I am a liberal columnist, commentator, podcaster and sometime political activist. I have been a Democrat all my life. But I am still stunned by how dumb Democrats can be.
Like now. Fueled by tidbits leaked from Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s blockbuster new book, “Original Sin,” Democrats are rushing to distance themselves from Joe Biden, condemning him for waiting too long to decide not to run again, and blaming him for everything bad that’s happening under President Trump — an exercise that seems especially cruel and unnecessary, given Biden’s recent diagnosis with aggressive Stage Four prostate cancer.
Based on more than 200 interviews with Biden insiders, elected Democrats and political consultants, Tapper and Thompson conclude that Biden was in far worse mental decline than most people realized; that White House staffers deliberately covered up the state of his decline; that Biden betrayed the party when he failed to announce, after Democrats’ success in the 2022 midterms, that he would, as promised, not seek a second term; and that, after he finally did step aside, Democrats didn’t have enough time to mount a successful campaign against Trump.
“The original sin of Election 2024 was Biden’s decision to run for re-election,” Tapper and Thompson write, “followed by aggressive efforts to hide his cognitive diminishment.” David Plouffe, senior adviser to the Kamala Harris campaign, who described her 107-day sprint to election day as a “f—— nightmare,” blamed Biden for her loss: “And it’s all Biden…He totally f—– us.” In his review of “Original Sin” for the Washington Post, Alex Shephard called the issue of Biden’s health “not just the most important factor in the 2024 election but the sole defining reason for Trump’s victory.”
Time out here. Anybody who tells you he knows the “sole defining reason” for the success or failure of any election campaign doesn’t know what he’s talking about. And nothing else he says should be taken seriously.
I realize that most of my fellow Democrats and commentators are in a hurry to scurry down that easy, beat-up-on-Biden rabbit hole, but count me out. It’s a colossal waste of time, energy, resources and attention.
I’m not saying Tapper and Thompson are wrong. I agree that Joe Biden should not have run for reelection. I agree he should have dropped out sooner. I agree that his delay in doing so was a factor — one of many, many factors — in the outcome of the 2024 campaign. But what’s done is done. Every minute spent today talking about Joe Biden’s mental awareness in 2022 is a minute not spent talking today about Trump’s relentless efforts to gut our democratic institutions in 2025.
Plus, let’s get real, does anyone seriously believe that anybody, Republican or Democrat, cast their vote on Nov. 5, 2024, based on the state of Joe Biden’s mental awareness? He wasn’t in play at the time. Voters faced a clear choice between a former president and a sitting vice president; between a white male and a black female; between a convicted felon and a former prosecutor; between continuing with more of the same or shaking things up by giving Trump a second chance.
If there was any singular, overriding issue in 2024, it was higher prices. Although the overall economy was strong, many Americans didn’t feel good about it because all they saw were higher prices, especially at the grocery store. So 77 million of them voted, at least in part, because they believed a change in leadership would mean lower prices.
Of course, it hasn’t turned out that way. Just the opposite. Even the head of Walmart has warned that Trump’s tariffs will mean higher prices. And it is a big mistake any time Democrats spend talking about Biden’s mental capacity, instead of how the combination of Trump’s tariffs and tax cuts for the wealthy are hurting working families today.
This is not the first time we’ve had to deal with a president who showed signs of mental decline. According to most historians, Ronald Reagan was far more “out of it” in the final year of his presidency than Joe Biden ever was. But note: Republicans didn’t waste any time in self-flagellation over what might have been different if only they’d known more at the time. Instead, they focused on moving forward, building a strong party, and winning the next election.
This is one more case where Democrats could learn a lot from Republicans.
Bill Press is host of “The Bill Press Pod.” He is the author of “From the Left: A Life in the Crossfire.”
