Latest news with #Jentleson
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Dems are quietly forming a think tank to help them win again
At a private meeting last month, a top Democratic strategist pitched party leaders and donors: We need to break down ideological lanes and reject interest group agendas if we plan to win again. Adam Jentleson, former chief of staff to Sen. John Fetterman (D-Penn.) and top aide to former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), used the retreat to preview his new policy research and messaging hub, called Searchlight. Its goal: push the Democratic Party toward the most effective, broadly popular positions regardless of which wing of the party they come from, with an eye toward 2028, according to five people who have spoken directly to Jentleson and were granted anonymity to describe private conversations. Seth London, an adviser to major Democratic donors, is working with Jentleson on the effort. The think tank's mission, as described by these people, is an explicit rejection of purity tests Jentleson sees as holding the party hostage, the most famous of which became fodder for a highly effective ad Donald Trump used against former Vice President Kamala Harris during his campaign to recapture the presidency. Searchlight — a name inspired by the birthplace of Jentleson's former boss, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid — comes at a precarious moment for a Democratic Party looking to revive its deeply unpopular brand and eyeing a comeback in the 2026 midterms. One person directly familiar with the project, granted anonymity to describe private details, said its aim will be to create 'an institutional space where Democrats can think freely and put those ideas out into the world.' 'That doesn't exist right now because anywhere else, you're going to get those ideas sanded down from one angle or another,' the person continued, adding that it wasn't going to be driven ideologically or 'on a left-right binary scale,' but rather 'draw on the best ideas wherever they come from.' Jentleson explained the group to top Democratic donors and officials, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin and other congressional members, according to those people. The confab, dubbed 'Wildflower,' was hosted at a swanky resort of the same name in upstate New York, where it also drew several potential 2028 candidates, including former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear and Arizona Sen. Ruben Gallego. Some of Jentleson's pitch, these people said, was already laid out in a New York Times op-ed published soon after the 2024 election loss. He urged Democrats to declare 'independence from liberal and progressive interest groups that prevent Democrats from thinking clearly about how to win' and to reject the 'rigid mores and vocabulary of college-educated elites.' He urged elected officials to not be afraid of alienating powerful groups that dictated much of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary. London, too, penned a post-election strategy memo that called for 'a complete rejection of race- and group-based identity politics.' 'Voters do not break down among the perceived ideological lines that a lot of Democrats are drawn into by the interest groups,' said a retreat attendee granted anonymity to discuss a private event. 'The machinations of the party force people into boxes, and if this is a vehicle to get those new ideas out there, outside those lanes that automatically limit the breadth of voters you're able to reach, then I think a lot of people would welcome that.' But the fight over the Democratic Party's future is well underway, and Searchlight is the newest entrant into an already crowded scene of Democratic groups looking to shape the 2028 presidential primary. At least some of those who heard Jentleson's pitch were frustrated that it sounded duplicative of other efforts. Just this week, Welcome PAC, a moderate-focused group, is holding 'WelcomeFest,' a day-long event they describe as 'the largest public gathering of centrist Democrats.' Several speakers at WelcomeFest, including Slotkin and Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-Wash.), also attended Wildflower. 'They're saying, 'we need a moderate voice, because we're losing everyone and we have to come back to the center and get away from woke, identity politics,'' said one Democratic donor adviser who heard Jentleson's pitch. 'They want to become a research and communications hub for that, which is great, but we already have a bunch of entities who do that.'
