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.
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.
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).
I think you are spot on that the next candidate has to come from outside the DNC establishment. I currently don’t see anyone out there that doesn’t have baggage. We need an independent, rural (or at least non-blue state… sorry, Gavin) populist who can effectively cut through the culture war. These transformative figures can come out of nowhere. Obama and Trump seemingly came out of nowhere as political juggernauts. I had never heard of Obama until 2004 DNC convention… four years later he was president. Trump was a fringe political player even though a household name and everyone discounted him. With social media as it is now, I think we could get a transformative figure who could break through in three years. We just need the right platform and excellent oratory skills. I see a massive opportunity for independents/third parties right now.
Your frustration is palpable and widely shared. But focusing solely on Joe Biden's decision to run again risks oversimplifying the systemic breakdown that led to the Democrats’ defeat in 2024 and Trump’s return to power.
Yes, Biden’s age and health were real concerns. But this was not just one man’s stubbornness. It was a party-wide failure to act with foresight. Institutional inertia, fear of internal fracture, and outdated loyalty structures led to a manipulated primary calendar and a coronation masquerading as consensus. The Democrats didn’t just ignore warning signs. They engineered around them.
And when Biden finally stepped aside, Kamala Harris entered a political battlefield already set ablaze. She faced an unwinnable mix: economic instability tied to the administration she inherited, cultural attacks designed to dehumanize, and a party that demanded ideological purity in one breath and centrist compromise in the next. Her defeat was not a failure of charisma or conviction. It was the inevitable result of a system allergic to risk and addicted to control.
But the deeper crisis isn’t just broken trust. It’s corrosive apathy. We underestimated how many Americans have stopped believing their voice matters at any level of government. Even in this week’s local races, the disengagement was glaring. Apathy has become more toxic than outrage because it kills the very fuel movements need to resist. People are not just exhausted. They are alienated from power itself.
So, where has the trust gone?
It didn’t vanish with Biden’s shuffle or the DNC’s cowardice. It eroded through decades of triangulation, bipartisan betrayals, and a democracy reduced to a branding exercise. We preserved the optics of stability while hollowing out the structures that gave people a stake in the outcome.
Trump didn’t win because Biden ran. Trump won because we never built a resilient alternative. We still treat politics like a choice between personalities instead of a referendum on power. We still pretend that courage is a liability and institutional loyalty is strategy.
So yes, let's name the failures. But let’s not stop at blame. Let’s rebuild trust not through platitudes or party rebrands but through structural reform and radical accessibility. That means new parties, new pipelines, new platforms, and a politics that doesn’t confuse “moderation” with meaninglessness.
This is not just about recovering trust. It’s about reanimating participation before apathy finishes what cynicism started.
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).
I think you are spot on that the next candidate has to come from outside the DNC establishment. I currently don’t see anyone out there that doesn’t have baggage. We need an independent, rural (or at least non-blue state… sorry, Gavin) populist who can effectively cut through the culture war. These transformative figures can come out of nowhere. Obama and Trump seemingly came out of nowhere as political juggernauts. I had never heard of Obama until 2004 DNC convention… four years later he was president. Trump was a fringe political player even though a household name and everyone discounted him. With social media as it is now, I think we could get a transformative figure who could break through in three years. We just need the right platform and excellent oratory skills. I see a massive opportunity for independents/third parties right now.
Your frustration is palpable and widely shared. But focusing solely on Joe Biden's decision to run again risks oversimplifying the systemic breakdown that led to the Democrats’ defeat in 2024 and Trump’s return to power.
Yes, Biden’s age and health were real concerns. But this was not just one man’s stubbornness. It was a party-wide failure to act with foresight. Institutional inertia, fear of internal fracture, and outdated loyalty structures led to a manipulated primary calendar and a coronation masquerading as consensus. The Democrats didn’t just ignore warning signs. They engineered around them.
And when Biden finally stepped aside, Kamala Harris entered a political battlefield already set ablaze. She faced an unwinnable mix: economic instability tied to the administration she inherited, cultural attacks designed to dehumanize, and a party that demanded ideological purity in one breath and centrist compromise in the next. Her defeat was not a failure of charisma or conviction. It was the inevitable result of a system allergic to risk and addicted to control.
But the deeper crisis isn’t just broken trust. It’s corrosive apathy. We underestimated how many Americans have stopped believing their voice matters at any level of government. Even in this week’s local races, the disengagement was glaring. Apathy has become more toxic than outrage because it kills the very fuel movements need to resist. People are not just exhausted. They are alienated from power itself.
So, where has the trust gone?
It didn’t vanish with Biden’s shuffle or the DNC’s cowardice. It eroded through decades of triangulation, bipartisan betrayals, and a democracy reduced to a branding exercise. We preserved the optics of stability while hollowing out the structures that gave people a stake in the outcome.
Trump didn’t win because Biden ran. Trump won because we never built a resilient alternative. We still treat politics like a choice between personalities instead of a referendum on power. We still pretend that courage is a liability and institutional loyalty is strategy.
So yes, let's name the failures. But let’s not stop at blame. Let’s rebuild trust not through platitudes or party rebrands but through structural reform and radical accessibility. That means new parties, new pipelines, new platforms, and a politics that doesn’t confuse “moderation” with meaninglessness.
This is not just about recovering trust. It’s about reanimating participation before apathy finishes what cynicism started.
Clooney went real life Michael Clayton with it and saved 4 Senate seats