The news media’s favorite story to cover is how the news media covers a story. This ingrained preference is perfectly fine with the wider media ecosystem whose favorite thing to cover about the news media is how they cover the news media covering the news media. The fancy scientific term for such things is symbiotic — denoting a mutually beneficial relationship between different people or groups. The harsher term would be incestuous — excessively or improperly intimate or exclusive.
The modern term is content. And content, in the year of our Lord 2025, is the king of all things media.
For weeks now, the socio-political interwebs, news media, and social media have been padding out all their non-Donald Trump political content with a rehashing of former President Joe Biden’s fall from political grace. Specifically, a massive multiplayer role-playing game of “what did you know, and when did you know it” around Biden’s diminished capacity and advancing age. While everyone saw what happened during THAT 2024 presidential debate compared to the previous 40+ years of public tape on Joe Biden, the speculation and accusations of a coverup after the on-camera debacle went from internet whispers to full throated roars. Biden soon thereafter stepped aside from the race. President Trump subsequently won the election, with various opinions on the role Biden played in that result.
The recent flare-up of the debate centers around the book Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson. The criticism of the book’s authors was almost immediate. Tapper especially, as one of the moderators of THAT debate, has taken fire from all sides. Who is he, the criticism goes, to ask “what did you know, and when did you know it” when we, the public, should be asking you, Jake Tapper, “what did you know, and when did you know it?” Talking head montages of folks defending then-President Biden go viral, along with receipts from folks who were shouted down for raising the issue of Biden’s then-record setting age for a president in the first place. Including Tapper himself from his position on CNN. The increase in furor necessitated, at least to the same team accused of covering for him, Joe Biden to do some counter narrative media. Notably, these appearances were to be his first real outings since the election and inauguration. Including one on The View that went particularly poorly for the former president and reinforced all the questions such a press tour was designed to answer.
The interwebs are taking all of this with measured response and mature deliberation free from political priors and continuities of clicks… No, of course they aren’t. Content is king, and measured opinions will not be usurping the crown anytime soon. The vast fields of facts that lay ready for harvest but lack for workers are being bypassed in favor of riding the painted horses of the carousel of conspiracy theories. That keeps the news media story going. That keeps the books selling. That keeps the talking heads talking. That keeps the viral video and algorithm-assuaged postings posting. From the Sunday morning shows to social media posts, plenty of tinder remained for the bonfire of Biden’s vanity in holding on to power when he clearly shouldn’t have.
And then on Sunday afternoon the official office of the former president released this statement:
Taking the statement on its face, this is horrible news. Cancer does not care who you are. The only initial, human response to such a statement is hoping for the former president’s recovery and thoughts & prayers for him and his family. That is how most folks will react to various degrees. Taken in the context of recent events, the likelihood Biden’s condition has been known for a while and the release of the information was done just now for more than just public knowledge is a fair thing to be skeptical of. If this announcement comes off as “ok, folks, he’s sick and old and he’s done with public politics now” it is the Biden team’s own fault. Joe Biden the man deserves empathy. Joe Biden the brand cannot be trusted.
Meanwhile, in the realm subjugated to King Content, the conspiracy theories will really get cranked up. “What did you know, and when did you know it” will now include everyone with a Twitter account becoming specialized oncologists and experts on the urinary symptoms of a man they only care about insofar as he can drive views and clicks. Joe Biden the man might have cancer, but Joe Biden the driver of narratives has plenty of work still to do.
The underlying issues to all this hot mess — the fitness of the president, the trust of the American people in their government, and the news media that is supposed to report on such things — is vitally important. Especially with former President Biden’s successor to the White House eclipsing his record for oldest serving president ever. Serious adults would keep receipts on this episode of President Biden’s fitness, seeing as President Donald Trump — like Biden — has decades of video on how he talks and acts and is clearly not the same as the man who came down the golden escalator. Folks that think time and tides are going to pass Trumpism by are beating against an undefeated foe in time.
President Biden and his team deserve intense scrutiny and criticism for any and all efforts to conceal Joe Biden the man’s decline for the purposes of extending Joe Biden the presidency. Many folks from politics, punditry, media, and the politically ate-up masses aided and abetted that effort. They deserve criticism as well, especially those profiting and using the whole sad episode for content now. President Trump’s laughably sanitized fitness reports listing him at 224 pounds while being assisted by the most dedicated media machine of the modern era does not inspire confidence that any issues with 47’s health will be any more transparent than 46’s was. Donald Trump the man, if God forbid something healthwise befalls him, deserves empathy. Donald Trump the brand absolutely cannot be trusted.
