For a crop of ambitious Democrats, the shroud of secrecy surrounding former President Joe Biden’s health has become an opportunity to break with party leadership.
In recent days, a small chorus of Democrats has been litigating the wisdom of Biden running for a second term, calling the knee-jerk defense of his political viability a mistake that broke the trust of voters.
“I admit that by 2024, the American public had made up their mind, right, that they wanted the Democratic Party to nominate somebody new, and it was absolutely a mistake for the party to not listen to those voters,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) told NBC News.
The admission is a stark break from the uniform defense of Biden before he dropped out following a disastrous debate performance. Criticism was also sparse as then-Vice President Kamala Harris attempted to resurrect his flagging campaign, taking over as the Democratic nominee weeks before Election Day.
But on the other side of the election, and as Democrats grapple with a bombshell book alleging a cover-up of Biden’s mental state, previously loyal politicians are now calling Nov. 5 an indictment.
“In light of the facts that have come out, Joe Biden should not have run for reelection, and we should have had an open primary,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), a 2024 surrogate for Biden, told Fox News.
Democrats have generally avoided the finer details of Original Sin, the book alleging Biden staffers hid a diminished Biden from the public and even members of his administration. Murphy said Biden “was in control” during their interactions, while Khanna said he, too, saw no signs of decline when they met face to face.
But they stand as the few Democrats calling November a failure of the party. Both are also believed to have presidential ambitions, with a crowded but open field expected in 2028.
A Democratic strategist downplayed the comments made by Murphy and Khanna.
“I don’t think their strategy is to break with the party. I simply think they’re telling the truth,” the operative told the Washington Examiner. “With those two examples in particular, they’ve never had a problem telling it like it is, and that’s part of their appeal.”
Another Democratic strategist, Christopher Hahn, dismissed the importance of Biden to the 2028 primary, arguing that “voters look to the future and not something that’s no longer relevant.”
“The Biden era is over,” Hahn told the Washington Examiner. “Democrats need to do a better job messaging around their core values and showing voters that they will fight for them.”
Still, Biden’s health is becoming wrapped up in a broader critique of the party as Democrats look to demonstrate they will learn from their mistakes and set a better tone for the future.
Gov. Andy Beshear (D-KY) has criticized Democrats for speaking in coded language that does not resonate with the working class. Pete Buttigieg, the former transportation secretary under Biden, has also described the Democratic brand as being in need of repair, prescribing a message that is not simply focused on opposing President Donald Trump.
On the question of Biden’s fitness, some have been willing to go further than others. Buttigieg told an audience in Iowa this month that “maybe” the former president should not have run. Others have remained steadfastly loyal.
“I realize that reporters who are covering the wide world want to go back and relitigate what happened in 2024, and examine every little thing, and there’s a book that came out that’s suggesting that there was cognitive decline,” Gov. JB Pritzker (D-IL) told a reporter last week. “Look, all I can tell you is every interaction I had with President Biden demonstrated to me a man who has more empathy than any other president that I’ve known in my lifetime.”
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI), who was a co-chair of Biden’s campaign, told CNN she was too “busy” governing and politicking to assess the president’s mental acuity.
“I was busy doing the connection and voter registration,” she said. “I didn’t see the president frequently, and I can tell you I can’t speak to that directly.”
In light of Biden’s cancer diagnosis, revealed on Sunday in a statement from his staff, the Democratic talk of his fitness has ebbed.
But Dean Phillips, the former House Democrat who challenged Biden on a platform of generational change, has embarked on a media tour of op-eds and TV appearances to claim that he was right despite his alienation from the party.
“Faith won’t be regained until members of Congress begin defending our Constitution with the same subjugation of self-interest that members of our armed forces must apply to the defense of our country,” Phillips, whose father was killed in the Vietnam War, wrote in the Wall Street Journal. “Their model made it easy for me to accept the personal and professional cost of simply telling the truth about Mr. Biden’s incapacity, fulfilling my oath to office, and honoring my father and the hundreds of thousands of Americans who have made the ultimate sacrifice to our remarkable nation.”
Phillips is also joined by a handful of progressive Democrats denouncing the party’s direction but highlighting the age of lawmakers instead. David Hogg, a Democratic National Committee vice chairman, has elevated his national profile but risked his standing in the DNC for promising to primary older incumbents in Congress.
Charlie Comfort, a Democrat from the former early-voting state of Iowa, said the critiques of Murphy and Khanna are meaningless so long after the 2024 election.
Khanna is among those Democrats who repeatedly defended Biden’s mental acuity during the presidential campaign.
“They should have been doing this in 2023,” Comfort told the Washington Examiner. “To me, it seems very convenient for them to suddenly make a break when, ultimately, they have been supportive of party leadership in the past couple of years. We needed new party leadership at the start of 2023, and then maybe just maybe we wouldn’t be horribly in the wilderness.”
Democratic strategist Peter Daou, who once advised Hillary Clinton‘s 2008 campaign before leaving the party in 2020, said that “even Democratic voters, I think up to 50% of voters, wanted somebody other than Biden.”
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“So seeing Democratic officials and, you know, consultants, strategists, and media figures suddenly coming out of the woodwork, saying, ‘Oh, it was a mistake to run Biden,’ is way too little, too late,” Daou told the Washington Examiner. “The Biden team were doing all sorts of tricks and really just like, putting pressure on state parties and local officials to prevent any challenges to him.”
On whether Democrats are capable of change, especially in a two-party system, Daou added: “I don’t think Democrats can do anything to reform themselves. … I look at all of that as rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.”