While Politico refuses to say so, the media should have the same worries.
Oh right, I said "Democrats." That includes the media.
Joe Biden may have cost Democrats the White House in 2024. Their inability to admit it, some Democrats fear, could hobble them in 2028.
As a fresh reckoning in the party unfolds around the former president's mental acuity, potential presidential contenders have mostly dodged questions about his condition while in office. They've also sidestepped whether the party should have more forcefully called on him to abandon his reelection bid earlier.
"How are some of these national frontrunners or people who are already barnstorming states like South Carolina or Iowa expected to look voters in the eyes with a straight face and say, 'Trust me, even though I got the 2024 election so terribly wrong?'" asked the former Rep. Joe Cunningham (D-S.C.), who said he expects the issue to come up on the trail in what is now the first-in-the-nation primary state. "There's no courage on display by any of the folks whose names are being circulated right now."
He said the party's Biden question needs to be "nipped in the bud" if Democrats want to reestablish trust with voters.
Some potential presidential contenders have been willing to criticize Biden, to varying degrees, risking pushback from critics accusing them of hypocrisy after they defended Biden last year. Just this week, Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut said there was "no doubt" about Biden's cognitive decline, former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg conceded the party "maybe" would have done better without him and Rep. Ro Khanna of California said "Democrats must be honest ... Joe Biden should not have run for reelection."
But they were the exception. For the most part, leading Democrats -- many of whom attested to Biden's fitness when he was still on the ticket -- are ducking what is fast becoming the first real litmus test of the 2028 campaign. The problem for Democrats is Biden's blast radius keeps expanding. It isn't just the embarrassing accounts dribbling out from a forthcoming book. It's that so many Democrats with 2028 ambitions were defending him at the time -- and are now being forced to answer for what they knew and when.
When Murphy, in an interview, fessed up to Biden's diminishing capabilities, GOP operatives threw months-old comments in face. "This you??" said an aide to Speaker Mike Johnson on the social media platform X, pointing to when the Democratic senator had vouched for Biden in the wake of a damning Wall Street Journal report on the subject.
Khanna got similar treatment. After Biden's disastrous debate, one social media user pointed out, Khanna compared Biden to the fictional boxer Rocky, saying the latter was a "fighter" even if he "wasn't the most eloquent."
On Thursday, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro appeared to try to differentiate himself from other ambitious Democrats -- and put some distance between himself and Biden -- by maintaining he privately raised concerns with the former president in the moment.
...
While Shapiro said publicly at the time that Biden had "a responsibility to reassure" Pennsylvanians he could win, the governor and most other elected Democrats defended Biden's fitness up through the final months of his presidency.
Note that the only thing Democrats will admit about Biden's health is that maybe he lacked the physical ability to "vigorously" fight in the 2024 election, or maybe he didn't reassure voters that he "could win."
This is the same lie they all told when they were pressuring Biden to drop out. They all claimed they had no questions about his mental acuity or ability to discharge the office. They only were concerned about his "ability to win" or the public's mistaken perception of Biden as too frail and deteriorated to be president.
This is how they justify forcing him out of the race but letting the demented man remain president for six more months.
And they're still lying, including those, like Josh Shapiro, that Politico claims are finally doing some "truth" telling. They're still pushing the absurd lie that Biden was mentally fit, just maybe not capable of convincing voters that he was mentally fit.
Asked by POLITICO in August 2024 if he had any concerns that Biden had slipped, Shapiro said, "Not at all, and I've been in regular contact with the president."
The article notes that Gavin Newsom vouched for Biden's fitness, even after the debate.
At least he vouched publicly. In private, he talked about Biden being demented:
But the book reports that Newsom attended a June 2023 fundraiser with Biden in Kentfield, California that "went awry," with attendees "shaken by Biden's meandering remarks."
"I remember leaving that fundraiser thinking, Fuck," one attendee told the book's authors, Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson.
Democrats continue pushing the lie and refusing to come clean:
"I think he had good days and bad days. That's all I'll say," Sen. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan told POLITICO.
The leader of the free world, the man with access to the nuclear football, is not allowed to continue in office if he has "some good days, some bad days."
Many Democrats who vouched up and down for Biden's fitness now say... they didn't see Biden's infirmity, because they just never spoke to Biden much:
...
It was a pleading of ignorance that Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer likewise employed, telling CNN on Thursday, "I didn't see the president frequently. And I can tell you I can't speak to that directly."
But you did speak to his fitness directly in 2024. You say you didn't really see him much -- but you vouched for him anyway.
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Some Democrats argue that their leaders aren't owning up to the truth about Biden -- and risk keeping the issue alive indefinitely as a result. They fear that Democrats' record-low approval ratings are tied, in part, to their unwillingness to come clean.
This is amusing: "Tapper" is trending, and not for good reasons.