Is there an element of the Joe Biden team waving the white flag publicly with the disclosure of the former president’s cancer, signaling the end of his public-facing career coming off unsuccessful forays into media? Probably. Joe Biden the man needs to set all other things aside and deal with his health while spending time with his family. The evidence we have indicates he should probably have done so much sooner than this. But politics is a hell of a drug.
The wider application of weeks of Joe Biden rehash is how much of the news cycle depends on voluntary participation. If Joe Biden is going to be criticized for staying in the game past when he shouldn’t have, with plenty of validity to the accusation, perhaps now is a good time to review the far lower stakes of feeding the media content machines with stories that really mattered the first time, but probably don’t the ninth time. Or the tenth version. Or the eleventh remix with twelve talking heads on the panel discussion. Or at least, after the first few times and the facts are known or suspected, you don’t need entire books written about them and press tours promoting them.
Content might be king of our self-imposed media realm, but when matters of life and death like cancer pierce through the narrative news cycle, it is a good time to press pause. None of us are getting out of this alive, all of our days are numbered, everyone is going to be past tense sometime in the all-too-soon future. Maybe we can adjust our political and media intake accordingly. Maybe that will adjust our politics somewhat for the better. And then maybe, just maybe, we stop putting ourselves and our country in this kind of position in the first place.
Remember how he tripped up in 2022 and said that he had cancer and then the news had to trip over itself explaining that he merely made a mistake?
Maybe it was a for-realsies Kinsley Gaffe.
I have multiple family members with this. You can (and SHOULD) take a blood test every year at his age which tells you if you have this cancer and how bad it is.
The PSA test measure the level of prostate-specific antigen (PSA) in the blood. So basically you should know you have cancer when you have just a few cells, and you should know how aggressive it is by the speed of the increase of your PSA level.
Biden most certainly should have known he’s had cancer for years, maybe even decades. Long before he’s hit this point he should have had his prostrate removed.
A routine PSA test isn’t recommended past age 70 (since at that point it doesn’t save life-years statistically) — who knows what testing Biden has had up to this point or why they discovered it now…
This brings to mind my grandfather Donaldson, who was dx with prostate cancer at the age of 76 and his doctor informed him that “Well, Mr. Donaldson your PSA level and at your age, we don’t usually recommend do anything to aggressive based on your expected lifespan” to which grandad responded, “just how long do you plan on letting me live?” He took 32 rounds of radiation, and as he jokes the only issue he ever had the was the effects of the radiation more than the cancer. He beat it and died at 89 of unrelated illness.
I bring that up also because grandad was the same age as Ronald Reagan with a week, greatly admired him, and refused to vote for him on the grounds of “men our age have no business being president” regardless of all other politics. Feels relevant in the full context of today.
The current conspiracy theory is that prostate cancer takes more than two years to move into bones and so, therefore, the plan was to have Biden win re-election and then die, giving us our first Black Female President.
But Trump messed all of that up by insisting on a debate.
You just can’t help yourself, can you?
Is this one of those things where we need to show respect to Biden the man by never talking about what the last two years in the White House were like?
With the benefit of hindsight, the people who pointed out Biden had serious mental issues were correct. Which means shouting them down and gaslighting them was the wrong move.
A full primary would have resulted in much stronger candidate than Harris. The media certainly beclowned themselves, first by pretending Biden had no problems and second by pretending the Harris was strong.
“With the benefit of hindsight”
How did the conspiracy theorists somehow acquire their promethean foresight?
It’s not a “conspiracy” if you’re open about it and the reasoning is obvious.
Biden was very old when he was running for President the first time. Ergo the people who insisted he pick a Black Female VP though this would result in a Black Female President.
Having said that, the people in the White House shielding the President were probably motivated more by their own jobs and loyalty to the President than Team Blue identity politics.
The Conspiracy Theorists are engaged in spin and assuming super-competence rather than incompetence.
As Yogi Berra once said, some people if they don’t already know you can’t explain it to them.
Yeah, I hate making my arguments explicit too.
I assume the people keeping mum about Biden’s various health problems were mostly interested in keeping their jobs and/or denying reality.