Politico
4 days ago
- Business
- Politico
Dems are quietly forming a think tank to help them win again
At a private meeting last month, a top Democratic strategist pitched party leaders and donors: We need to break down ideological lanes and reject interest group agendas if we plan to win again. Adam Jentleson, former chief of staff to Sen. John Fetterman (D-Penn.) and top aide to former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), used the retreat to preview his new policy research and messaging hub, called Searchlight. Its goal: push the Democratic Party toward the most effective, broadly popular positions regardless of which wing of the party they come from, with an eye toward 2028, according to five people who have spoken directly to Jentleson and were granted anonymity to describe private conversations. Seth London, an adviser to major Democratic donors, is working with Jentleson on the effort. The think tank's mission, as described by these people, is an explicit rejection of purity tests Jentleson sees as holding the party hostage, the most famous of which became fodder for a highly effective ad Donald Trump used against former Vice President Kamala Harris during his campaign to recapture the presidency. Searchlight — a name inspired by the birthplace of Jentleson's former boss, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid — comes at a precarious moment for a Democratic Party looking to revive its deeply unpopular brand and eyeing a comeback in the 2026 midterms. One person directly familiar with the project, granted anonymity to describe private details, said its aim will be to create 'an institutional space where Democrats can think freely and put those ideas out into the world.' 'That doesn't exist right now because anywhere else, you're going to get those ideas sanded down from one angle or another,' the person continued, adding that it wasn't going to be driven ideologically or 'on a left-right binary scale,' but rather 'draw on the best ideas wherever they come from.' Jentleson explained the group to top Democratic donors and officials, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin and other congressional members, according to those people. The confab, dubbed 'Wildflower,' was hosted at a swanky resort of the same name in upstate New York, where it also drew several potential 2028 candidates, including former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear and Arizona Sen. Ruben Gallego. Some of Jentleson's pitch, these people said, was already laid out in a New York Times op-ed published soon after the 2024 election loss. He urged Democrats to declare 'independence from liberal and progressive interest groups that prevent Democrats from thinking clearly about how to win' and to reject the 'rigid mores and vocabulary of college-educated elites.' He urged elected officials to not be afraid of alienating powerful groups that dictated much of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary. London, too, penned a post-election strategy memo that called for 'a complete rejection of race- and group-based identity politics.' 'Voters do not break down among the perceived ideological lines that a lot of Democrats are drawn into by the interest groups,' said a retreat attendee granted anonymity to discuss a private event. 'The machinations of the party force people into boxes, and if this is a vehicle to get those new ideas out there, outside those lanes that automatically limit the breadth of voters you're able to reach, then I think a lot of people would welcome that.' But the fight over the Democratic Party's future is well underway, and Searchlight is the newest entrant into an already crowded scene of Democratic groups looking to shape the 2028 presidential primary. At least some of those who heard Jentleson's pitch were frustrated that it sounded duplicative of other efforts. Just this week, Welcome PAC, a moderate-focused group, is holding 'WelcomeFest,' a day-long event they describe as 'the largest public gathering of centrist Democrats.' Several speakers at WelcomeFest, including Slotkin and Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-Wash.), also attended Wildflower. 'They're saying, 'we need a moderate voice, because we're losing everyone and we have to come back to the center and get away from woke, identity politics,'' said one Democratic donor adviser who heard Jentleson's pitch. 'They want to become a research and communications hub for that, which is great, but we already have a bunch of entities who do that.'
Politico
17-05-2025
- Health
- Politico
Biden, Fetterman and Why Staffers Might Start Breaking Their Silence
This month's blockbuster New York magazine piece on Sen. John Fetterman's mental health challenges raised eyebrows for a lot of reasons. But one little-noticed aspect jumped out at Beltway veterans: Fetterman's former chief of staff Adam Jentleson had actually gone on the record with damning allegations — denied by Fetterman — that the Pennsylvania Democrat was a diminished, troubled figure who had gone off his medications. Whatever you think of Jentleson's decision to go public, it was a shocking break with the 'staffer code' that has long ruled Washington underlings' behavior. Instead of keeping mum, Jentleson shared a close-up view of his boss' erratic moods and risky behaviors, as well as contemporaneous correspondence where the chief of staff outlined his worries to Fetterman's medical team. And in a month of newsy stories about how senior aides handled President Joe Biden's health and acuity, the breach of confidence may be a sign of things to come on both ends of Pennsylvania Ave. Up to now, particularly on Capitol Hill, blabbing about the boss' health was just not done. The traditional omerta has always been especially strong when it comes to spilling the beans about lawmakers' backstage selves. The recent cognitive struggles of late Sen. Dianne Feinstein and former Rep. Kay Granger were largely kept quiet by aides. In the latter case, the silence continued despite the fact that the congresswoman was residing in an assisted-living facility. Even in the executive branch, where staffs are bigger and tongues are looser, the much more typical pattern is for the lesser-known staff to talk anonymously — and for the reporting to focus on the principals, not the aides. Call it pusillanimous, but this way of doing business is surely better for a staffer's onward career, always a key concern in Washington. No one wants to hire someone who has been quite so public in their disloyalty. 