open to an alternative in 204 with 14% saying they d support kennedy for the democratic nomination while a new harris poll finds that 63% of voters think the president would not be able to finish a second term if he was reelected and that vice president kamala harris would wind up taking over at some point. let s bring in wall street journal columnists dan henninger and kim strassel. so, dan, what do you think of joe biden s decision to run for a second term? i think that if in terms of the good of the country, it s a big mistake. for sure. in terms of joe biden s apparently boundless ambitions, if he thinks donald trump is going to be the opposition, he believes he can beat trump. paul: you think that s the main motivation for biden at this stage, beat trump? well, no. i think the main motivation is he likes to be president [laughter] paul: okay. air force one, all the rest of it. [laughter] his entire career was dedicated to this spot, and it s tough to give it up
chairman of the council of economic advisers at the white house and a distinguished visiting fellow at the hoover institution. kevin, welcome. thanks for coming in. so do you think this strategy by the republicans to use the debt ceiling despite the potential risks of a default to get concessions on spending is a good one? is that a good strategy? if. yeah, i think it is a good strategy. and you might remember, paul, that it was about, gosh, almost a decade ago that you ran an op-ed that abby mccluskey and i wrote where we went through the history of debt limit debates, and we pound they have this thing called a dirty debt limit increase and then a clean one is the debt limit only, and we found that the majority of debt limit increases that happened were dirty, and that was even true when the democrats controlled all three branches of government. and there have been a lot of policies that are pretty good including spending cuts and the cigarette tax, for example, was passed in a debt
paul: a high stakes showdown over the debt ceiling heating heating up this week with speaker kevin healthcare carmy mccarthy unveiling a plan. calling on joe biden to negotiate with the president demanding that republicans take the threat of default off the table. president biden and senator schumer have no right to play politics with the debt. they need to sit down, negotiate and address this crisis. i made clear to speaker mccar think about how we should proceed to settle our differences. take default off the table, and let s have a real, serious, detailed conversation about how to grow the economy, lower costs and reduce the deficit. paul: let s bring in kevin hassett, he s the former