The people forcing Biden to have a Black Female VP were “hoping” she’d be next, but that was open and obvious enough that I wouldn’t call it a conspiracy.
I’m surprised “a routine PSA test isn’t recommended past age 70” because my family’s experience has been it’s a cheap, easy, great indicator and super aggressive cancers can be caught super early. If your score increases by 5x in a short amount of time, 5x a very small number is still a small number.
Well, this is where “Biden said he had cancer back in 2022” is interesting.
At the very least, it’s an indicator that Biden knew that he had cancer back in 2022.
Like President Biden, my father was diagnosed with stage 3 prostate cancer last year at 83. His PSA had been near normal the year before and the recommendation from his DR was and remains watchful waiting. It hasn’t gotten worse nor metastasized.
Point being this could well be a recent development with no connection to his prior fitness to serve. Frankly given the opaqueness of the current president’s medical history, I’d say we are blessed to know way more about President Biden.
Using this announcement as cover for all manner of political conspiracies isn’t just bad form though – it cheapens the diagnosis and what he and Dr. Biden are no doubt struggling through. We as a nation used to be better then that.
Part of the problem, it’s argued, is that there already was a conspiracy to cover up Biden’s mental decline.
Is wondering whether there was also a conspiracy to cover up his physical decline beyond the pale?
Are we not allowed to wonder if Biden was actually running things?
Are we not allowed to wonder what Jaybird gets out of derailing conversations with baseless useless conspiracies that do no one any good?
Jake Tapper’s Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again gets released tomorrow.
I’m not sure that arguing that this stuff is baseless is the right play.
And, if I’m right about that, the “HOW DARE YOU” position is definitely not the right play.
Are we not allowed to wonder if Biden was actually running things?
We’re in “end of Reagan’s 2nd term” territory. The President’s core staff knows there is a serious problem and is “shielding” him. He’s in charge and running things but he’s also a lot less functional than he used to be so his minions pretty much do their own thing.
Thanks to the current situation, I’m curious as to whether more people than just Joe Biden knew that Biden had cancer back in 2022.
I guess we have to read the book.
That stuff might have to be in the sequel. “Duplicate Sin: President Biden’s Cancer, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again”
The WH admitted he had skin cancer in 2022. Which all the video surfacing today points to. Jeez.
What was the quotation that Biden gave? Did it specify “skin cancer” or was the clarification given later by a spokesperson?
That matters why? I mean I get that I’m probably the only one here who trusts my former White House colleagues, but I do.
That’s the nub… you’re in a boat that is seeing fellow travelers exit rapidly.
It’s absolutely possible that this comes as a complete surprise.
It’s absolutely possible that the Stage 4 diagnosis is a complete surprise.
It’s absolutely possible that he was diagnosed and per current guidelines did nothing; but the diagnosis was kept private.
It’s absolutely possible that the diagnosis, his age, and life expectancy didn’t add-up to 4 more years, and that was kept private.
Depending on which absolutely possible scenario is accurate would determine whether people in the decision making business ought to be in the decision making business in the future.
I mean I get that I’m probably the only one here who trusts my former White House colleagues, but I do.
We may be using two different kinds of “trust” here.
There’s this definition: “I believe that the Biden Team is looking out for the best interest of my country, the world in general, and me and my family. What they say in any given moment is in service to this larger mission and I am on board with it.”
There’s this definition: “I believe that the Biden spokespeople make statements that conform, more or less, with the state of affairs as it exists.”
So when I say “I don’t trust them”, I am saying “I do not believe that the prepositions spilling from the lips of the spokespeople matches up with the state of affairs in the world” and you hear that and you sputter “YOU DON’T TRUST THEM?!?” as if I were accusing them of being in some secret collusion with the Illuminati and willing to betray America, the world, and, most importantly, you and your family.
And even now, you say “I trust my former colleagues”, you’re not saying “I believe that the prepositions that they’re saying are independently verifiable” but “I believe that they’re working for a vision of the world, a vision which I share and things that they may have to say in order to help achieve this vision are things that I am willing to accept at face value (even if it changes again in five minutes).”
And that’s fine.
But I am one of those aspy fellows who sees that the prepositions spilling from the mouths of spokespeople as not having a relationship with the world as it exists and takes it into account when they say new things… specifically that the truth value of their statements are secondary to what the statements are trying to accomplish.