'Your whole job as a chief of staff is, you're there to protect,' said John Lawrence, who played the role in then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office. 'There's a measure of responsibility in accepting and playing that kind of a staff role that presumes that you are not going to use the intimacy of your relationship with your boss.' Could that now be changing? In the aftermath of Biden's disastrous decision to run again, it sure looks like the incentive structure for keeping mum has shifted, even if there aren't yet many examples yet of insiders following Jentleson's lead. Consider the advance reports about the buzziest political book of the season: Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson's Original Sin, which details a supposed cover-up around Biden's cognitive decline. While the book isn't out until next week, the authors say that they don't simply build a case against the former president. Instead, they promise to tell on an inner circle of aides and allies who worked to keep Biden's alleged condition away from the general public. The launch follows other scooplets on the same theme in campaign books by authors such as Chris Whipple as well as Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes, with more to come in a forthcoming book by journalists Josh Dawsey, Tyler Pager and Isaac Arnsdorf. In all of the reporting, the Biden-health passages leave readers with a resonant twist on a famous political question: What did the staff know, and when did they know it? Given Democratic fury about Donald Trump's return to the White House, it's a good bet those aides are in for a world of scorn as they get identified. A New Yorker excerpt from Tapper and Thompson's book, for instance, details longtime aide Steve Ricchetti's efforts to squelch George Clooney's first-person account of Biden's diminishment, likening Ricchetti to 'a Mob boss.' That's the sort of descriptor that doesn't usually land on staffers, no matter how badly their president screws up. When blame for a political disaster is assigned to aides who kept a secret, and those aides are set up for a public pillorying, it creates a hell of a motivation to speak out early. Little of the Biden-coverup reporting so far is a departure from the dishy-Beltway-scoop pattern of relying on anonymous sources. Many White House details are attributed to a 'senior aide,' a 'prominent Democratic strategist,' and the like. It doesn't matter. With the Biden debacle looming large, the next cadre of insiders is likely to think differently when it comes to being quiet about the boss's state of mind and body — the kind of thing Washington staffers have long taken care of, even if it's never been part of the official job description. This is, I think, great news. In our era of gerontocracy, Washington has repeatedly been flummoxed by how to handle the question of whether a public official is all there. It's an issue that seems to overwhelm the professional codes of all kinds of Beltway institutions. Take the media, for instance. Our reporting standards for scandals are built on verifiable things: A copy of the corrupt contract, evidence of the unethical quid pro quo. But when the story is mental decline, the evidence is always going to be foggier. Humans have good days and bad days; documentation is hidden behind HIPAA laws. As a result, reporters who have no problem asking whether a pol is a crook can find themselves tongue-tied when pressing an official about whether he's lost his marbles. There's a broad sense that the press corps dropped the ball on Biden, whose not-so-secret decline was captured in anecdotes bouncing around Washington for a couple years. Ultimately, we're still waiting for an accepted set of rules on how to proceed. In the same vein, maybe it's time for a new code of honor about what kind of discretion aides should show. It's reasonable to expect them to respect confidences about legislative strategy, internal policy debates, the twists and turns of negotiations. But evidence of dangerous mental health issues or actual dementia seems like a different category. Whoever kept silent about Feinstein's or Granger's incapacities engaged in loyal service to their lawmaker — and a pretty shabby dereliction of duty to the citizens of Texas, California and the United States. To be sure, there's a lot that's unique about the story of Jentleson speaking out about Fetterman. The author of a well-received book on the Senate, Jentleson has a higher profile than your ordinary staffer. And as a Democrat in disfavor with the left, Fetterman makes a less risky friendly-fire target than a party-line pol. When I reached out, Jentleson declined to comment about his thought process for going public. Unlike a lot of other former top aides, he hasn't swung to another senator or hung out a shingle on K Street, which leaves him less exposed to payback from the political class. Still, it's good that Jentleson spoke out. And I hope that one side-effect of Biden's debacle is a new sense that it's really not okay to hide the news about this kind of thing. 'A lot of people in the immediate circle cared more about him than the larger stakes,' Thompson told me this week. 'They thought they were the same thing.' If nothing else, maybe the burgeoning Democratic fury around the Biden situation will change the one calculation that may matter most for Beltway careerists: What will help me climb to the next rung on the professional ladder? Sure, no future boss wants to hire a fink. But being accused of perpetuating a disastrous staff cover-up isn't a great look, either.
