Politics & Power: Did Biden deceive the Democratic Party, or were the party’s eyes closed to reality?

Some Democrats say it was a mistake to allow then-President Joe Biden to remain in the 2024 race for as long as they did.

A new book, Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again by CNN’s Jake Tapper and Axios’ Alex Thompson, contains some bombshells and raises some fundamental questions that the Democrats must ask: Did Biden’s team deceive them, or did they deceive themselves? Were their eyes closed to reality?

The bottom line is that the book paints a portrait of a president whose faculties, both physical and mental, were “diminished.” And Tapper and Thompson say aides and advisers hid that from the public.

Veteran Democratic strategist David Plouffe, who spearheaded the Kamala Harris campaign, is quoted in the book as saying: “We got so screwed by Biden as a party.”

He talks about having been recruited by Harris after Biden dropped out of the race following his disastrous debate performance. He described the move as a “rescue mission” and that the expedited timeline Harris was faced with was a “f------ nightmare.”

Then there’s the story that before the 2024 election, George Clooney held a record-breaking fundraiser with Biden and former President Barack Obama. The narrative in the book indicates Clooney saw Biden and had a “knot in his stomach” while watching the president take small steps and shuffle around greeting donors.

Tapper and Thompson reported that when Biden reached Clooney, he appeared not to recognize the actor, who is a longtime friend of Biden’s.

“Thank you for being here,” Biden said to Clooney, per the book. The greeting prompted Biden’s aide, who was standing next to him, to say, “You know George,” even though it was evident Biden did not recognize Clooney.

“Yeah, yeah,” Biden said, according to the book. “Thank you for being here.”

A spokesperson for the former president defended Biden’s behavior at the fundraiser, telling the reporters in a statement: “No one has been able to point out where Joe Biden had to make a presidential decision or make a presidential address where he was unable to do his job because of mental decline. In fact, the evidence points to the opposite—he was a very effective president. Evidence of aging is not evidence of mental incapacity.”

Biden recently appeared on ABC’s “The View” and said he would have won if he had stayed in the 2024 presidential race.

“I was confident I would beat (Donald) Trump. He’s a loser,” Biden said.

Democratic congressional leaders are dodging questions about whether Biden was fit for office.

For instance, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said: “We’re not looking backward. We’re looking forward at this particular moment in time.”

The Democrats long tiptoed around Biden’s frailty.

There are any number of opinion pieces out there asking valid questions.

In a USA Today opinion piece titled. “Biden didn’t deceive Democrats about his decline. It‘s time to admit the truth,” Dace Potas maintains: “Democrats need to realize Biden didn’t hoodwink them – they willingly went along with it. Acknowledging their mishandling of the former president‘s decline will be better for them in the long run.”

Natasha Korecki from NBC News asks: Can Democrats blame their problems all on Biden? And goes a step further with an eye on 2028, adding: “As the party ponders a full reckoning, some on the left say blaming their 2024 loss all on Biden is a cop-out and positions the party poorly for 2028.”

Simon Rosenberg, a longtime Democratic strategist, said the party would be well served to evaluate its mistakes but also quickly adjust to the new political landscape before it.

In an interview with NBC News, he said: “There are a lot of lessons to be learned from 2024 beyond just whether Biden should have run, and it‘s important that we continue to have a spirited conversation inside the family about what went wrong and what we can learn from it.”

But Rosenberg is also realistic and knows that the playing field is quickly changing with Trump in the White House, and the Dems need to adapt and adapt quickly because “Trump has already created a whole new dynamic, and the politics that generated 2024 are no longer with us.”

Rosenberg’s take: “We now have a new set of realities that we have to respond to and build from, and so what‘s going to be more important.”

As for the Democrats, they are desperate to talk about anything but Biden. And political analysts say they need to admit their problems aren’t going to go away with Biden.

Those analysts say they need to come to grips with their failures, line up in unity in opposition to Trump‘s domestic agenda and jump at the chance to strike on ideological disagreements on taxes, immigration, and entitlements within the GOP. That, those analysts say, gives the Democratic party plenty to oppose.

“But the real next chapter for us is going to be the 20 or 30 political leaders in our party charting a new course, having a big debate, and we’re having a big debate and charting a new course for our party over the next few years,” Rosenberg told NBC News.

Political analyst Sean Freeder joins me to break down the questions around Biden’s decline and what’s on the horizon for the Democrats on this week’s episode of Politics & Power.

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