I actually believe both those things.
Well, Tapper’s book comes out tomorrow.
You’ll have to pick between “Tapper is telling the truth” and “Biden’s staff was telling the truth”.
“Fake News” might be the best play, if you want to keep running with your former compatriots in the White House.
I mean, *I* don’t particularly trust Tapper so I can see where you’d be coming from.
No, we already know Biden’s staff wasn’t telling the truth.
When the Special Council said Biden was having memory/mental issues, he was correct. Ergo they and the media were wrong when they claimed it was a political hit job and Biden was fine.
Whether or not Tapper is making stuff up is a different issue.
Given what has been said above, I’m not sure that “we” already know that, Dark
If Tapper says “A (named or unnamed) told me X, B (named or unnamed) told me Y, and C (named or unnamed) told me Z,” I assume that is, within reasonable margins of error, close to the truth of what Tapper was told by the people he chose to talk to and who chose to talk to him. Whether X,Y, or Z are themselves true, or support whatever story Tapper is telling, is a different matter, as his who he chose to talk to and who chose to talk to him, and whether, because of the limits of his sources, he missed P,Q,R,S, and T.
The problem with “there’s not a whole lot of reason to trust Tapper on this” is that, while true, it doesn’t do a whole lot for the whole “there’s not a whole lot of reason to trust the White House Spokespeople on this” issue.
This isn’t binary, and it isn’t really a matter of “trusting” Tapper. As I said, he will probably be approximately truthful in reporting what answers, if any, he got from the people he asked. Whether it all hangs together in the end and shows what Tapper thinks it shows is not a matter of trust.
For what it’s worth, I believe that Tapper’s book is an attempt for journalismists to claw back some of the credibility they’ve lost by acting as stenographers over the last few years.
So even if he is accurately repeating what he is being told, it’s in service to a motive that seems to be some variant of “we want to be able to be credible when we act as stenographers next time”.
So even if he’s acting as a stenographer for people who are telling the truth (this time), he’s not doing it in a way that will make me believe his statements accurately reflect reality next time.
Most high-end journalists have been glorified stenographers for decades, not “the last few years.” A long time ago, I suggested in complete seriousness that the White House press room be staffed not by the senior, bigfoot correspondents, but the youngsters who haven’t yet learned how to, say, cover a fire for the metro desk.
Ben Rhodes seems to have thought that they already got a good start on that.
Imagine what might have been possible with even more of those journalismists around.
Which has precedent going back at least to Functional President Edith Wilson.
You may or may not think that Biden was a competent President. It may well be the case that aides, close associates, were actually doing the Presidenting or that Biden was giving only the broadest sorts of direction because of mental decline. Or you might think he had good days and bad days, and was usually better in the mornings than the afternoons, like a lot of people his age. (Like a lot of people the incumbent President’s age, for that matter.) Or you might think hey, he’s fine, he just sometimes stutters and that’s nothing new at all. Maybe that awful debate performance was just his stutter getting the best of him under stress. Or it might be a combo plate of these things. It was hardly a secret from anyone that Biden Was Old.
But it’s demonstrably not the case that the Democratic Party ignored the situation, at least after the debate. Nancy Pelosi leading a meeting with Biden to tell him, “You need to step aside” is the opposite of the Democratic Establishment ignoring the situation. If you were disappointed there wasn’t a do-over primary, that’s a different question than were Democrats ignoring the situation, covering up for it, or otherwise trying to fool the public.
Now, was the news media ignoring, apologizing, or covering up what was going on? That’s a different question than the Democratic Establishment. But if we do care about the media’s role in covering up Biden’s decline, then oughtn’t we similarly care about how the media reports erratic behavior and statements from the incumbent President? Trump may not be going through the same kind of decline that Biden did, and perhaps he was starting off from a place that wasn’t actually particularly healthy to begin with.
But if we’re going to have hand-wringing and accountability about not explaining to people earlier, more honestly, and more forcefully that Biden Is Getting Too Old For This, then we need to have more, more honest, and more forceful examination of the question of Trump Is Getting Too Erratic For This.
And, I hasten to add, we ought to be MORE concerned with whether the President currently in office is really up for the job than we are with whether the immediate past President was up for the job. If Biden isn’t up to Presidenting today, that doesn’t matter so much because Biden isn’t President today.