Yahoo
16-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
The Era of Political Staff Covering Up For Impaired Bosses Might Be Coming to an End
This month's blockbuster New York magazine piece on Sen. John Fetterman's mental health challenges raised eyebrows for a lot of reasons. But one little-noticed aspect jumped out at Beltway veterans: Fetterman's former chief of staff Adam Jentleson had actually gone on the record with damning allegations — denied by Fetterman — that the Pennsylvania Democrat was a diminished, troubled figure who had gone off his medications. Whatever you think of Jentleson's decision to go public, it was a shocking break with the 'staffer code' that has long ruled Washington underlings' behavior. Instead of keeping mum, Jentleson shared a close-up view of his boss' erratic moods and risky behaviors, as well as contemporaneous correspondence where the chief of staff outlined his worries to Fetterman's medical team. And in a month of newsy stories about how senior aides handled President Joe Biden's health and acuity, the breach of confidence may be a sign of things to come on both ends of Pennsylvania Ave. Up to now, particularly on Capitol Hill, blabbing about the boss' health was just not done. The traditional omerta has always been especially strong when it comes to spilling the beans about lawmakers' backstage selves. The recent cognitive struggles of late Sen. Dianne Feinstein and former Rep. Kay Granger were largely kept quiet by aides. In the latter case, the silence continued despite the fact that the congresswoman was residing in an assisted-living facility. Even in the executive branch, where staffs are bigger and tongues are looser, the much more typical pattern is for the lesser-known staff to talk anonymously — and for the reporting to focus on the principals, not the aides. Call it pusillanimous, but this way of doing business is surely better for a staffer's onward career, always a key concern in Washington. No one wants to hire someone who has been quite so public in their disloyalty. 'Your whole job as a chief of staff is, you're there to protect,' said John Lawrence, who played the role in then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office. 'There's a measure of responsibility in accepting and playing that kind of a staff role that presumes that you are not going to use the intimacy of your relationship with your boss.' Could that now be changing? In the aftermath of Biden's disastrous decision to run again, it sure looks like the incentive structure for keeping mum has shifted, even if there aren't yet many examples yet of insiders following Jentleson's lead. Consider the advance reports about the buzziest political book of the season: Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson's Original Sin, which details a supposed cover-up around Biden's cognitive decline. While the book isn't out until next week, the authors say that they don't simply build a case against the former president. Instead, they promise to tell on an inner circle of aides and allies who worked to keep Biden's alleged condition away from the general public. The launch follows other scooplets on the same theme in campaign books by authors such as Chris Whipple as well as Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes, with more to come in a forthcoming book by journalists Josh Dawsey, Tyler Pager and Isaac Arnsdorf. In all of the reporting, the Biden-health passages leave readers with a resonant twist on a famous political question: What did the staff know, and when did they know it? Given Democratic fury about Donald Trump's return to the White House, it's a good bet those aides are in for a world of scorn as they get identified. A New Yorker excerpt from Tapper and Thompson's book, for instance, details longtime aide Steve Ricchetti's efforts to squelch George Clooney's first-person account of Biden's diminishment, likening Ricchetti to 'a Mob boss.' That's the sort of descriptor that doesn't usually land on staffers, no matter how badly their president screws up. When blame for a political disaster is assigned to aides who kept a secret, and those aides are set up for a public pillorying, it creates a hell of a motivation to speak out early. Little of the Biden-coverup reporting so far is a departure from the dishy-Beltway-scoop pattern of relying on anonymous sources. Many White House details are attributed to a 'senior aide,' a 'prominent Democratic strategist,' and the like. It doesn't matter. With the Biden debacle looming large, the next cadre of insiders is likely to think differently when it comes to being quiet about the boss's state of mind and body — the kind of thing Washington staffers have long taken care of, even if it's never been part of the official job description. This is, I think, great news. In our era of gerontocracy, Washington has repeatedly been flummoxed by how to handle the question of whether a public official is all there. It's an issue that seems to overwhelm the professional codes of all kinds of Beltway institutions. Take the media, for instance. Our