Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) wouldn’t tell the New York Times whether he’d back Joe Biden for President in 2024 — or consider a third-party run of his own.

“Earlier this month, when Senator Bernie Sanders said he would not challenge President Biden in 2024, Mr. Biden was so relieved he invited his former rival to dinner at the White House the next night,” the New York Times reports.

“Mr. Biden has been eager for signs of loyalty — and they have been few and far between. Facing intensifying skepticism about his capacity to run for re-election when he will be nearly 82, the president and his top aides have been stung by the questions about his plans, irritated at what they see as a lack of respect from their party and the press, and determined to tamp down suggestions that he’s effectively a lame duck a year and a half into his administration.”

“Mr. Biden isn’t just intending to run, his aides argue, but he’s also laying the groundwork by building resources at the Democratic National Committee, restocking his operation in battleground states and looking to use his influence to shape the nomination process in his favor.”

The Economist: “If Mr Trump runs again, it seems Mr Biden wants to. He rightly fears a second Trump term would be calamitous; yet the fact that he thinks he is the likeliest impediment to that points to another Democratic problem.”

“If Mr Biden steps aside, the vice-president, Kamala Harris, is expected to be the Democratic nominee. And many fear she would lose to Mr Trump or one of his imitators, because of another combination of dire fundamentals and poor political skills. If America was not ready for a woman president in 2016, it is probably no readier for a black woman now. And Ms Harris, a Californian progressive unused to competitive elections, was exposed during her brief primary tilt in 2019 as an awkward campaigner with few fixed views. Mr Biden shone by comparison.”

“The question, then, is can Democrats bypass them both?”

“With Virginia’s biennial budget signed, and the state’s congressional primaries in the rearview mirror, Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) is ready to head out on the campaign trail to help out fellow Republicans,” Fox News reports.

Jeff Greenfield: “It is the fundamental belief — or tropism — of Trump that he is incapable of losing an election honestly. The loss itself is proof of fraud, and even a potential loss is grounds for rejecting the results. In one of the first debates of 2016, he was the only Republican candidate who would not pledge to back the party’s ultimate nominee. When he lost the Iowa caucuses to Ted Cruz, he tweeted: ‘Based on the fraud committed by Senator Ted Cruz during the Iowa Caucus, either a new election should take place or Cruz results nullified.’ He claimed he lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton in 2016 because of the ‘millions’ of aliens who voted illegally.”

“Given this core character trait, what do you suppose will happen if Trump faces a serious competitor for the nomination in 2024? Is he likely to accept the vote count that shows him losing a primary or caucus? Is it likely he will forego the temptation to challenge every convention rule that poses a threat to him? (If you want to see what a genuinely contested GOP convention looks like, check out the Taft-Roosevelt fight in 1912, or the Eisenhower-Taft confrontation of 1952.)”

“Most important, a Trump who is denied the nomination — which, by his account, must have been the product of horrible, disgusting cheating the likes of which nobody has ever seen — is a Trump with the inclination and the resources to run an independent campaign for president. And he’ll have enough true believers to doom whoever the GOP nominee is.”

Politico: “Newsom has stressed that he isn’t challenging President Joe Biden — either on his stewardship of their party or as a candidate in two years. He’s reminded people that Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris separately trekked across the country to stump for him in his recall election.”

“But taken together, the moves have been widely interpreted as a relatively young executive using the specter of a future presidential bid to shine a bright spotlight on himself. And they’ve been enough to elicit early brushbacks from allies of Biden and Harris.”

Jonathan Chait: “One of the points I made in my feature story on DeSantis in March is that he is the beneficiary of a concerted effort by Republican elites to promote his candidacy. The coordination behind DeSantis is reminiscent of how the party coalesced behind George W. Bush in 1999. What had begun as a wide-open race with multiple contestants winnowed very quickly as the word got out that Bush was the pick.”