For instance, President Trump’s reaction to this very news about his predecessor’s announcement of the prostate cancer diagnosis:
“The autopen is becoming a very big deal, because it seems like maybe that was the president, whoever operated the autopen. But when they say that that was not good, they also – you know, you have to look, and you have to say the test was not so good either.”
WTF does this even mean? The right thing to say is, “Of course my thoughts and prayers go out to Joe and his family.” If you must, you say, “Of course we’ve had our political differences. But regardless, I offer him and my family my best wishes.” And if you can’t summon up even the minimal level of humanity needed to pretend to have sympathy, you can say, “You know, this is a good reminder to all men middle-aged and older, get your PSA screened. And maybe we should look at whether we stop doing that screening too soon in life, that seems like something we should be asking our Surgeon General and maybe Secretary Kennedy.” (Except, gods, no, don’t ask Secretary Kennedy, he’s not even a medical doctor, and for that matter don’t ask the Surgeon General-designate, either, she’s a quack.)
But what Trump said was not responsive to the point raised at all. Biden’s mental ability to President is different from whether he has prostate cancer and if it was detected during his Presidency and if so what was done about it and why and who made that call.
Trump vomiting up word salad like that seems to not raise alarm bells because he articualtes the words in his usual style and delivers them with a tone of confidence even as the intellectual thread behind them meanders into a vast empty wasteland. And that shouldn’t be the case.
You may not have seen it, given that it was on his Truth Social account, but there Trump wrote:
Many thanks to the staffer who ghostwrote that for him.
If Biden’s presidency has taught us anything, it’s that it’s very important to have the right people write tweets for you.
Everybody thinks that it’s something as simple as hiring a Megan Coyne, but next thing you know, you’re resigning on Twitter.
It is useless to debate whether Trump will ever say the correct thing (he won’t) and it is even more useless to debate anyone who thinks Trump would say the right-thing.
I know as a fellow lawyer, I am supposed to believe in the powers of rhetoric and argument to convince everyone all the time but it is clear lots of humans don’t operate this way.
“This is why it’s important to make sweeping generalizations about people who don’t agree with you on everything.”
Saul, I despair every time I dig in to academic and psychological examinations of how people really make decisions, of how people experience and express bias.
I despair because it sure looks like all of these wonderful powers of persuasion we lawyers supposedly possess are as useless as paper airplanes thrown at a tank, when put up against the human unconscious.
True story. I once defended a college in a suit by an unsuccessful candidate for a tenure-track job. He was a hispanic male and lost to a white female. He was a decidedly mediocre candidate and the person chosen was demonstrably superior, which we argued at length and with much evidence to the jury, which came out our way.
In the hallway after the verdict, one juror said to me that the plaintiff shouldn’t have been hired because of his thick Spanish accent. (Not a point we had made, or even hinted at.) I looked around to make sure no one else had heard this.
Here is his actual response: “It’s a very very sad situation. I feel very badly about it”.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Iaw-4tQJISs
Now, was the news media ignoring, apologizing, or covering up what was going on? That’s a different question than the Democratic Establishment.
My assumption is the Democratic Establishment had a lot more access to Biden than the media and thus had a front row seat.
then we need to have more, more honest, and more forceful examination of the question of Trump Is Getting Too Erratic For This.
We’re focused on the Dem establishment because them dropping the ball cost them the election and it’s a great time for soul searching.
Trump has a massive list of obvious and open problems too long for me to list. IMHO he’s unfit to be President.
And he was still the stronger candidate than both Biden and Harris. Amazingly, the Team Blue Establishment knew this and went with them anyway.
There really should be two discussions, one on Biden, and another on why Harris should never have been VP.
It’s one thing to say “Harris was the wrong choice,” but once you say that, it’s incumbent upon the offerer of that opinion to say what better choice could have been made. We can’t say, “I pick Johnny Electable!” We have to pick an actual person. Who is going to be an actual politician, with an actual record, and actual weaknesses to go along with their strengths.
Harris was the incumbent Vice President, the person the party had already rallied around as being ready to step in if anything happened. Rather than admit that no, she had actually been a bad choice, it was an easy play to say “She’s good to go, and has been all along.” Now, I’m going to concede that her primary campaign in ’20 and indeed her stumping as the running mate in ’20 were pretty weak, but I genuinely thought she brought a better product to the podium in ’24. Not good enough, as it turned out, and it took her until a few weeks after the convention to hit her stride at all.
