Four Lessons From The Book of Joe

The much-ballyhooed Jake Tapper/Alex Thomson book Original Sin was released yesterday, and last night at about 11 p.m., I finished the final page. It’s pretty jarring, and not the easiest read because we know how it turned out. I’ll not excerpt any of it here because you should read it for yourself. Until you do, know that the book is convincing and contains significant and shocking new reporting. It enlightens and generally confirms other 2024 campaign books (such as Fight, by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes) that expose the truth of Joe Biden’s deterioration and the purposeful obfuscations meant to convince us it was not happening.

I know…it’s not usually good political practice to spend time like this on subjects that distract from the mission at hand. And yes, that mission is clear: slowing MAGA Authoritarianism now and defeating it in 2026. But let’s stop here and chat for a bit about the story of 2024 because, for Democrats to get back on track, I think we should learn some lessons from what we all lived through.

I realize that some of you feel Original Sin is an unjustified attack. You feel devoted to Biden because “he’s a good man who delivered good policy.” Others may be angry with Biden and his team because hiding his diminishment cost us other policies, and ultimately resulted in Donald Trump 2.0. First, those are not mutually exclusive positions, and I hold parts of both, and second, I’m going to ask you all to get out of your social media corners and be unemotional about all of this for a few minutes.

My personal position was that I proudly worked to elect Biden in 2020. I was part of an official campaign committee and believed it was very important for the country that he win. And I also felt he should be a one-term bridge president. It turns out that most voters thought the same, and I think their opinions should have counted more.

This is not just about who the president is, because in polarized times like these, top-of-the-ticket realities have massive ramifications for every single race in every state in the country. That means there is no candidate or policy untouched by this story. Jon Tester’s race was largely colored by what happened in the Biden Whitehouse and campaign. The House and Senate were most likely lost because of it. So, no soap opera emotion should be involved in assessing it. This is about democracy, good government, national security, the environment, public lands, education, and healthcare. Serious stuff! If we want swing voters to treat it all seriously, then we had better do the same. That brings me to the first lesson from Joe's story.

1. Governing is incredibly hard; the Presidency requires our finest. Maybe we should act like it. Pretending Biden was up to the task of winning in 2024 only diminished the perceived importance of the government to swing voters. It probably opened up the door to their acceptance of an authoritarian reality show clown. Before you get too upset, stop. Take a breath. It’s just not possible to read these books about the final two years of the Biden presidency and not see a man on the downhill slide. It’s not a personal attack. It eventually happens to everyone, but it can’t be defended in the presidency. Just go back and look at videos of Biden from 2008-12 and then watch a clip of the 2024 debate. The difference is shocking.

2. Voters who are not partisans absorb broad truths; anyone who tells them otherwise is not “trustworthy." When DC Democrats told people that Biden was A-OK even though he could not recognize George Clooney, whom he had known for decades (yes, that happened), non-political voters didn’t buy it. This has a lot to do with why some voters said things like “Trump tells the truth, Democrats do not.” I realize this may sound silly, but on “instinctually obvious” things like being able to string a thought together at a debate, you can’t tell voters they are not seeing something that is right there before their eyes. If you do, be prepared to be thought of as a liar. Frankly, all Democrats in the country (including our campaign) were heavily impacted by this perception. When the Biden campaign doubled down and said things like “the economy is better than you think”… oooh boy, that was just fuel on the not-to-be-trusted fire!

3. Communication and Sales are critical components of successful governance and politics. In the final two years of the Biden term, Biden aides' most common deflection/defense was “he still makes good decisions in the small meetings.” Well, OK - good. But that’s only part of being in office or running a successful campaign. How about selling a stronger Ukraine policy to Congress? How about getting on the stump daily to make the case for your reelection? That could have saved the house. In this world of marketing, the voters we need to reach are not going to be convinced by someone who cannot make their own case; they expect to be sold.

4. There is no secluded army of super-smart party officials running the show. As Democrats, we tend to defer to structure and norms. I know what it’s like to suppose, or even wish that an all-powerful decision-making group of sharply dressed professionals is somewhere on the Democratic helm, but that’s just not true. So many times on my own campaign, voters showed they thought the same when they demanded to know “why the party didn’t do this, or do that?” Each time I burst their bubble by explaining, “I got news for you - YOU are the party.”

   The reality of this point is hammered home with disastrous consequences in the Biden story. In 2022-2024, the entire party structure, most candidates (me included), staffers, and many voters deferred to people who were supposed to be the smartest, best, or have the country’s interest in mind. But they were just people. Some were smart but sidelined, some were selfish, some were frightened, some were incompetent. The lesson is easy to see: we should question more, break our own rules, press harder, demand better results, and stop deferring to our own self-made structures meant to keep people in power and money.

We should all take these larger lessons from this scarring experience: Care enough to question authority. Be bold enough to recognize reality and then say the hard truths. Care enough to win, because in politics, the winners govern and the losers go home, and I really hate what governance looks like right now.