Crypto News: Democrats pull the fire alarm

Last night, to understate the case, wasn't great for President Joe Biden. Not great at all. As Bloomberg Businessweek political writer Joshua Green tells us, the conversation is now whether he'll stay on the ticket for November. Plus: These Japanese minitrucks have a cult following abroad. If this email was forwarded to you, click here to sign up.

Barack Obama's first campaign manager, David Plouffe, had a term for Democrats who worried they were going to lose the election: "bedwetters." Well, it's time to pass around the diapers.

Joe Biden seemed so incoherent, halting and confused in Thursday night's presidential debate—so visibly, alarmingly aged—that it immediately changed the trajectory of the race.

For Washington reporters like me, debates have a certain informal rhythm and structure. The minute things kick off, you're subsumed into a rolling string of texts and chats with strategists, lobbyists, politicians and other close sources, as everyone tries to gauge everyone else's real-time reaction to what they're seeing and suss out what the major themes of the evening are going to be.

Here's the first text in my phone: "holy s---."

President Biden during Thursday's debate at CNN studios in Atlanta. Photographer: Anadolu/Anadolu

That set the tone of the rising panic among Democrats, left-leaners and Never Trump Republicans as the debate proceeded. Before Biden shuffled off the stage, the backchannel conversation had already turned to who could replace him on the ticket. Clinton? Obama? Gore?

By Friday morning, "Newsom" and "Hillary" were both trending on X. That's the conversation that's going to dominate national politics in the coming days and weeks. Not inflation. Not Trump's felonies.

Biden's performance was so bad that even former members of his administration didn't try to spin it as positive. Prominent Democrats like David Axelrod, James Carville and Claire McCaskill were downright withering in their assessments, openly contemplating the possibility of Biden stepping down. "We are confronting a crisis," McCaskill, a former Democratic senator from Missouri, said on MSNBC.

The crisis Democrats are now confronting, however, isn't just Biden's cognitive limitations. It's the practical and mechanical problem of whether he can be persuaded to step aside. Biden faced no serious challengers and easily secured the delegates necessary to win the nomination. Those delegates are selected based on their loyalty to him. It's hard to imagine any scenario in which the nomination is pried away from him against his wishes. (And then there's the financial reality: If Vice President Kamala Harris were to be the nominee, she would get the $212 million in the campaign's war chest. Any other candidate would be starting from scratch.)

Biden would therefore have to be convinced that it's best for him to step aside. There's no longer a smoky backroom of party bosses calling the shots. Donors don't have that kind of power, either. Even if they did, they might lack the nerve. The party and campaign have already spent almost $350 million to get Biden elected.

That leaves Biden's inner circle of longtime loyalists—the same crew that's spent the past six months swatting down anyone who expressed worries about Biden's age. And, of course, his family.

When I circled back with my text chains this morning, the bleary-eyed, day-after conventional wisdom had gelled into a grim resignation that perhaps the only person who can steer Biden to the sidelines is his wife, Jill.

Now everyone will wait anxiously for the first wave of polls to see if voters share the insiders' assessment that Biden's hopes for a second term are in free fall.

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A kei-truck's flatbed size is similar to that of a Ford F-150 with a 6.5-foot box. Photographer: Jesse Burke for Bloomberg Businessweek

On a cloudy Sunday afternoon in April, about 50 people gathered on Brian Mulcahy's blueberry farm in quiet Holyoke, Massachusetts. Mostly strangers, they were united over one shared passion: aging Japanese minitrucks.

None of the 20 vehicles parked nearby—almost comically tiny, with worn paint and dainty wheels—looked like they'd excite America's typically size-obsessed auto buyers. But these used minitrucks, exported across the Pacific, have been building a cult following over the past decade, precisely because they're what big, hulking, US-made trucks aren't: compact, fuel-efficient and cheap.

"It's exactly what I need," says Mulcahy, who bought his 1991 Mitsubishi Mini Cab for $6,500 in February. He can steer the narrow truck between rows of blueberry bushes while carrying his farming tools in the back. The Toyota Tacomas he'd been buying for 15 years couldn't do that, he says, and they guzzled twice as much gas as his truck, which can go at least 35 miles on a gallon. Mulcahy also likes that his Mini Cab is "funky and weird, which draws attention to the farm."

Minicars—or kei-cars (kei means "light" in Japanese)—and ultra-tiny trucks and vans have become an unlikely hit outside their home market.

Sarah Hilton, Ignacio Gonzalez and Rachel Phua write about their charms and the challenges of importation: Japan's Tiny Kei-Trucks Have a Cult Following in the US, and Some States Are Pushing Back

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