And if not President Biden, then who?

Plan B conversations are getting louder

The Biden campaign’s attempts to calm panicked Democrats and donors after the president’s disastrous debate appear to have backfired.

One Democratic lawmaker has openly called on President Biden to drop out of the race, while others have sharply criticized his campaign’s response. Polls show his approval ratings are slipping. And many party members are as nervous about sticking with him as they were last week — but also worried about the alternatives.

The last: Rep. Lloyd Doggett of Texas became the first sitting Democrat to demand that Biden step aside. And some of Biden’s allies qualified their defenses after the debate: Representative Jim Clyburn of South Carolina told The Hill on NewsNation: “I think the American people want an explanation.”

Barack Obama has said privately that Biden’s already tough fight has gotten tougher, The Washington Post reported. Democrats and foreign allies are concerned that Biden seems increasingly confused or lethargic, The Times reported.

And 75 percent of respondents in a new CNN poll said they would rather have someone else on the Democratic ticket.

Team Biden continued to try to allay concernsscheduled with the president for an interview with George Stephanopoulos of ABC NewsThe White House also weighed whether Biden would visit Wisconsin and Pennsylvania in the coming days. More importantly, it also scheduled a meeting with Democratic governors on Wednesday after they expressed frustration with the Biden camp’s response to the debate.

Biden told donors at a fundraising event on Tuesday that a recent grueling travel itinerary had caused him to “fall asleep on stage,” adding that this was “not an excuse, it’s an explanation.”

Talk about Vice President Kamala Harris as the most viable plan b grows, even if forcing Biden to step aside remains extraordinarily difficult. Other potential candidates have been mentioned, including Gov. Gavin Newsom of California and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan. (Like Harris, they have all publicly endorsed Biden.)

But Harris is the leading alternative. One reason is money: she is the only potential candidate who accept immediately the $240 million in Biden campaign funds, since she is his running mate. Anyone else would face significant challenges in taking control of that money with just months to go until the election.

In addition, the CNN poll showed that Harris performed better against Trump than her boss. Key Democratic officials, including Klyburnsaid they would support her if she were nominated. And Harris has a coterie of well-heeled supporters, including Brad Karp, the chairman of the Wall Street law firm Paul Weiss; Jon Henes, the CEO of C Street Advisory Group; and Donna Langley, the chairman of NBCUniversal.

Still, some in the donor class have doubts about Harris. Tech magnate Reid Hoffman was one of her biggest donors in the last election cycle. But Semafor reports that his top political adviser, Dmitry Mehlhorntold the backers of the super PAC American Bridge that the switch to vice president would drive away crucial undecided voters. “Kamala Harris is more threatening to those undecided voters than a dead Joe Biden or a comatose Joe Biden,” Mehlhorn said.

And lawyer John Morgan told The Times that a rush to find a Plan B “could create more infighting and do more harm than good.”

THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS

Tesla shares rise on better-than-expected vehicle deliveries. Shares of the electric carmaker rose in premarket trading on Wednesday, rising as much as 10 percent on Tuesday after the company said vehicle deliveries exceeded analysts’ forecastsBut a Times poll shows that Elon Musk’s political divide may be hurting Tesla’s sales.

The verdict in Donald Trump’s hush money case in Manhattan has been postponed. The presiding judge in the case agreed to postpone the trial from July 11 to Sept. 18 to consider how a recent Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity affects the sentencing. Separately, Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City and a Trump confidant, was suspended from New York for his role in the attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

Apple will reportedly take on an observer role on OpenAI’s board of directors. Phil Schiller, the head of the tech giant’s App Store, will to be given a non-voting position as part of the deal to bring ChatGPT to iPhones, iPads and Macs, Bloomberg reported. Microsoft, an investor in OpenAI and a former Apple rival, already has a similar position, raising potential complications.

The FDA approves Eli Lilly’s new Alzheimer’s drug. The drug company’s donanemab, one of a new class of treatments for the disease, has been shown to moderately slow the rate of cognitive decline in patients; the list price is $32,000 for a year. But shares in Lilly fell after President Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont, the company called about the high costs of his weight loss treatment, Mounjaro.

Paramount and Skydance: The Final Chapter?

The biggest Hollywood blockbuster of the summer may finally be nearing its end. Shari Redstone has reached a tentative deal to sell her controlling interest in Paramount to David Ellison’s Skydance, weeks after talks broke down at the last minute, DealBook’s Lauren Hirsch and The Times’ Ben Mullin report.

