© AP
Wow, big news broke Tuesday - President Biden's campaign is officially going to be headquartered in Wilmington, Delaware. For months nervous Democrats have wondered why Biden only had four full-time staffers devoted to his reelection effort and why the campaign wasn't yet located anywhere.
This development will do absolutely nothing, however, to stop the panic within the party that Biden is too old to run for reelection and could easily lose to former President Donald Trump. Sorry, Team Biden, these fears will not be put to rest; they are going to persist and grow.
Though the White House and the Democratic National Committee may be trying to ignore it,
there is suddenly a constant stream of stories in the media about doubts that Biden can make it across the finish line 16 months from now. Though Frank Bruni noted it's probably too late, he encouraged Democrats in a New York Times column to talk about Hunter Biden, and suggested Biden should step aside: "It might be best, for him and for continued Democratic control of the White House, if he let Democrats choose a different 2024 nominee."
And CNN's Edward-Isaac Dovere's reporting last week went there - top Democrats and donors continue to "reach out to those seen as possible replacement presidential candidates. Get ready, they urge..."
Democrats, Dovere wrote, worry about Biden's weak small-dollar fundraising - which shows diminished energy from the grassroots - as well as his light schedule, which they believe will only exacerbate the perception that he is too old to campaign or be president. A Democrat who had a senior role in Biden's 2020 campaign is quoted saying "If Trump wins next November and everyone says, 'How did that happen,' one of the questions will be: what was the Biden campaign doing in the summer of 2023?"
Comment: In the broad strokes Burns is probably right. The full extent of Prigozhin's punishment will likely take some time to fully manifest. Though it may not be exactly what Burns has in mind or expects.