AN IMPORTANT PART OF RECOVERY is owning up to mistakes and taking full responsibility for the harm they caused. And as the Democratic party tries to earn back the trust of voters, its leaders are publicly grappling with one of their biggest missteps from 2024: how they handled Joe Biden.
Nearly five months after the election, the ex-president’s legacy lingers over the party like the stench of rotting food—a reminder that while a good meal was once enjoyed, they were too late in clearing the table.
The Bulwark
It really is a shame. His legacy might have been quite different had he stepped aside like he said he was going to do.
Party officials have grown more comfortable admitting that Biden’s decision to run again was a mistake. They feel at ease saying that his stubbornness cost Kamala Harris a chance to ramp up a better campaign. Voters, some of whom voted for Joe Biden in 2020 under the belief that he would not seek re-election, now regularly say they felt misled when he ran and gaslighted when party leaders and White House officials said Biden was capable of serving another four years, despite his visible frailty and declining faculties.
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Biden recently signed with the talent agency CAA and has plans for a book, which could give him a platform to share his own point of view on that 2024 decision.
That one's going to be ghost-written, one way or another. Is Biden even still alive now? Haven't heard nor seen anything.
Although a small group of loyal aides have stuck with him to set up his post-presidential office—they’re currently working out of a small office in downtown D.C.—the ex-president has morphed into something of a lightning rod even for those who worked with him. Even those who occupied the upper echelons of White House and administration staff have copped to genuine anger and despair over his decision not to step back sooner.
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A CNN survey released on Sunday found that their favorability rating among all Americans stands at just 29 percent, a record low since the network started polling in 1992. An NBC News poll also released on Sunday found that just 27 percent of registered voters have a positive view of the party, also an all-time low since they started polling in 1990.
Jeezus. I didn't realize it was THAT low.
“Democrats need to acknowledge mistakes not just from this cycle but from decades of allowing jobs to go overseas and factory towns be de-industrialized,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) told The Bulwark. “No one associated with these colossal mess-ups should be part of leading this party’s future.”
Another open question is how much good comes from looking backwards. Much of the polling indicates that Democratic voter dissatisfaction is driven not by anger towards Biden but by a desire to see the party push back more aggressively against Trump.
Can't we do both?
“The sad truth is, there’s not a single remaining member of Congress—not a single Democrat, not a single one, and probably not a single one that will be on that debate stage in 2028—who had the courage to point out the truth and risk their career and lead Democrats to the Holy Land,” Phillips said. “Instead, it’ll be filled with people who chose to be quiet and preserve their futures and subjugate their principles.”
Unless AOC wants to run. Or Pete Buttigieg.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who played an important part in forcing Biden to step down, was asked if he knew about “Biden’s declining faculties” before the debate. “No. . . . I didn’t realize, because my dealings with him were just fine,” Schumer responded.
I sense a contradiction there.
The ex-president’s conduct throughout the 2024 campaign is the subject of a handful of books slated to be released this spring. An excerpt published last week from one of those books—FIGHT: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House, by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes—detailed how Biden personally demanded Kamala Harris remain loyal to him and not criticize his presidency, setting off a fresh round of anger even among those who worked for the president.
“American democracy is supposedly on the line, and yet that’s what he focused on,” another former White House official fumed when I asked for their thoughts on the excerpt.
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Schumer is still feeling the heat from his handling of the government funding bill.
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Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Tuesday criticized Schumer’s leadership, telling reporters, “I myself don’t give away anything for nothing” (a very Pelosi-like diss). And at a town hall on Tuesday night, Rep. Glenn Ivey (D-Md.) became the first member of Congress to call on Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to step down from leadership. Of course, it will take a lot more than that to get Schumer to give up his post. But it’s clear that the anger isn’t going to mellow over anytime soon.
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