Harris and Trump had one debate and I think she did one of the all time great political mindfucks of American history in it. But like you, I’m predisposed to dislike Trump and see his flaws, which I think she drew out of him a way that felt devastating at the time. Other people must have had a different reaction than I.
There were several other names I recall being discussed with sobriety: Newsom, Whitmer, Booker, Warren, Beshear, Klobuchar, and Shapiro. I do not recall mention of Buttigieg, Blinken, Yellen, or Austin and I cannot even begin to imagine anyone else in the Cabinet having been a viable choice. So who among these would have been better, and from there, would they have been better enough to have beaten Trump?
If we conclude that there was no one who was going to beat Trump, then the importance of this debate is diminished considerably. Now, I’m not ready to concede that there was no one who could have beaten Trump. But I still think Harris could have beaten Trump had different political choices been made along the way. As in ’16 and ’20, the difference in outcome came down to pretty small margins in the swing states. Some of the bad choices that led to the bad outcome were Harris’ (where was she going to step out of his shadow and announce her own, different platform?). Some of them were other peoples’ (why use the closing argument to try to court moderate Republicans?).
This, however, is different than saying Shapiro or Newsom or Klobuchar or whoever would have done better.
Here you go: “An Open Primary”.
Last year, I argued that, post-debate, Biden was going to lose. That was what was going to happen. Biden loses, Trump wins, President Trump.
So here are your options:
President Trump *OR* swap Biden out for What’s-in-the-Box.
“We swapped Biden out!”
“We did!”
“Therefore we did what you said!”
“That’s true.”
“Therefore you can’t say that Harris was a bad option!”
“Au contraire, mon frère.”
Back in the heady days of July 2024, Mark Halperin said the following:
I, personally, think that Halperin was being fed information from the Pelosi/Obama camp and they had the gameplan and gave it to a trusted stenographer.
And then Biden screwed everything up by getting all pissy about being stabbed in the back and Breyer’ed and chose to endorse the ever-living it-shay out of Harris.
“What better choice could have been made?”
“The one on the floor of the convention.”
“But Harris might have won that one too!”
“It would have been better for her to have done so.”
I thought “concepts of a plan” was a Trump thing.
Apparently, the Pelosi/Obama wing has demonstrated how poor of a concept such a thing is in practice.
Which is why I roll my eyes at all the “the party should have done X” talk. That’s not how parties work in this country. They’re very big, they’re very decentralized and they don’t have that kind of control NOR do that have any centralized controllers. Arguably Obama blew most of his shot on influencing matters when he coaxed Joe into not running in 2016 in favor of HRC (note: HRC was pretty much inevitable in 2016 due to previous events in 2012 and 2008). In theory Obama could have exercised more influence but he would have had to be overt which means he’d have had to cease to be Obama since Obama has, from jump, been inveterately scornful of and averse to overt politicking.
-Biden chose to run in 2020 and there was no one who could have forced him not to do so nor barred him from doing so once he did. In the glaring light of five years of hindsight we know this was a bad choice for the Dems but, again, these were choices being made by individual actors.
-In 2020 the party eventually bit the bullet and coalesced behind Biden via a bunch of endorsements and via Amy and Pete both being team players and standing down. I would submit that, even viewed with hindsight, this was the correct choice. Biden had sopped up enough of the central lane that no other centrist was going to be able to consolidate support. Bernie had demonstrated, glaringly (and I sympathize that leftists hate to admit this), that the silent majority of new socialist voters who were just waiting for their candidate to appear didn’t exist. And Biden won where I don’t see any reason to think Bernie would have.
-In 2020 Biden chose Harris as veep. This was both a product of the left identarian nonsense that the whole left struggles with coupled with some very venal desire by Biden and his crew to have a veep who they felt would present no threat for the party to mount a campaign behind to replace him. There was nothing the party could have done to prevent this nor did it have any central organ to do such a thing nor, if it existed, would such an organ have not been captured by the identarianism that made being down on Harriss anathema.
-In 2024 Biden got muscled out and this was as consolidated a party action as one could realistically expect. The various actors with influence urged him to drop out and even then, it took over a month AND Biden catching Covid before he finally gave in and bowed out. Yes, he endorsed Harris and she consolidated support. I don’t find the idea of some kind of mini-primary brawl convincing. It seems to me all we’d have seen is a bloodied Harris losing by more than the smidge she lost to Trump by and giving away even more house seats. The idea someone else could have unseated her strikes me as entirely fantastical.
