Revelations about former President Joe Biden’s mental and physical decline in office have set off a credibility crisis in the Democratic Party that may take years to overcome, according to political strategists.
Biden, 82, faced public skepticism about his ability to carry out presidential duties after he decided to run for reelection. New reporting from several books, such as Original Sin, suggests that the former president’s allies knew he was cognitively unable to handle reelection and purposely hid that knowledge from the public.
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Biden’s surprise announcement last week of aggressive prostate cancer has reignited questions about his tenure in the White House. President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress have called for investigations into Biden’s aides and health team to determine who was running the White House and signing government documents.
Dave Carney, a Republican strategist based in New Hampshire, thinks the Democratic Party’s credibility may be shot for a generation.
“Does anybody believe what Enron says?” he asked, referring to the Fortune 500 company that succumbed to a billion-dollar accounting scandal in 2001. “This is a catastrophic ethical line that they’ve crossed. Even their biggest defenders in the media have turned on them. No one believes accounting from Enron post-collapse, and no one is going to believe what Democrats say post-collapse.”
Carney said the Democratic Party will require a massive change in leadership before anyone buys what it’s selling, and that regaining trust is very difficult in politics.
The decisions of Biden’s inner circle have rippled out to the entire Democratic Party, which is suffering from historically low approval ratings.
The fallout for Democrats couldn’t come at a worse time, as they are trying to develop a cohesive strategy to counter Trump as he upends foreign and domestic policy at a dizzying pace.
But as they go on offense, including against the GOP budget reconciliation bill as a giveaway to billionaires, Republicans counter that Democrats who defended or even downplayed Biden’s health problems can’t be trusted on any issue.
“The same people who have been telling you that President Biden’s health was just fine are now telling you all these other things about millionaires and billionaires,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) said on the House floor before final passage of the “one big, beautiful bill” legislation.
Republicans intend to keep the spotlight on Democrats with investigations into Biden’s use of an autopen to conduct presidential business and whether the former president’s physician, Dr. Kevin O’Connor, lied to the public about Biden’s health problems.
Biden last received a prostate-specific antigen blood test, which helps detect prostate cancer, in 2014, according to a spokeswoman. On top of the decision not to give Biden a cognitive test, the disclosure raised fresh questioning about why O’Connor would have allowed Biden to go more than a decade without the cancer screening.
“As we keep learning, the concerns over Biden’s health as president were very real and deeper than most know, and questions of how we were being governed are legitimate,” said Douglas Heye, a GOP strategist and a former Republican National Committee communications director. “These questions aren’t going away, and if Democrats want to move past this and try to rebuild the trust they squandered, they should want to have this resolved as soon as possible.”
Ford O’Connell, another GOP strategist, claimed the severity of Biden’s problems and other members of his administration couldn’t be ignored.
“You cannot let this go by. This can never happen again, regardless of party, because you’re talking about national security,” said O’Connell. “And add in all the other stuff that went on during this, like Lloyd Austin just disappears for three days. There’s some people that need to be legally held accountable after the dust settles.”
O’Connell was referencing the stunning revelation that Biden’s former Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin kept his prostate cancer diagnosis and hospitalization for treatment hidden from the public last year.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called Democrats’ handling of Biden’s health “truly one of the worst political scandals this country has ever seen. That the previous administration covered up the decline in the former president’s mental and physical ability, and it’s now all coming out.”
A Democratic operative, who requested anonymity to speak freely, claimed, “Democrats will restore accountability when we produce candidates voters can trust.”
Democrats are still struggling to determine how best to counter Trump and win back voters who historically voted blue but drifted to the GOP under Trump. In addition to Biden’s decline, Democrats are also in a fierce internal debate over age and elderly lawmakers blocking the next generation from leadership.
These issues, which some Democrats claim are distractions, have made it harder for the party to unite to oppose Trump ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, a boon to the GOP.
“The problems that face the Democrats are far deeper than Joe Biden’s obvious infirmities,” said GOP strategist John Feehery. The bigger problem is “they have abandoned the white working class, which used to be the heart of their party.”
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To fix it, Ohio-based GOP strategist Jai Chabria says the party will need not only its own Trump-like figure to give it new direction in 2028, but its own Joe Rogan to carry that message to the masses because the media is also wrapped up in the Biden scandal.
“The mainstream media was the Democratic Party’s biggest weapon,” he said. “That was their biggest way to get a message out, and when that has been discredited, what do they do?”