Democrats Aren't Punishing Anyone For Their 'Original Sin'
Earlier this month, an adviser to Democratic donors texted me to ask if I had a copy of 'Original Sin,' the new book from CNN's Jake Tapper and Axios' Alex Thompson chronicling former President Joe Biden's 'decline, its cover-up and his disastrous choice to run again,' in the words of the book's subtitle.
I told him I didn't have one yet.
'I want to know if there's anyone else we should be mad at,' the adviser, who requested anonymity to preserve relationships, texted back.
Even before the arrival of 'Original Sin,' most leading Democrats had landed on a quartet of Biden advisers as clear villains in the tale of Biden's physical, mental and political decline: first lady Jill Biden; Anthony Bernal, one of her top aides who seemingly managed to accumulate power through loyalty, gossip and fashion advice; strategist Mike Donilon; and lobbyist-turned-adviser Steve Ricchetti.
Biden and those four, the Democratic Party's internal narrative goes, created a White House environment where bad news was snuffed out before it could reach the principal's ears, enabling an autopilot decision to run an aging and unpopular president for reelection with no backup plan if things went awry.
The result? A revitalized Donald Trump threatening America with the very authoritarianism Biden's initial bid for the presidency was built around stopping, and a Democratic Party left listless and aimless.
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All of the above advisers are so closely tied to Biden, whose unpopularity has already rendered him nearly persona non grata when it comes to the future of the Democratic Party, that there is little question they, too, will face a form of political exile. The question now facing Democrats is simple: Who still needs to say 50 Hail Marys as penance? Did anyone else commit a mortal sin deserving of banishment?
A week after the book's release, the party seems to have made its decision: Not really. Party leaders and potential 2028 candidates are happy to say Biden should not have run again, but seem reluctant to draw any further conclusions about what it means for the party's decision-making process or who should play a role in shaping its future.
So far, the number of Democrats publicly calling out additional top officials is small. Megadonor John Morgan, not known for his bashfulness, suggested top Biden officials should be 'disqualified' from a future in the party. Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, now running for governor of California, has demanded that both former Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra and former Vice President Kamala Harris be upfront with voters about what they knew about Biden's condition. (Harris is a potential candidate for governor, and Becerra, like Villaraigosa, has already announced a bid.)
'People around the president were intentionally complicit, or told outright lies in a systematic cover-up to keep Joe Biden's mental decline from the public,' Villaraigosa told HuffPost, noting the book specifically says Biden once mixed up Becerra with another Latino member of the Cabinet. 'We've come to learn that this cover-up included two prominent California politicians. What did they know? When did they know it? Why didn't they say anything?'
Harris didn't respond to a request for comment. Becerra, in a statement, simply said he 'met with President Biden when needed to make important decisions and to execute with my team at HHS.'
'It's clear the president was getting older, but he made the mission clear: run the largest health agency in the world, expand care to millions more Americans than ever before, negotiate down the cost of prescription drugs, and pull us out of a world-wide pandemic,' Becerra said. 'And we delivered.'
Those looking for new villains in the pages of 'Original Sin' might not find what they are looking for. The book does not necessarily indict specific acts — if the actions it describes count as a cover-up, there's no shredding of confidential documents or witnesses bribed. Instead, it indicts a style of governance in which a small number of close advisers hold disproportionate sway and keep upsetting information from reaching the president's ears while they insist on a reality of a fully functioning president not matched by evidence — one that would be scandalous even if Joe Biden was winning back-to-back episodes of 'Jeopardy!'
The most glaring consequence of this, in the book, is Biden's repeated belief in polls indicating he was winning the 2024 election against now-President Trump. Over and over again, Biden attempts to reassure interlocutors by telling them polls show he (and sometimes only he) is beating Trump. This, to put it lightly, was not actually the state of polling in late 2023 and early-to-mid-2024.
One example: On July 3, 2024, Democratic governors from around the country flew into Washington to meet with Biden in the aftermath of his debate disaster. During the meeting, the president insisted polls showed him as the candidate best positioned to beat Trump (they didn't) and that voters cared more about saving democracy than about Biden's health (they also didn't).
Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey, on the way out of the meeting, confronted Ricchetti about the discrepancy between Biden's confidence and the polls the governors were seeing, which showed Trump gaining ground in blue states like New Mexico and Maine.
