In a gripping new book, a top Democratic strategist lays bare the chaos of the 2024 election, pinning the party’s loss on former President Joe Biden’s fateful decision to run for a second term. David Plouffe, who steered Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign to victory and served as a senior advisor to Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024, doesn’t hold back in Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again, co-authored by CNN’s Jake Tapper and Axios’ Alex Thompson.
“And it’s all Biden,” Plouffe declares in the book, capturing the frustration over Biden’s prolonged campaign and the White House’s insistence that he could still clinch another term. “He totally f—ed us.”
Harris’ Impossible Battle
For Harris, the fallout was brutal. Her campaign against President Donald Trump, already a steep climb, became what Plouffe calls “a f—ing nightmare,” with Biden’s shadow looming large over her efforts.
Plouffe isn’t alone in pointing fingers. Others within the Democratic circle argue that Biden’s 2024 run, amid growing concerns about his mental sharpness, dealt a severe blow to the party’s prospects.
A Shielded Decline
A former senior White House aide, quoted in Original Sin, reveals the extent of the effort to mask Biden’s struggles: “We attempted to shield him from his own staff so many people didn’t realize the extent of the decline beginning in 2023.”
This aide, who left the White House over doubts about Biden’s fitness for another term, calls his decision to run a “disservice” to both the nation and the Democratic Party. “I love Joe Biden. When it comes to decency, there are few in politics like him,” the aide reflects in the book. “Still, it was a disservice to the country and to the party for his family and advisers to allow him to run again.”
The Cost of Isolation
Original Sin dives deep into the 2024 election cycle, exposing how Biden’s team worked to conceal the toll age had taken on his mental faculties. The book paints a picture of a campaign built on denial, with aides and advisors orchestrating a cover-up to keep Biden’s condition under wraps.
Other accounts echo this narrative. In Uncharted: How Trump Beat Biden, Harris, and the Odds in the Wildest Campaign in History by Chris Whipple, a former CBS 60 Minutes producer, similar concerns surface.
Whipple cites a White House aide who criticized the decision to isolate Biden, even from friends and allies. “They were afraid he might say the wrong thing or might feed the mental acuity narrative,” the aide told Whipple. “And so he started seeing fewer and fewer people. They allowed his faculties to atrophy. But I think, like knives, they have to be sharpened. They get sharpened by rubbing them up against steel. And they don’t get sharpened by sitting in a drawer.”
A Party’s Reckoning
As these books reveal, Biden’s choice to stay in the race reverberated far beyond his own campaign, reshaping the Democratic strategy and leaving Harris to navigate an uphill battle.
The story of 2024, as told through these insider accounts, is one of loyalty, miscalculation, and a party grappling with the consequences of a leader’s refusal to step aside.
Stay tuned to the Fairview Gazette.
