Blinken's Mission, Impossible

Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Sunday. His goal was to reassure Abbas that the Biden administration is doing everything it can to limit civilian casualties as Israel continues to bomb the Gaza Strip. It is Washington's hope that after Israel destroys Hamas—the terrorist group in charge of Gaza, and the perpetrator of the October 7 massacre that left 1,400 Israelis dead—Abbas and the Palestinian Authority could take over as the official government.

Abbas, however, has called for an immediate ceasefire in the conflict—a course of action that Jordan, Egypt, and many others in the international community have been demanding. President Joe Biden has not embraced a full ceasefire, instead preferring a "humanitarian pause" so that much needed aid can reach the people of the Gaza Strip. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said there will be no ceasefire until and unless Hamas releases all its hostages.

Indeed, Israel ramped up its attacks over the weekend. The Palestinians against lost internet and other communication services as Israeli forces initiated another round of intense bombings in northwest Gaza aimed at killing senior Hamas leaders. Some areas of Gaza had internet restored on Monday morning.

The Palestinian death toll has risen to nearly 10,000, which puts the U.S. in a difficult position. Biden has offered unqualified support to Netanyahu, and repeatedly reaffirmed Israel's right to defend itself against terrorism. Self-defense is well and good, but does the U.S. have a responsibility to provide Israel as many weapons and as much funding as it requires? Since World War II, the U.S. government has given more aid to Israel than to any other country in the world; does this policy really reflect America's national security needs? How does the rest of the world view it?

Blinken reportedly received an icy reception from the U.S.'s Muslim allies in Turkey, Iraq, and elsewhere. They know that an open-ended and ever-escalating war between Israel and Hamas is bad for everyone, and that the U.S. is paying for it.

Biden's poll numbers: They're bad. The latest polling from The New York Times and Siena College has Biden losing to former President Donald Trump, who is well ahead in key swing states: Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Arizona, and Pennsylvania. Prospective voters are particularly worried about Biden's age, about national security, and about the economy; on that last question, Trump leads Biden by more than 20 points.

Tellingly, Biden is polling worse than Vice President Kamala Harris. And Trump does far worse against a generic candidate with a D next to their name.

A generic, unnamed Democrat fares 13 points better than Biden against Trump in swing states, per new NYT poll.
Kamala Harris does better than Biden too.
My quick write up of the pollhttps://t.co/cWUe6G38Jy pic.twitter.com/DFHkbQcPUi

— Alex Thompson (@AlexThomp) November 5, 2023

These are big liabilities. In the 2020 Democratic primaries, one of the most compelling arguments for Biden was electability: Polls showed that he was most likely to defeat Trump in the general election. And for most of his presidency thus far, it has been evident that whatever Biden's faults, Democrats lack a more popular alternative.

But now even the perpetually disappointing Harris seems like a better option to swing state voters. That's quite an indictment of the incumbent.

More Twitter Files: A new installment of the Twitter Files, written by Susan Schmidt, finds that a report about Russian malfeasance on Twitter was ill-conceived and inaccurate; Twitter knew this, but was afraid to publicly challenge the prevailing narrative, particularly after Sen. Mark Warner (D–VA) started making noise about it.

Internally, Twitter's head of trust and safety Yoel Roth slammed the report—assembled by New Knowledge, an internet research firm—as wholly flawed, and noted that some accounts labeled as Russian bots were actually authentic Americans. "Nothing to see here," Yoth wrote to his colleagues.

The Twitter Files have documented this phenomenon again and again: national security officials, Democratic politicians, so-called disinformation experts, and the mainstream media made inaccurate claims about Russian bots in order to pressure Twitter to suppress legitimate political speech.

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Scenes from Washington, D.C.

Thousands of pro-Palestinian protesters converged on the nation's capital on Saturday, and a massive crowd formed outside the White House to chant "fuck Joe Biden."

The White House's NW entrance has been smeared with red paint and protesters are pushing on gate #March4Palestine pic.twitter.com/D4cFNOCyiU

— Steven Nelson (@stevennelson10) November 4, 2023

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QUICK HITS

• Kamala Harris' stepdaughter is reenacting a literal plotline from Veep.

This is a subplot from Veep. Like in a literal sense, it was in the show. https://t.co/Od6ozADc5q

— ettingermentum (@ettingermentum) November 4, 2023

• Jeff Bezos is leaving Seattle for Miami, and the reason why is no mystery: Washington state was trying to raise taxes specifically to bilk him to the tune of $1.44 billion.
• Things are not going well for Ukraine in its war with Russia, and it's only a matter of time before the country needs to negotiate with its attacker.
• Nevertheless, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had choice words for Russian President Vladimir Putin: He's a "fucking terrorist."
• If Trump returns to office, key allies are discussing "revenge."
• Tucker Carlson is interviewing Julian Assange.

Julian Assange, facing a 175 year sentence if extradited to the US for exposing war crimes, receives visit from @TuckerCarlson today as announcement of hearing at Royal Courts of Justice expected imminently #FreeAssange #JournalismIsNotACrime https://t.co/9G5Wh4cG5K

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) November 2, 2023