“Something very much like that is occurring with DeSantis. DeSantis is hoovering up cash from the party’s donor class, including the support of at least 42 billionaires. The most telling fact about the New Hampshire poll is that while DeSantis leads Trump by just two points overall, he leads among Fox News watchers by 14 points and among conservative radio listeners by 16 points. Republicans who consume conservative media are getting the message. The voters who are not yet tuned in to conservative media may still name Trump in polls, but they are likely to follow.”

“Crucially, the support for DeSantis spans the current internal divide within the party between anti-anti-Trump conservatives — who disdain Trump as a liability and wish he was gone but support him against the Democrats — and enthusiastically pro-Trump conservatives.”

A new University of New Hampshire poll finds Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) leading Donald Trump (R) in a Republican presidential primary, 39% to 37%.

Support for DeSantis has more than doubled since October.

DeSantis runs better against Joe Biden than does Trump, a further sign of Trump’s weakening support.

Arizona Speaker Rusty Bowers (R), who testified so forcefully against efforts by Donald Trump to overturn the 2020 presidential election before the January 6 Committee, said he would nonetheless vote for Trump again if he were the Republican nominee in 2024, the AP reports.

Said Bowers: “If he is the nominee, if he was up against Biden, I’d vote for him again. Simply because what he did the first time, before Covid, was so good for the county. In my view it was great.”

“Michigan has the racial diversity, union membership and spread of Democrats across the state that could give it an edge as the Democratic National Committee looks to award coveted early slots on the 2024 presidential nomination calendar,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“The jockeying heats up starting Wednesday as the DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee hears pitches from 16 states and Puerto Rico over the course of three days in Washington. The states include New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada, all favored to keep their early spots in the process.”

“Gavin Newsom keeps picking exactly the kinds of fights that presidential candidates like to pick,” the New York Times reports.

“And though Newsom has declared that he has ‘subzero interest’ in running for president — and aides insist that he is deadly earnest about that — he appears to be not only positioning himself as a point man for blue states but also laying the groundwork for a future White House run.”

Said David Axelrod: “If the president were not to run, it’s hard to imagine that Newsom would not be sorely tempted to enter the race. … Newsom is young and politically muscular, which may be just what the market will be seeking post-Biden.”

Billionaire Peter Thiel “has told people he is unsure whether he will support Trump in 2024,” the Washington Post reports.

Tara Palmeri: “Normally, a sitting president chooses to announce their decision to run for re-election sometime after the midterms. And this is, by all appearances, the plan for Biden, too. White House aides are carrying on preparations for his big announcement, which would typically come during sometime between November and January. Staffers have been told to arrange for Biden’s 2024 presidential campaign, while his inner circle works out details like when and where they will officially announce it.”

“And yet this very same official acknowledged to me that this could all be ‘busy work.’ Indeed, Biden’s political future appears more tenuous than ever before.”

Elon Musk declined to tell Bloomberg whether he’d back former President Donald Trump in 2024.

Said Musk: “I think I’m undecided at this point about that election.”

Musk tweeted last month that he “gave money to and voted for Hillary and then voted for Biden. However, given unprovoked attacks by leading Democrats against me and a very cold shoulder to Tesla and SpaceX, I intend to vote Republican in November.”

TMZ: Elon Musk’s daughter seeks name change to sever ties with father.

New York Times: “To some Democrats in Congress, he has become something of a hero for resisting Donald Trump’s pressure campaign to overturn the 2020 election at a time when American democracy seemed to teeter on the brink. To Mr. Trump and his political base, Mr. Pence is a weakling who gave away the presidency. And to a swath of anti-Trump voters in both parties, he is merely someone who finally did the right thing by standing up to his former boss — years too late, after willingly defending or ignoring some of Mr. Trump’s earlier excesses.”

“The whipsaw of images creates an uncertain foundation for a potential presidential campaign, for which Mr. Pence has been laying the groundwork. Yet the former vice president is continuing with his travels around the country in advance of the 2024 primaries, as he navigates his fraught positioning.”