there’s plenty of time for circumstances to change.”

When asked if it’s frustrating when people within his own party say negative things or suggest the president should consider moving aside, Daschle, founder of the Daschle Group, said “it’s not frustrating, it’s understandable.” 

“Obviously, they have a point,” he said. “In spite of the debate that we’ve had now for several months about age and about options, I think we have to acknowledge that it’s absolutely critical that we come together and we be as cohesive as possible over the next 12 months. And I know that’s not easy. But it’s essential if we’re going to succeed.”

Democrats for months have questioned if Biden is too old to run for reelection or if he has the stamina and mental and physical capacity to do so. Senate Democrats are also now pushing back hard on criticism from within their own party, dismissing concerns about Biden’s electability as counterproductive.

“He’s running for reelection, people need to understand that and so as a party, everybody should figure out how do we get him reelected. Like, that’s pretty simple. I’m in the Jim Messina, David Plouffe school of, people need to stop bedwetting and focus on how to win,” Elmendorf said.

Messina, former President Obama’s 2012 campaign manager, has been an advocate for Biden on social media, posting on X this week, “Polls a year out are about as good at predicting election results as a magic 8 ball would be.” Plouffe, Obama’s 2008 campaign manager, has long warned against Democrats ‘bedwetting’ and worrying about political outcomes.

But then there’s Axelrod, from Obama world, who said this week that Biden has a “50-50 shot” of winning in 2024, adding, “He thinks he can cheat nature here, and it’s really risky.” He had earlier suggested Biden step aside, although he also touted that the Biden administration has done great things.

Axelrod’s suggestion that Biden consider stepping aside broke open some lingering tensions between the Biden and Obama teams, which Democrats say doesn’t do them any favors. There’s also the matter of how different the current political environment is.

“A lot of the people who comment on campaigns these days are sort of living in past campaigns. We’re in a very different way in which campaigns are run, in which people communicate, in which money is raised and money is spent,” Elmendorf said. 

“No offense to a lot of my friends who’ve worked on past campaigns, but I think a lot of them are probably…not as up to date and they probably don’t have as much information,” he added.

Biden’s campaign manager Julie Chávez Rodriguez has acknowledged that the general election will be “very close,”  as Biden aides lean into attacks on Trump, ramping up the offensive by rolling out daily memos that outline what a second term would mean for issues from the economy, abortion, and immigration. They’ve also reiterated a notion Biden often touts: That he’s the only candidate who can beat Trump. There’s also the matter of, if Biden steps down, who could possibly take his place.

“Joe Biden has done it. Who would you put in his place? If David Axelrod says he has a 50-50 chance maybe, who has more than a 50-50 chance? Name the person,” Mika Brzezinski, the co-host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” said on Tuesday. “Someone name a name that we know has more than a 50-50. There isn’t one.”

Biden also faces some primary challengers, including Minnesota Rep. Dean Phillips (D) and Marianne Williamson. Meanwhile, independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been polling with a high favorability in recent surveys, which some find problematic.

“I’m not like sanguine, or like, oh, Joe Biden’s gonna win. I think we’re an extremely competitive, divided country. These third party people are very concerning,” Elmendorf said, mentioning Green Party Ralph Nader’s impact in the 2000 election.

Yasmin Nelson, a senior policy adviser at Holland & Knight and former senior policy adviser to Vice President Harris when she served in the Senate, said despite the noise, Democrats have to stay focused on the ticket they have.

“Biden-Harris is the ticket and it’s not in Democrats best interest to entertain anything other than that. The campaign has a year to show voters the difference they’ve made and the significant legislative success over the first term, amidst extreme odds,” said Nelson. “They have to remind voters of that fight daily and build the brand around that success.”

Daschle also called for unity in the face of Biden’s primary challengers and for Biden allies to stay engaged over the next year.

“The only way we can ensure that we won’t fail is if we stay as unified and as aggressively engaged as we possibly can. And that seems to me to be the simple truth that the sooner we all recognize and acknowledge the better,” he said.

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Anti-Israel protests borrow playbook from social justice movements: experts

The anti-Israel movement roiling major American cities and college campuses following the outbreak of Israel’s war with Hamas bears a striking resemblance to other movements favored by social justice activists, experts suggest.

Since the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel by Hamas terrorists, an outpouring of protests across the world have not condemned the terror group but rather the Jewish state, which continues to reflect on the loss of more than 1,200 Israelis who died in the massacre last month.

The most extreme displays from Hamas-sympathizing supporters seem to be coming from American college campuses. Particularly concerning demonstrations were witnessed at once-prestigious institutions such as Harvard and New York University, among others.

Aside from college campuses, the anti-Israel movement also found its way to the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) in Washington, D.C., where supposed pro-Palestinian demonstrators grew violent and clashed with police. Other protests have taken place outside the State Department, where demonstrators held handcrafted signs with anti-Israel slogans like “Israel = Cancer of the Middle East.”

DEMOCRATIC SOCIALIST MEMBERS OF CONGRESS HAVE NOT CONDEMNED VIOLENT ANTI-ISRAEL PROTEST TARGETING OWN PARTY HQ

Those protests, and similar ones in recent American history, according to observers who’ve watched the issue unfold and offered their perspectives to Fox News Digital, are part of a much larger problem meant to “destabilize this country.”