'The president's referencing polls where he's leading,' Healey told Ricchetti. 'What polls is he referencing? Because they're different from the polls that governors are seeing in our states.'
'I've been doing this for 30 years,' Ricchetti responded. 'I know polls.'
A Biden spokesperson didn't address how the White House worked during the Biden administration, instead issuing a statement reiterating the former president's fitness for office: 'There is nothing in this book that shows Joe Biden failed to do his job, as the authors have alleged, nor did they prove their allegation that there was a cover-up or conspiracy. Nowhere do they show that our national security was threatened or where the president wasn't otherwise engaged in the important matters of the presidency. In fact, Joe Biden was an effective president who led our country with empathy and skill.'
The others blamed are similarly unapologetic. In an appearance in February at Harvard, Donilon blamed the party for abandoning Biden after what he insisted was a single bad debate performance.
'It was getting written as this fact, 'Oh, Biden was mentally impaired,'' he said. 'I don't know how much time any of those people spent with him — I know how much time I spent with him. I know what I saw.'
Tapper and Thompson's prodigious reporting — they interviewed more than 200 people, most of them after the 2024 election — does name and at least attempts to shame many other Biden loyalists, particularly those who led the charge in combating journalists and others who questioned Biden's vitality.
But other high-profile figures in Biden's orbit mostly escape direct blame. Jeff Zients, Biden's second chief of staff, often seems like a background character, warranting just 31 mentions across the book's 332 pages. Other key players, like Biden's first chief of staff, Ron Klain, leave the White House after the midterms and aren't present as Biden's decline accelerates.
Anita Dunn, the White House's communications guru, may be the Biden insider with the most to theoretically lose. She played a key role in blessing and running Future Forward, the super PAC that raised $560 million to support Biden and then Harris in the 2024 election. It's unclear if Future Forward will remain the major Democratic super PAC going forward, and a broader backlash to Biden world could snuff out its hopes. Dunn is mentioned just 27 times. (For comparison's sake, Donilon warrants 80 mentions and Ricchetti 59.)
Some Democratic donors told me they are devoting additional skepticism to pitches from Biden-linked operatives, but there appears to be little desire for a party-wide reckoning. When I asked Villaraigosa, for instance, if he would no longer consider hiring former Biden operatives on his campaign, he demurred and kept the focus on higher-ranking officials.
'I only know what I read,' he said. 'The book focuses primarily on his coterie of advisers, the Cabinet and the vice president.'
Other Democratic elites consider the book little more than a distraction driven by a hype machine that invariably spins up behind a book co-written by one of CNN's highest-profile anchors, and would prefer the party push forward and focus on countering the authoritarianism Biden's decision ultimately enabled. Others acknowledge the problem but have simply moved on to worrying about podcasts. A handful still have their heads in the sand.
Does the party need to do more to repair its relationship with voters? In an interview with New York Times columnist Ezra Klein, Tapper said as much.
'I think one of the reasons the Democratic Party's numbers are still so low is that they have not reckoned with the lies that they told about this,' Tapper said. 'These are not lies about tariffs. These are not lies about economic policy or things that I don't fully understand as the average voter. These are lies about things that we all perfectly understand: aging, colds, being addled, not being your best. These are things that we all have access to.'
Very few party operatives seem to agree. Most believe these questions about Biden's fitness for office won't haunt the party for long, enabling political comebacks for those close to Biden and allowing the party as a whole to move past the recent unpleasantness.
'It's much more important for the 2028 Democratic presidential nominee to be able to answer tough questions about Joe Biden's immigration policy than for them to be able to answer tough questions about his age,' said an adviser to a prospective presidential candidate, requesting anonymity to predict the future.
