Where has the Trust Gone?
This week will be marked by the release of the new book, Original Sin by Alex Thompson and Jake Tapper about Joe Biden’s disastrous choice to run for re-election. The press excerpt has already set off a mini-firestorm with an account of Joe Biden’s incoherence backstage at the now-infamous LA fundraiser hosted by George Clooney last June.
I joked with a friend, “Who knew it would take George Clooney to save democracy?” His Op-Ed was too little too late.
I saw Joe Biden in person last February at an event in South Carolina and his condition was . . . not great. He was having trouble remembering people. He whispered. His skin was translucent. He didn’t walk so much as shuffle. And his delivery off of a teleprompter was uneven, occasionally unclear and wholly unconvincing. Afterwards, the crowd chanted “Four more years! Four more years!”
I turned to Evelyn who was there and said, “Four more years? He looks like death warmed over. Four more weeks is more like it.”
The Democrats have yet to truly reckon with just how badly Joe Biden screwed over all Americans who would prefer not to have Trump in office. He bears more responsibility for Trump’s return than any other figure, and essentially hand-delivered the White House back to Trump due to his stubbornness, delusion and pride. Even when he stepped aside in July, Kamala Harris was hurriedly anointed without a primary and then urged to run on the legacy of an unpopular incumbent. Joe could have said, “Feel free to throw me under the bus, run your own campaign.” Instead, his message was, “No daylight” between you and me.
Joe and the Dems failing to come clean will also greatly weaken all critiques of Donald Trump’s mental acuity. Everything seems like hypocrisy now.
Who is to blame?
The list starts obviously with Joe Biden himself, who described himself as a bridge to the next generation. That doesn’t exactly scream “I should be President until I die / age 86.”
Then it’s the leaders of the DNC who protected and enabled Joe by canceling primaries and shuffling the calendar to insulate Joe from competition. South Carolina was moved up to #1 in order to scare off any challengers and reward Jim Clyburn for enabling Joe’s 2020 victory.
Then it’s the top figures of the Democratic Party who could have forced a primary. This includes anyone who could have run a credible primary challenge, including Gavin Newsom, JB Pritzker, Gretchen Whitmer, Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg and others. Imagine if one of these figures had made a speech at the end of 2023 and kicked off a campaign against Joe?
Only one elected officeholder had the courage to take on the challenge: Rep. Dean Phillips. In South Carolina at the event I attended, Dean Phillips said to Gavin Newsom, “You should have fucking run!”
He was right. Dean was the only one who put the interests of the country ahead of his own. Of course, Dean’s reward was a malicious press campaign and a premature end to his political career.
I’m sure some of the other potential contenders saw what happened to Dean and said, “I’m smart for passing on challenging Joe.”
Maybe smart, but bad for the country.
Last, it’s the Dem-aligned press corps that ignored any critiques of Joe Biden’s mental faculties even after the American people had concluded that he was simply too old to run for re-election.
You can probably sense my anger and frustration in writing this. I saw this coming; I was standing next to Dean in New Hampshire and South Carolina while the Dems were trashing him, only to change their tune a mere five months later. Here’s my endorsement speech of Dean which expresses my sentiments in January 2024.
Half the country is still pissed off at being gaslit about Joe Biden’s fitness for office. The Democratic Party should own its failure in full. Joe Biden should come out and say, “I never should have run again, I made an error, and I apologize to the American people for failing them when it came time to be a statesman and leader. I should have put their interests ahead of my own. I failed and I’m sorry.” That’s the only way to retake his legacy.
As it is, Joe Biden’s failure will continue to hang over the Party and stain the careers of anyone who was part of his Administration. Who feels like a leader while covering for Joe? In my opinion, the next nominee is likely to be someone who had no attachment to the Biden team and can credibly say, “Look, I was busy getting results in Harrisburg/Lansing/Annapolis/Frankfort. I had nothing to do with this mess.”
Where has the trust gone? It went up in smoke along with Joe Biden’s legacy when the Democratic Party fell in line rather than raise their hands and say, “Hey, are we sure that our 81-year old historically unpopular incumbent is up for this?”
Careerism and conformity won the day when courage was called for. The path back is unclear. We will all pay the price for years to come.
Sorry this isn’t better news! To help build a new political party, check out Forward here; we just picked up some great new people. For my interview of entrepreneur Neil Parikh who is using AI to make people mentally healthier, click here. Building is the answer.
Andrew, I couldn't agree with you more about Biden and his poor choices as he was failing physically and mentally. I voted for you in NH five years ago because you seemed to see the future better than other candidates. (I still have my autographed YANG hat and think about our conversation about Linus Rastonis) My feeling about your guaranteed income has only grown more positive as I learn more about AI and see the DOGE cuts going on in the Federal government. While I am disgusted with how the Trump administration and the Musk hatchet job has handled the "downsizing" of the various agencies. Also the blind complicity of the GOP Congress. I can see that it is preparing us for what will probably happen to many businesses in the next decade as AI begins to more and more replace functions done currently by employees. When there is no place for those employees, made redundant by AI, to go, some sort of income system will be inevitable even though the Right will fight is tooth and nail. The logical thing (in my current thinking anyway) is for the profits of AI to be taxed heavily and funneled to potentially millions of unemployed workers of all skill levels.
Referring to your Biden article, I was bitterly disappointed in Joe and those around him after the 2022 midterms which were a great success for the Democrats in general and Joe in particular. He had gotten the country back on track and it was a perfect time for him to say...okay, next generation, you carry it on. But as we know, his ego got in the way and now we have Trump again. The Dems have a lot of great talented leadership but they were all weakened for 2028 by not primarying Biden in 2024. I like Whitmer, Beshear, Shapiro and Buttigieg. I used to think Newsome would be good, but he would have been better in 2024.
My bigger immediate concern is the 2026 midterms. Trump doesn't want to lose either Congressional majority and will do most anything the retain it. He staged an assassination attempt to get elected, I feel he isn't above doing something similar to maintain that power. While speculating on what he might do is not a time well spent, I wouldn't put it past him to declare some sort of state of emergency to get the midterms canceled. He did say last year that his evangelicals wouldn't have to vote again...I have a tendency to take him at his word after seeing the havoc he has reign down this January 20. The Democrats in Congress seem anaemic at being able to slow his agenda, so anything is possible.
Andrew,
Back in January of this year I wrote my thoughts on what happened in the November 2024 election and what I thought and still think needs to happen. Unfortunately I DON'T think the Democratic leadership has figured this out.
****
January 2025.
My hope
I appreciate very much the work that President Biden did during his 50 year career in government and as President. I really don’t know what went on behind the scenes during the 2024 campaign but I think that there were two primary tracks were being followed. One was that President Biden certainly wanted to have another term as president and the other was his key staff that were withholding information or not presenting information strongly enough when it became obvious that Biden did not have enough support to defeat Trump.
As a result, the storyline continued (at least on the surface) that Biden was on a path to win re-election. But that was not really true and did not come to life until the disastrous debate. From that day on things were in panic mode and a full fledged fire drill began and continued to election day in November.
I am sure there will continue to be much discussion about what happened and lots of finger pointing about who was to blame — which is not one person but a long list of leadership in the Biden campaign and the Democratic Party.
In the aftermath of the election and the painful future that is directly in front of us, I wonder how long it will be, if ever, that the Democratic leadership will come together with those outside of the Democratic Party and form a coalition that will be strong enough to clean up the mess of Trump 2.0. Then also build a new team that can quickly gain the confidence of the voters (outside of the MAGA/Trump 2.0 crowd).