Half a year on from their humiliating election defeat and the Democratic Party is still searching for a scapegoat. But, to be fair, there’s plenty of blame to go around.
Whether it’s frittering millions away on celebrity-packed events few cared about, snootily dismissing the concerns of your base on issues like Israel/Palestine and universal healthcare, or simply assuming Americans will vote for you because you’re not Donald Trump, huge mistakes were made.
But, arguably, the biggest unforced error was made by Joe Biden and his team. The first half of 2024 saw multiple videos of a clearly confused Biden being led through public events. In response to the many people pointing out he didn’t look well, Biden’s team insisted the videos were “cheapfakes”, had been misleadingly edited, and that the 81-year-old had never been mentally sharper.
That insistence evaporated on contact with reality the moment the first presidential debate began, when it immediately became apparent that something was very wrong with Biden. Now, David Plouffe, who masterminded Obama’s 2008 election campaign and advised the 2024 Harris team, has been quoted in Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s new tell-all, Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again, which doesn’t hold back.
“It’s all Biden”
— Axios (@axios) May 13, 2025
EXCLUSIVE: Joe Biden's physical deterioration was so severe that advisers privately discussed the possibility he'd need to use a wheelchair if he won re-election, @jaketapper and @AlexThomp write in their new book. https://t.co/Vsgrjoz2JW
Plouffe bluntly states that Biden “totally ****ed us” by not dropping out sooner, leaving Kamala Harris too little time to mount a successful campaign, describing the 107 days that followed as a “****ing nightmare”. The book goes on to speak to multiple other Dem officials who don’t mince words.
One “prominent Democratic strategist” described Biden’s unwillingness to face reality as “an abomination”, arguing that “he stole an election from the Democratic party; he stole it from the American people.” Another “senior aide” admits they covered up the reality of the president’s health: “We attempted to shield him from his own staff so many people didn’t realize the extent of the decline beginning in 2023”.
Perhaps this is too obvious to point out, but maybe the most powerful nuclear-armed world superpower shouldn’t be led by an octogenarian who, as The Guardian puts it after reading the book, was “increasingly prone to lose his train of thought and struggle to remember the names of top aides. His speeches can be incoherent and difficult to hear.”
Then again, an inability to face reality and an iron grip on power by increasingly decrepit elderly politicians is a hallmark of the current Democratic Party. Even so, it’s shocking that Biden was allowed to get as far as he did as the candidate for 2024. We’ll never know whether Kamala could have won even with an extra six months of prep time, but it’s safe to say that Biden’s death grip on the White House paved the way for Donald Trump to waltz back into power.
