IN UGLY DEMOCRATIC FEUD, BOTH SIDES DESERVE TO LOSE. Are Republicans taking pleasure in the current feud between Bidenworld and some pillars of the Democratic Party? Yes, they are. But not a joke, as former President Joe Biden would say: The fight is worth noting because it shines a light on the continuing bitterness in the party as it struggles to deal with the 2024 loss and the Trump presidency.

Recently, this newsletter looked at Hunter Biden’s three-hour rant about everyone he believes wronged his father, especially in the summer of 2024, when Joe Biden performed badly in a debate with Donald Trump and was, as a result, forced off the Democratic ticket. 

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The major conspirators in the Biden hit were, of course, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and former President Barack Obama. Hunter Biden is certainly in a rage about them. But he is also angry at several lesser figures who wanted President Biden gone, such as the cast of the popular Democratic podcast Pod Save America.

The podcast features four voices: Jon Favreau, Tommy Vietor, Dan Pfeiffer, and Jon Lovett, all veterans of the Obama White House speechwriting shop. The show has the feel of today’s Democratic Party — a group of elite, well-educated, and well-off progressive Democrats talking about politics.

In his recent interview, Hunter Biden called the podcasters “junior f***ing speechwriters on Barack Obama’s Senate staff who have been dining out on the relationship with him for years, making millions of dollars.”

Hunter Biden also said the Pod Save America guys live in a privileged world and are out of touch with the Democratic base that is essential to winning elections. “The Pod Save America saviors of the Democratic Party, with what — four white millionaires that are dining out on their association with Barack Obama from 16 years ago, living in Beverly f***ing Hills, telling the rest of the world what black voters in South Carolina really want, or what the waitress living outside of Green Bay, Wisconsin, really believes,” he said.

The next day, it was Pod Save America’s turn to respond. 

They started off with heavy sarcasm. “It must be just so hard for Hunter Biden to watch all these people dining out on somebody’s name,” Lovett said, meaning, of course, that Biden had spent his entire career making money off his father’s name.

Then, Vietor addressed Hunter Biden directly: “What if we just stipulate … all your business dealings were above-board and legal. All your paintings were purchased by art lovers who loved the product and didn’t know your name.” Meaning, of course, that Hunter Biden’s business dealings were in fact shady, and that the people who would pay $50,000 for a Hunter Biden painting were trying to curry favor with his father.

Finally, Vietor dropped the sarcasm and said to Biden, “You were on the board of Burisma because of who your dad is. And that is what people hate about Washington. And it was part of the problem.” Burisma was, of course, the Ukrainian energy company that, when Joe Biden was vice president, put Hunter on its board and paid him about $1 million a year to do mostly nothing.

There was more: “It’s just this sense of entitlement that, like, from Biden, from his family, from the inner circle that he was owed the presidency, owed a second term,” Vietor said. “It’s just very f***ing grating.”

Lovett noted that we can’t know what would have happened had Joe Biden stayed in the 2024 race until the end. “But one thing we know is that Hunter Biden, throughout Joe Biden’s presidency, was a terrible liability for him,” Lovett said. “And put the addiction aside — it was because he was on Burisma, because he became an artist, because he was part of the kind of sleazy Washington that people hated. You were a liability. You should be ashamed of the ways in which you made your father’s political life worse. And the idea that we’re going to listen to you now, like give me a f***ing break. It’s ridiculous.”

“Maybe that’s the last time we hear from the Biden family on the election,” Favreau added. “Fingers crossed — for a while.”

Here’s the thing about these Democrats taking potshots at each other. Both sides are right. The Pod Save America guys are right when they say Hunter Biden is a sleazy influence peddler out to make a buck on his family’s name. And Hunter is right when he says the podcast guys are elite, out-of-touch Democrats “dining out on their association with Barack Obama” who are alienating the party’s traditional base and turning it into an image of themselves.

So in this feud, both sides deserve to lose. What could be more emblematic of where the Democratic Party’s efforts at post-2024 self-examination stand today?