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DAN GAINOR: May's 7 craziest stories
Perhaps we should stop calling the fifth month of the year May and just start calling it Maybe. Like Maybe CNN anchor Jake Tapper will be honest about how much he and his network covered up the Biden presidency. Or, Maybe things are getting better even though the press won't admit it. Tariffs and trade deals didn't end the economy, despite media rhetoric. That doesn't mean all is right with the world. It never is. But our friends on the left always say the sky is falling. Maybe they're just nuts. And that takes me into the land of crazy news. Here are seven reasons why last month May(be) crazy. 1. Irresistible: It's always a battle to see which major print outlet is the most ridiculously left-wing. The Washington Post, where democracy used to "die in darkness," has a strong claim. But the other major player is The New York Times and it's been that way pretty much my entire life. That's a long darn time. (Cut me open and count the rings.) Times publisher A.G. 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What's pathetic is how little effort he made. Like him or not, Springsteen has written some amazing lyrics. But his anti-Trump comments read like a 22-year-old's Huffington Post blog: "[T]the America I've written about, and has been a beacon of hope and liberty for 250 years, is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent and treasonous administration." Hardly up to snuff for the man who wrote, "Is a dream a lie if it don't come true? Or is it something worse?" The best part is he's selling a six-track EP with two of the tracks bashing Trump. From "Born to Run" to "Born to Resist." 3. Mask maker, mask maker…: The COVID pandemic reaction on left and right stems from foundational differences about how safe we expect to be. Safetyism is why lefties think it's good to censor speech online and off because words make them feel unsafe. Leftists worship infinite safety. Which takes me to one of my favorite former Washington Post staffers – Taylor Lorenz. That's because she is still obsessed with COVID. To hear her talk, we should all be living life like John Travolta when he played "The Boy in the Plastic Bubble." Her Bluesky feed is … special. "If you're not masking right now during an ongoing pandemic you should feel shame. In a just world you'd be socially ostracized for cavalierly killing and disabling people." she wrote. That included Lorenz, "celebrating FREE SPEECH at the PornHub awards!" while wearing a mask. And no, those aren't old comments. They're from this May. 4. CNN+ or minus?: We've all seen movies where they note the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result. CNN, come on down. The lefty cable outfit is doing the Michael Keaton thing from "Multiplicity" and making copies of copies. CNN CEO Mark Thompson announced this month that the network is going to provide a "simple and centralized way" to get all their content. Naturally, you have to pay. According to The New York Times, "CNN's new service won't look like CNN+, its failed $300 million splashy foray into streaming that was stuffed with well-known news and entertainment personalities." In other words, they don't have any money, plan to do this on the cheap and are praying like crazy somebody will rain cash. Maybe they will if the network offers a Tapper-free tier. 5. Knock, knock, who's there?: In an era of AI videos, stories like this one scream tricks for clicks. Turns out, it's probably legit. Florida residents had unwelcome visitors – door-to-door gators. According to the Lee County Sheriff's Office, deputies responded after an alligator kept knocking on a door. The men in blue (or whatever gator-wrangling deputies wear) saw the "suspicious" alligator trying to get into a home. Now, I already view my neighbors to the south with caution because they let gators roam golf courses like eager caddies. But when your future pair of boots knocks on the door and wants in, I want out. That's how Chubbs Peterson lost his hand. ("Happy Gilmore," folks.) 6. Florida Man has competition: Readers of this column know I love animal stories – from gators to baby goats. This month, we've got a raccoon with a meth pipe. Shockingly, this story comes from Ohio, not Florida. Springfield Township Police Department found Chewy the raccoon gnawing on the end of a meth pipe. As Mike Gavin from NBC New York put it, "No, the raccoon will not be charged with drug possession." Acting on the tip from Chewy, police searched the vehicle and the driver "was charged with three counts of possession of drug paraphernalia and cited for driving under suspension." Raccoons, taking a bite out of crime! 7. Size matters: Before Antifa loons started ripping down statues, leaving your mark on the world with a statue in your honor was a sign of import. From the Pietà to the Lincoln Memorial, some of the greatest works of art honor famous people looking their best. Others are iconic and stand for freedom, like the Statue of Liberty. Then there's "Grounded in the Stars," by artist Thomas J Price. It's a temporary bronze statue in Times Square of a 12-foot-tall Black woman looking kind of … plump. Now, as a man of some girth, I might have let this one fade into well-deserved obscurity, except the official Times Square website's description of Grounded in the Stars bashed the two great men who have permanent statues there: "Installed at ground level on a wide low base, the work invites engagement with the hundreds of thousands of people who traverse the plazas each day, the woman in Grounded in the Stars cuts a stark contrast to the pedestaled permanent monuments — both white, both men — which bookend Duffy Square, while embodying a quiet gravity and grandeur." "Both white, both men," like that's somehow a bad thing. The two figures are famed Army Chaplain Father Francis P. Duffy, the author of "You're a Grand Old Flag," and, none other than himself, George M. Cohan. Price was just doing his own version of tearing down statues. He failed.