reporting standards for scandals are built on verifiable things: A copy of the corrupt contract, evidence of the unethical quid pro quo. But when the story is mental decline, the evidence is always going to be foggier. Humans have good days and bad days; documentation is hidden behind HIPPA laws. As a result, reporters who have no problem asking whether a pol is a crook can find themselves tongue-tied when pressing an official about whether he's lost his marbles. There's a broad sense that the press corps dropped the ball on Biden, whose not-so-secret decline was captured in anecdotes bouncing around Washington for a couple years. Ultimately, we're still waiting for an accepted set of rules on how to proceed. In the same vein, maybe it's time for a new code of honor about what kind of discretion aides should show. It's reasonable to expect them to respect confidences about legislative strategy, internal policy debates, the twists and turns of negotiations. But evidence of dangerous mental health issues or actual dementia seems like a different category. Whoever kept silent about Feinstein's or Granger's incapacities engaged in loyal service to their lawmaker — and a pretty shabby dereliction of duty to the citizens of Texas, California and the United States. To be sure, there's a lot that's unique about the story of Jentleson speaking out about Fetterman. The author of a well-received book on the Senate, Jentleson has a higher profile than your ordinary staffer. And as a Democrat in disfavor with the left, Fetterman makes a less risky friendly-fire target than a party-line pol. When I reached out, Jentleson declined to comment about his thought process for going public. Unlike a lot of other former top aides, he hasn't swung to another senator or hung out a shingle on K Street, which leaves him less exposed to payback from the political class. Still, it's good that Jentleson spoke out. And I hope that one side-effect of Biden's debacle is a new sense that it's really not okay to hide the news about this kind of thing. 'A lot of people in the immediate circle cared more about him than the larger stakes,' Thompson told me this week. 'They thought they were the same thing.' If nothing else, maybe the burgeoning Democratic fury around the Biden situation will change the one calculation that may matter most for Beltway careerists: What will help me climb to the next rung on the professional ladder? Sure, no future boss wants to hire a fink. But being accused of perpetuating a disastrous staff cover-up isn't a great look, either.
Politico
16-05-2025
- Health
- Politico
The Era of Political Staff Covering Up For Impaired Bosses Might Be Coming to an End
This month's blockbuster New York magazine piece on Sen. John Fetterman's mental health challenges raised eyebrows for a lot of reasons. But one little-noticed aspect jumped out at Beltway veterans: Fetterman's former chief of staff Adam Jentleson had actually gone on the record with damning allegations — denied by Fetterman — that the Pennsylvania Democrat was a diminished, troubled figure who had gone off his medications. Whatever you think of Jentleson's decision to go public, it was a shocking break with the 'staffer code' that has long ruled Washington underlings' behavior. Instead of keeping mum, Jentleson shared a close-up view of his boss' erratic moods and risky behaviors, as well as contemporaneous correspondence where the chief of staff outlined his worries to Fetterman's medical team. And in a month of newsy stories about how senior aides handled President Joe Biden's health and acuity, the breach of confidence may be a sign of things to come on both ends of Pennsylvania Ave. Up to now, particularly on Capitol Hill, blabbing about the boss' health was just not done. The traditional omerta has always been especially strong when it comes to spilling the beans about lawmakers' backstage selves. The recent cognitive struggles of late Sen. Dianne Feinstein and former Rep. Kay Granger were largely kept quiet by aides. In the latter case, the silence continued despite the fact that the congresswoman was residing in an assisted-living facility. Even in the executive branch, where staffs are bigger and tongues are looser, the much more typical pattern is for the lesser-known staff to talk anonymously — and for the reporting to focus on the principals, not the aides. Call it pusillanimous, but this way of doing business is surely better for a staffer's onward career, always a key concern in Washington. No one wants to hire someone who has been quite so public in their disloyalty. 'Your whole job as a chief of staff is, you're there to protect,' said John Lawrence, who played the role in then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office. 