The big question now is: will the new deal hold?

A summary of the most troubled media deal in recent history: After months of talks, Paramount and Skydance, the film studio behind “Top Gun: Maverick,” reached a deal last month. Skydance would buy National Amusements, the holding company through which Redstone controls Paramount, and then merge with Paramount.

But just as a special committee of Paramount executives was set to vote on the deal, lawyers for National Amusements emailed them saying talks were ending.

Paramount prepared to go it alone. The company outlined what that might look like after the Skydance deal fell through. But investors weren’t convinced: Paramount shares have fallen more than 16 percent in the past month.

Media watchers have criticized Paramount, which owns CBS, MTV and Nickelodeon, for its relatively late start in the streaming space and missed opportunities, including the sale of flagship assets such as Showtime and BET. The company is also struggling with about $14 billion in debt.

Negotiations between Skydance and Paramount resumed shortly after the original deal fell through. Here’s what’s being discussed this time:

• Skydancing has agreed to pay slightly more for National Amusements: $1.75 billion, down from $1.7 billion.

• The new deal gives National Amusements more protection from potential shareholder lawsuits. That was a major stumbling block in previous negotiations; non-Redstone shareholders worried that their interests could be diluted.

• Paramount is expected to secure a 45-day “go shop” period, during which it can talk to other suitors. (Those interested in buying National Amusements include Barry Diller’s IAC, Edgar Bronfman Jr. and Bain Capital, and Steve Paul, the Hollywood executive behind “Baby Geniuses.”)

It is now up to Paramount’s special committee. Last time, Redstone canceled the deal before it was voted on. This time, she’s sending the directors a deal she’s already blessed.

A look ahead to Friday’s jobs report

The S&P 500 posted its 32nd record high of the year on Tuesday. But the rally wasn’t fueled by the artificial intelligence euphoria that has been driving markets higher in recent months. Instead, it was Jay Powell who took credit for the rally.

At the European Central Bank’s annual summit in Sintra, Portugal, the Fed’s chairman said inflation appears to be coming down. But he added: “What we would like to see is more data” to reinforce that view before making a decision on when to cut rates.

The next big piece of data is coming on Friday. The June jobs report is expected to show the following: a significant decrease when adopting. Will that be enough evidence for the central bank to lower borrowing costs? for Election day?

The markets seem to think so. Futures traders on Wednesday were pricing in a 75 percent chance of a rate cut at the September meeting, while Powell himself warned on Tuesday that he would not “land on a specific date.”

Economists expect the following in the jobs report:

• They believe employers created 190,000 jobs, down from the 272,000 reported in the groundbreaking May report.

• That would mean the labor market would grow for the 42nd consecutive month, keeping the unemployment rate at 4 percent.

• Hourly wages are expected to have risen by 3.9 percent year-on-year, which is also lower than in May.

There will be a lot of attention to wage growth. There are indications that wage growth has slowed steadily this year, helping to slow inflation. That may be because workers appear more content to stay with their employers, Bank of America economists said in a research note last week.

It’s a sign that the frantic job changes that characterized the era of the “great resignation” have been replaced by a more settled period that economists call “the great vacillation.”

The downward rounds are on the rise

A moribund IPO and M&A market and high interest rates have put the brakes on sky-high valuations, as investors queue up for promising artificial intelligence startups such as OpenAI, Mistral and Anthropic.

But in this tough environment, raising money at a fixed or lower implied valuation is no longer as damaging to a startup’s reputation as it once was, and investors are rethinking the way they assess a company.

An increasing share of venture capital transactions consists of down and flat rounds. They account for about a quarter of all deals this year, compared to about 15 percent in 2019, according to data from PitchBook, a startup-mapping firm.

“The reality is that the valuation environment with 5 percent interest rates is just very different than it was in 2021,” Rich Wong, a partner at venture capital firm Accel, told DealBook. “This is just a re-evaluation of how a successful company is viewed in the market.”

“Winter is here for startups,” said Venky Ganesan, a partner at Menlo Ventures. “What matters now is finding safety and riding out the storm.”

READING SPEED

Offers

• Shares in SoftBank hits a record as shareholders cheer Japanese tech investor’s bets on artificial intelligence. (Bloomberg)

• Disney’s Bob Iger and his wife, journalist Willow Bay, are reportedly planning to Angels FCthe Los Angeles soccer team, in a deal that values ​​the club at $250 million — the highest valuation for a professional women’s franchise worldwide. (Semafor)

Artificial intelligence

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