Brooke Goldstein, a human rights attorney who serves as the executive director of The Lawfare Project, said she believes it’s time for law enforcement officials to open an investigation to find out how the protests are organized, as well as whether the protests are connected to foreign governments or terrorist organizations.

“We need to call these protesters what they are. They are not pro-Palestinian. There is no Palestinian democracy movement. There’s no Palestinian peace movement. They are pro-Hamas,” she said. “We need to take a long hard look at how a significant segment of our population has become radicalized. Law enforcement and lawmakers have, for too long, turned a blind eye to the operations of foreign governments within our borders, especially Qatar. They have ignored the relationship between designated terrorist groups and student groups on campus.”

“These protesters are not progressive, and they are not nonviolent. Their purpose is to destabilize this country and there’s an urgent need for law-enforcement to open an investigation into how they are being organized and whether or not they are tied to foreign governments or foreign terrorist groups,” she added

Other reasoning behind several of those protests, which have been complex and unpredictable in many instances, boils down to the teachings and activism of “left-wing academics” who have long supported certain racial divides and expect others to do the same, according to Christopher F. Rufo, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal.

IN PROTESTS AGAINST ISRAEL, ‘AMERICAN WAY OF FREEDOM’ IS BEING ‘DEEPLY CHALLENGED,’ SAYS AUTHOR AND HISTORIAN

“The left-wing academics who have been cheering on violent ‘decolonization’ against Jews have been pushing the same hideous rhetoric against ‘whiteness’ for years. Same ideology. Same hatred. Same bloodlust,” Rufo said.

Rufo noted that several on the “academic left treat the Hamas fighter as a noble savage who symbolizes revolt against the West and through whom the academic can experience the thrill of violence.

“The fighter is seen as the physical embodiment of the jargon: ‘decolonization,’ ‘resistance,’ ‘power,’” he added. “Time to connect the dots and fight it together.”

Similarly, Lisa Daftari, editor-in-chief of The Foreign Desk, said she believes the rise in antisemitism across the country represents the “cross-sectionality” of social justice movements and other groups that place a particular focus on support for left-wing ideas.

“A significant contributor to the rise of antisemitism, especially among those under 25 and on college campuses, is the cross-sectionality of social justice movements and organizations that are telling young people, ‘If you care about various human rights such as gay rights, trans rights, race issues, then you need to demonize Israel,” she said. “It is now on the social justice ‘checklist’ to condemn Israel.

“Similarly, we are seeing Israel portrayed as a country of White, privileged people, the offspring of Europeans who immigrated there. This is absolutely false,” Daftari added. “Israel is made up of a diverse patchwork of people from all over the world, including those who have been there long before the official founding of the State in 1948. There are Black, brown and White people in Israel coming from Africa, the Middle East, South America and all over.”

REPUBLICANS BLAST PRO-PALESTINIAN PROTESTS AT DNC: ‘NATION’S CAPITAL IS UNDER SIEGE’

Following the protests outside the DNC headquarters, Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Calif, said during a recent appearance on “The Faulkner Focus” that many anti-Israel protesters are being “duped” into supporting Hamas terrorism.

“The Hamas object was to attack and kill as many Israelis as they could… on Oct. 7, retreat, regroup and then do it again,” Sherman said at the time. “And that’s not me speaking, that’s top Hamas leadership. I think some of the demonstrators support that plan. Others are duped into the idea that somehow a truce that allows Hamas to regroup and repeat will bring peace, and obviously that isn’t the case.”

Last month, Pastor Dumisani Washington, a Black activist and the founder of the Institute for Black Solidarity with Israel (IBSI), called out Black Lives Matter chapters he believed were expressing support for Hamas’ terrorism against Israeli civilians for embodying an “evil beyond description,” in an interview with Fox News Digital.

“The price that’s paid for organizations like Black Lives Matter to feign concern about Baltimore, Oakland, Ferguson… to feign concern only to use those people and even the deaths there to then demonize Israel some 6,000 miles away, is an evil beyond description,” Washington said. “People are being destroyed for the sake of antisemitism and anti-Zionism.… How are we defending the people of Gaza by celebrating this type of blood and gore?”

Rather than express sympathy for the more than 1,200 Israelis murdered by Hamas terrorists, at least two Black Lives Matter groups declared their support for Palestinians. At least 27 American citizens have been killed, an unknown number are in Hamas captivity and others remain unaccounted for. Some 230 children, women and men are believed to have been taken hostage by Hamas, although the number could be greater.

BLM Grassroots published a statement to its Instagram page last month that said, “Black Lives Matter Grassroots stands in solidarity with our Palestinian family who are currently resisting [75] years of settler colonialism and apartheid.”

A mural of George Floyd, a Black man who died after he was handcuffed and pinned down by a White police officer in Minneapolis, was painted in Gaza City following his death in 2020. Originally, the mural only featured Floyd’s face, but the words “Black Lives Matter” were added later to show support for the movement in the United States.

During a 2021 interview with Vice, Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, used the “racist murder of George Floyd” to make a far-fetched comparison about Israel.

“I want to take this opportunity to remember the racist murder of George Floyd. George Floyd was killed as a result of racist ideology held by some people,” Sinwar said. “The same type of racism that killed George Floyd is being used by Israel against the Palestinians in Jerusalem, the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood and in the West Bank.”

Fox News’ Joseph A. Wulfsohn and Hannah Grossman contributed to this report.

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