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Good morning,
Thanks for reading The Backstory, a composite of the best new work at Puck.
It was another extraordinary week: John Heilemann and Peter Hamby reviewed Biden’s nightmare in Atlanta; Abby Livingston observed a bit of optimism among the Democratic bed-wetting class (pre-debate!); Dylan Byers unveiled the latest intrigue within The Washington Post’s fractious newsroom; Lauren Sherman related the most recent murmurs around Bernard Arnault’s empire; Matt Belloni revealed the outcome of the Yellowstone finale contretemps; Bill Cohan chronicled a billionaire battle on Nantucket; Marion Maneker conveyed the London art market anxieties; and John Ourand reported on Stephen A. Smith’s latest ask to the brass at ESPN.
Check out these stories, and others, via the links below. And stick around for the backstory on how it all came together.
Programming note: On July 10 in D.C., Peter Hamby will host an exclusive panel conversation focused on shifting voter dynamics ahead of the ’24 election—based on data revealed through Puck’s polling partnership with Echelon Insights—with a special emphasis on the outsize impact of women voters over the age of 50. Peter will be joined by Kristen Soltis Anderson from Echelon Insights, Margie Omero from GBAO, and Nancy LeaMond from AARP. To attend, click here to sign up for Puck, and email Fritz@puck.news for registration information.
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| Late Thursday night, and into the wee hours of Friday morning—as the punditocracy and vox populi, alike, were recounting the horrors of Joe Biden’s discombobulated and short-circuited debate performance—my partners John Heilemann, Peter Hamby, and Dylan Byers got together to discuss the evening’s events. After all, it was instantly clear that Biden’s senioritis in Atlanta was likely to replace Richard Nixon sweating under that gray suit in 1960 opposite John F. Kennedy as perhaps the worst presidential debate performance in modern memory. Recollections of Obama’s unpreparedness in Denver, in 2012, now seemed quaint by comparison.
John, for his part, had just finished up a tour of the spin room, where the Biden operatives and supporters were notably late to the floor—presumably cleaning up their talking points and hoping to dampen the instantly ubiquitous calls for the 46th president to step aside. He joined Peter and Dylan for a special taping of two of Puck’s most irresistible podcasts, The Powers That Be and Impolitic With John Heilemann. For the better part of an hour, as the Acela corridor was preparing to sleep this one off, the threesome exchanged notes on the debate, CNN’s decision against fact-checking the conversation, and the attendant bed-wetting.
“Tonight in my text messages, a very senior strategist said the panic will start tomorrow. And I texted that to another very senior strategist, who texted back, Wrong, the panic is starting now,” John said. “I texted one of the richest people in America, a huge Biden supporter, who has had Biden to his house relatively recently. I asked, How many Democrats, elected Democrats or people in your category of wealth, are texting you tonight talking about needing another nominee? And he said, Everyone. It’s beyond anything I’ve ever seen before. I’m on the floor. If we don’t change the nominee, the race is over.”
John continued: “Now, you can say that’s hair on fire. But I have at least a half-dozen Democratic senators in my text threads, and about 15 members of the House, and a bunch of really, really rich Democratic donors, and all of them are asking, What options do we have? How would this work? This is a complete calamity. The Daily Mail wrote a piece a few weeks ago that said the Clintons, the Obamas, Nancy, and Chuck had a conversation about going to Biden to try to get him to step down if he shit the bed in the debate. I don’t regard the Daily Mail as a credible media outlet, but four or five sources tell me that at least part of that is true. I think it mostly revolves around Nancy and Chuck, who are starting to freak out about what might happen to Democrats in the Senate and the House.” And then Peter noted, “What’s striking is the level of anger coming from normal Democrats, not professional Democrats, people who just want to vote against Trump and get this over with, even if they’re not in love with Biden, who are texting me their anger. It’s because so much feels at stake.”
I urge you to listen to this conversation, either on Peter’s show or John’s. Or you can read the edited transcript in Inside the Biden Panic Room. It’s an honest conversation among three experts, based on deep reporting and highly placed sources, that will entirely reanimate a familiar event in a way that makes it feel strikingly new—the true quintessence of Puck.
Meanwhile, Democrats aren’t the only group beset with anxiety. Before the Biden debate snafu, the biggest story in Washington pertained to The Washington Post, the historic paper that’s been ensnared in a messy leadership shuffle that’s boiled over into a larger philosophical crisis. As usual, Dylan has been the premier chronicler of this media saga—deftly sorting through the anxieties and ulterior motives to convey a far more complex and nuanced story than you’ll read anywhere else. Wet Hot British Summer captures the agony and ecstasy inside the joint.
But if you only have time to read one story this weekend, I’d urge you to drop everything and check out Bill Cohan’s brilliant and hilarious story on the scandal that confounded the billionaires of Nantucket. We may be in the midst of a historically important election, a generationally transformative pivot in the media and tech spaces, but the übermenschen in their reds were hellbent on putting the kibosh on a little clam shack in the Old North Wharf. In many ways, of course, this sort of tribal, plutocratic NIMBYism is a metaphor for our age, and a story befitting these times. It is, in other words, precisely what you should expect from Puck.
Have a great weekend and July Fourth,
Jon |
