We’ve been around the block many times on this question of why Joe Biden is unpopular, whether he’s a weak candidate, whether some other Democrat should replace him, etc. My general take has been that we should be clear with ourselves that it is basically an academic point because Biden will be the nominee. Recently, one of the numbers analysts I follow on Twitter, Lakshya Jain, pointed me to the actual poll data showing that none of the apparently attractive national Democratic possibilities do any better than Biden. Indeed, he seems to do a bit better, if not by a huge amount.

I wanted to flag your attention to two articles on Hamas and the Israel-Hamas War generally.

On the fate of the hostages, the Times of Israel reports that senior Hamas official Ghazi Hamad tells Al Jazeera that his group is not interested in releasing any more hostages, even for a ceasefire lasting multiple weeks. I take this as more confirmation of the point we discussed yesterday, which is that the remaining hostages, or at least a substantial number of them, are the sole remaining strategic asset Hamas has. Hamas’ leadership rightly see itself as in a war to the death with Israel. So they’re not going to give those hostages up.

Over the last three months many Democrats have gotten accustomed to seeing absolutely abysmal presidential poll numbers and reacting in one of two ways. Either they slip into despair or they wall off the information on the reasoning that we’re almost a year out from the election and the numbers have limited meaning so far in advance. There was a period in the middle months of the year when Biden was a bit ahead of Trump or the two were roughly tied and then starting in the fall Trump appeared to move meaningfully, though still only marginally, ahead. But something odd happened this week. It illustrated a few points about the ways in which polls operate, how they’re interpreted and what meaning we can draw from them.

A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Kate and Josh discuss a major ruling from the Colorado Supreme Court, the myriad of Trump-related cases headed for the Supreme Court, and some actually non-horrible polls for Joe Biden.

You can listen to the new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast here.

Even if many things are bleak, we still get to make fun of the comical dweeb Dean Phillips, the soon-to-be-former representative from the 3rd District of Minnesota. Philips at first claimed he was considering running for president to get someone else with a better shot to get into the race to challenge Joe Biden. It was, he said, not about issues or even about Biden. The party just needed a more youthful nominee and he wanted someone else to jump into the race. That didn’t happen. And somewhere along the way to getting in himself Phillips dropped the “God, it pains me to have to do this” routine for something more like “I’m gonna take this senile old coot down!” Having failed to get someone else to hop in the race Phillips decided his moment had indeed arrived. He got into the race and rapidly moved to challenge Biden from the right. He even hopped on the Hunter Biden-bashing bandwagon.

Let me briefly address this Colorado disqualification issue. Does it apply and should it apply to ex-President Donald Trump, disqualifying him from serving again as President?

Before delving into the constitutional text, let’s discuss how we should think about this issue, because there’s a lot going on here besides the plain text of the 14th Amendment. Criticisms that I hear are that barring Trump from the ballot is simply undemocratic. Trump has many supporters and they should be allowed to vote for him. At least in the abstract, good point. Another is that attempting to disqualify Trump and barring him from the ballot may actually help him, allowing him to play the victim and, perversely, to wear the mantle of democratic legitimacy.

The Colorado Supreme Court just ruled that the Disqualification Clause of the Constitution renders Donald Trump ineligible for the presidency. It has stayed its ruling until Jan. 4, 2024, to allow appeals to proceed.

Following up on what I wrote earlier today about future hostage releases, I think we’re started to see some of what I described. Yesterday, Hamas released a video of three elderly male Israeli hostages. Just a short time ago Palestinian Islamic Jihad released a video of two other hostages, one 79, another 47. PIJ is a separate group. It’s been known since the beginning that a smaller subset of the hostages are in their hands. It’s unknown the extent the two groups are coordinating their strategy in terms of the hostages or how much influence or control Hamas has over PIJ’s decisions about the hostages it’s holding.

So far these videos have basically been the hostages demanding their own release, pretty obviously coerced. In the one just released by PIJ the elderly man appears to have his hands handcuffed or tied behind the chair he’s sitting it. As yet they don’t seem to contain any threats. But we can likely expect more of this. When you’re on the ropes you use what you have. And what they have is hostages.

In yesterday’s Backchannel I wrote about the three Israeli hostages shot and killed by members of the IDF in Gaza and some more general observations about the IDF and the situation in Gaza. I’d now like to dig on in the fate of the remaining hostages.

Put simply, I’m pessimistic about any more deals to release hostages currently being held by Hamas. It’s very unlikely they will all be released as part of any deal. I base this on the totality of information I’ve learned since October 7th.

Here’s why.

Today Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones turns 80.

For years it’s been impossible to venture onto social media without seeing memes about Richards’ death-cheating immortality: the often gaunt hollowed visage, the legendary drug use, urban legends about recurrent full blood transfusions. Richards’ legendary junkiedom has been decades longer in the myth-making than the reality. As best as the various histories and memoirs inform us, Richards spent about a decade addicted to heroin, from around the age of 25 to roughly 35. There were recurrent clean-ups for tours, relapses, or just decisions to start shooting heroin again. He eventually kicked the habit in stages after a notorious drug bust in Toronto in 1977, which could have sent him to prison for years. In other words, that supposedly central thing about the man actually ended going on half a century ago. Of course, there are drugs and drugs. Richards continued to drink, smoke grass, snort cocaine for years while seemingly weening himself of the vices over time. He even quit smoking at some point during the COVID pandemic.