And, despite some element of whatabouting that this point has, it bears noting that this was the operation of a normal massive functioning party. The GOP, let us not forget in contrast, literally got invaded, had its brains scooped out and was rewired entirely by an outside entity. The old poli-sci theory of parties is that parties exist to, in order of importance: A- determine what platform of policies and positions matter to them, B-select candidates who adhere to that platform and C-win elections. The Dems have succeeded on A and B but have had a one cycle failure on C. The GOP has lost A and B almost entirely but has lucked into some C- but C is somewhat useless if you don’t nail down A and B.
So now in the bleak winter of Trump the only green shoots I can see on the left is the fact that the board is now, finally, clear. The next candidate is not in any way predetermined. The next ideological positions will be hashed out the old-fashioned way. We haven’t really been in that position since 2008.
What’s wacky is that I think that Bernie would have won in 2016, I also think that he would have lost in 2020… but I also think that most of the Democratic field would have lost in 2020.
Biden was one of the few people who could have won. Yes, even given (give your laundry list here).
Now we see that we might have been better off had Trump been elected in 2020 leaving a hollow Pence in 2024 to be crucified by the electoral college but woulda coulda shoulda.
We can now wonder who goes up against Vance.
Shapiro/Pritzker! From the river to the buffet!
Buttigeig/Beshear! Smart, Safe, and Sterile!
Harris/Walz! ENOUGH RUNWAY!
Harris is the current frontrunner in the way-too-early 2028 poll:
https://www.racetothewh.com/president/2028/dem
Meaningless at this point. It’s basically just a poll of “which of these names do you recognize?”
It’s fun to go back to posts and comment threads from early 2019 when no one wanted Biden but he was still the frontrunner due to name recognition. You might want to review a comment you made at the time. 🙂
If Harris were to decide to run, i bet she’d still be the frontrunner in March 2027.
Not entirely related but this article from December 2019 was a fun trip down memory lane as well.
I KNEW IT
Heh, I was prescient about Biden being an undesirable option but I’ll admit I ended up being wrong about his odds of getting the nod. Still, that stipulated, Biden in 2019 =/= Harris in 2025. Specifically Harris has a loss as a candidate in the general election for President. Biden had no such history in 2019. I’d be very surprised if Harris even tries to run let alone if she got much traction.
It would be very surprising to me if she even ran.
Eh, the thing about the field you’re looking at is it’s the field that existed BECAUSE Biden was running. In a 2020 where Biden didn’t run at all the entire field would be different- there were a lot of centrist voters who were locked up by Bidens’ presence even when he was not exactly catching fire pre-South Carolina. I mean, arguably so many moderates could have jumped in that they split up the lane but I think that’s unlikely- they’d have run out of money and winnowed pretty fast I suspect.
As for the future? It is wide open. The one thing I’m -very- confident in is that it’s not going to be Harris. She had her shot runway or no.
Biden was assumed to have been too old, too uninteresting, and too irrelevant to be president back in the heady days of 2019.
Remember our contest where everybody made the pitch for their own favorite candidates? The essay itself was great but the case for Biden’s was the most boring by far.
We’d have seen Warren/Buttigeig or something. Klobuchar/Booker. Sew up the East Coast/Midwest in haste, repent at leisure.
I do but the thing is that even then in the heady days of 2019 candidate Biden was present even in the dimmest hours of his campaign. He was locking up a lot of centrist electoral support (money and polling) and discouraging a lot of other centrist candidates. A 2019 where Biden didn’t run wouldn’t have been the 2019 candidate list minus Biden; it’d be an entirely different list and there’d have been a lot more centrist oomph kicking around to be grabbed.
Biden’s son died of brain cancer in May of 2015. That probably played a strong role in him no overthrowing HRC.
Yes, along with Obama discouraging him from running and his, quite accurate, real-politic sense that HRC had mostly logisticed up the nomination in advance. As I’ve analysed at length before; stopping HRC’s candidacy in 2016 would have been incredibly difficult even for a person with hindsight of 2016. She began laying the groundwork for it in 2008 and 2012- it was an intrademocratic juggernaut by 2016.