President Joe Biden just gave a solo press conference today. Before it took place, the media had a lot of time to kill, due to the presser being postponed multiple times (it finally began just before 7:30 Eastern, almost two hours after it was scheduled). The most cogent comment I heard from the pundits was someone essentially saying that it could be a "break" moment (if Biden did badly), but that it probably wouldn't be a "make" moment, since no matter how good Biden did the fears will not be completely put to rest -- we'll just be in a sort of endless cycle of every unscripted appearance by Biden becoming its own make-or-break moment on its own. That seemed about right, to me, and it still seems right after watching Biden's performance.

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President Joe Biden isn't going anywhere, he insists. He remains committed to his candidacy and is confident that he will indeed beat Donald Trump in November. And his strategy of toughing it out against all the critics calling for him to step away from the race appears to be paying off -- at least so far.

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Will President Joe Biden's re-election candidacy survive the week? That is the question on every Democrat's mind right now, as the forces line up both pro and con. Whatever happens, it pretty much has to happen soon. If Biden does somehow survive this week, then his chances of riding out the entire "Pass the torch, Joe" storm will have increased, that much seems somewhat certain. But with Congress back in session, all the elected national Democrats will be in one place again, and in both the House and Senate they are planning on holding very tense caucus meetings tomorrow.

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This week, the nation celebrated its 248th birthday. (Feel free to insert a "Biden's so old" joke here, if you wish....)

It's been a rather excruciating week, aside from enjoying the fireworks last night. The entire political media universe has been completely consumed with the question of whether President Joe Biden is the best candidate to take on Donald Trump, or whether he should instead gracefully step aside and allow the Democrats to nominate someone younger who might have a better chance at victory in November. We have to admit, we've never really seen anything like this (but then we are too young to remember Lyndon B. Johnson in 1968). The pressure on Biden seems to only be growing, day by day, as more and more people come to the conclusion that Democrats would be better served with a new nominee.

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Four states hold primary elections today: New York, South Carolina, Utah, and Colorado. There are interesting races in all of them -- including a major Democratic showdown in New York -- but the one that interests me the most will happen in Colorado. Because the voters in one House district will have the choice of bringing an end to Lauren Boebert's congressional career.

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Maybe it's just us, but this week seemed like a waiting game. Perhaps the midweek holiday had something to do with it, but everything in the political world right now seems to be on hold in anticipation of next Thursday's first presidential debate. The debate is going to be incredibly early in the campaign schedule, but nobody really knows what this will mean until after the dust settles. Who will benefit the most from the earliness of it all? Well, that all depends on how they do, of course.

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President Joe Biden has had to walk a tightrope on the subject of immigration during his term in office. He has supported programs that were a holdover from the administration of Donald Trump, and just recently announced a tightening of the rules on claiming asylum at the border in an effort to slow the flow of people making such claims. Neither one of these policies went over very well with the progressives in his own party, but this week Biden shifted gears and announced a policy that will benefit the lives of approximately 500,000 people. Undocumented spouses of America citizens who have lived in the country for 10 years or more will have a much easier path to citizenship under Biden's new program. Politically, this may provide a balance to Biden's more restrictive moves on immigration.

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The biggest political news of the week by far was Hunter Biden being convicted in record time on all three felony gun charges lodged against him. The jury spent only about three hours before returning these verdicts, which completely undercut the narrative Donald Trump has been spouting about how the justice system is "two-tiered" -- by which he means: "weaponized against Republicans while Democrats get a free pass." Kind of hard to make that argument when the president's own son just got convicted of felonies and is facing up to ten years in prison.

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There was significant news today on reproductive rights, from two separate directions. The Supreme Court unanimously (!) overturned a case that challenged the F.D.A.'s approval of mifepristone, one of the two most commonly used abortion pills in the country. The unanimity was possible because the high court essentially punted on the legal question and instead ruled that the plaintiffs had no legal standing to bring their case. Meanwhile, in the Senate, a bill to create a federal right to in-vitro fertilization failed, mostly on party lines. Last week a bill that would have given federal protections to contraceptives also failed. Both will be used in campaign advertising by Democrats to paint Republicans as being against both contraception rights and I.V.F.

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Two weeks from tomorrow, CNN will host the first general election presidential debate of the 2024 cycle. This is unprecedented, because it will happen so early in the campaign season. In fact, neither person on stage will officially be their party's nominee at this point, since the conventions will happen afterwards. It will be "Presumptive Republican Nominee Donald Trump" versus "Presumptive Democratic Nominee President Joe Biden." That alone sets it off from every other televised presidential debate.

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