'There's a measure of responsibility in accepting and playing that kind of a staff role that presumes that you are not going to use the intimacy of your relationship with your boss.' Could that now be changing? In the aftermath of Biden's disastrous decision to run again, it sure looks like the incentive structure for keeping mum has shifted, even if there aren't yet many examples yet of insiders following Jentleson's lead. Consider the advance reports about the buzziest political book of the season: Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson's Original Sin, which details a supposed cover-up around Biden's cognitive decline. While the book isn't out until next week, the authors say that they don't simply build a case against the former president. Instead, they promise to tell on an inner circle of aides and allies who worked to keep Biden's alleged condition away from the general public. The launch follows other scooplets on the same theme in campaign books by authors such as Chris Whipple as well as Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes, with more to come in a forthcoming book by journalists Josh Dawsey, Tyler Pager and Isaac Arnsdorf. In all of the reporting, the Biden-health passages leave readers with a resonant twist on a famous political question: What did the staff know, and when did they know it? Given Democratic fury about Donald Trump's return to the White House, it's a good bet those aides are in for a world of scorn as they get identified. A New Yorker excerpt from Tapper and Thompson's book, for instance, details longtime aide Steve Ricchetti's efforts to squelch George Clooney's first-person account of Biden's diminishment, likening Ricchetti to 'a Mob boss.' That's the sort of descriptor that doesn't usually land on staffers, no matter how badly their president screws up. When blame for a political disaster is assigned to aides who kept a secret, and those aides are set up for a public pillorying, it creates a hell of a motivation to speak out early. Little of the Biden-coverup reporting so far is a departure from the dishy-Beltway-scoop pattern of relying on anonymous sources. Many White House details are attributed to a 'senior aide,' a 'prominent Democratic strategist,' and the like. It doesn't matter. With the Biden debacle looming large, the next cadre of insiders is likely to think differently when it comes to being quiet about the boss's state of mind and body — the kind of thing Washington staffers have long taken care of, even if it's never been part of the official job description. This is, I think, great news. In our era of gerontocracy, Washington has repeatedly been flummoxed by how to handle the question of whether a public official is all there. It's an issue that seems to overwhelm the professional codes of all kinds of Beltway institutions. Take the media, for instance. Our reporting standards for scandals are built on verifiable things: A copy of the corrupt contract, evidence of the unethical quid pro quo. But when the story is mental decline, the evidence is always going to be foggier. Humans have good days and bad days; documentation is hidden behind HIPPA laws. As a result, reporters who have no problem asking whether a pol is a crook can find themselves tongue-tied when pressing an official about whether he's lost his marbles. There's a broad sense that the press corps dropped the ball on Biden, whose not-so-secret decline was captured in anecdotes bouncing around Washington for a couple years. Ultimately, we're still waiting for an accepted set of rules on how to proceed. In the same vein, maybe it's time for a new code of honor about what kind of discretion aides should show. It's reasonable to expect them to respect confidences about legislative strategy, internal policy debates, the twists and turns of negotiations. But evidence of dangerous mental health issues or actual dementia seems like a different category. Whoever kept silent about Feinstein's or Granger's incapacities engaged in loyal service to their lawmaker — and a pretty shabby dereliction of duty to the citizens of Texas, California and the United States. To be sure, there's a lot that's unique about the story of Jentleson speaking out about Fetterman. The author of a well-received book on the Senate, Jentleson has a higher profile than your ordinary staffer. And as a Democrat in disfavor with the left, Fetterman makes a less risky friendly-fire target than a party-line pol. When I reached out, Jentleson declined to comment about his thought process for going public. Unlike a lot of other former top aides, he hasn't swung to another senator or hung out a shingle on K Street, which leaves him less exposed to payback from the political class. Still, it's good that Jentleson spoke out. And I hope that one side-effect of Biden's debacle is a new sense that it's really not okay to hide the news about this kind of thing. 'A lot of people in the immediate circle cared more about him than the larger stakes,' Thompson told me this week. 'They thought they were the same thing.' If nothing else, maybe the burgeoning Democratic fury around the Biden situation will change the one calculation that may matter most for Beltway careerists: What will help me climb to the next rung on the professional ladder? Sure, no future boss wants to hire a fink. But being accused of perpetuating a disastrous staff cover-up isn't a great look, either.
