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301 How is continuing to foment Biden Derangement Syndrome supposed to HELP Dems in 2026-2028?
Et tu Chris Murphy? Senator Murphy has been one of the better Dem electeds during the Trump 2.0 Absolute Immunity years. But now even he’s fallen down the rabbit hole of Biden Derangement Syndrome.
The other day Beto O’Rourke said something similar on Bulwark-to name yet another of many examples. For what ever reason at this moment many with the party itself seem to think that with daily new assaults of Trump on the Rule of Law the most pressing issue for Democrats is to relitigate 2024. It’s not hard to see why the GOP would rather talk about Biden Circa 2024 than all of Trump’s abuses and crimes-between his destructive and completely unnecessary tariffs, his $280 billion extortion jet from Qatar, and his relentless attacks on the rule of law-on a week where he already was able to get a Wisconsin Supreme Court judge indicted for doing her job and a few weeks after his ICE agency arrested a Newark Mayor for doing his job, his Administration on Friday announced they were going to arrest-Democratic naturally-members of Congress-it’s a pretty impressive coup that THE STORY going viral in the mainstream media is a warmed over story about Robert Hur’s interview of Biden back in 2023. As Marcy Wheeler documents-see screenshot at top of the page-the media is obsessed with a few cherrypicked words from an old story while comparatively disinterested in arresting members of Congress.”
To get a sense of how much releasing recordings of Rob Hur’s interview with Joe Biden in advance of the legal release of them was about attention management, you need look no further than the Fox News homepage (this was from shortly after midnight ET).
The humiliating defeat for Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill in the House? Buried on the bottom of the front page.
The Supreme Court’s ruling protecting due process rights for those Trump tried to render to El Salvador using an Alien Enemies Act, which made it clear at least two Republican justices believe they can’t trust the Trump Administration? Second row.
Judge Paula Xinis’ rebuttal of DOJ’s claims that deporting Kilmar Abrego Garcia without a warrant, in spite of an order prohibiting it, was legal? Third row down.
A clip from the exclusive interview Bret Baier had with the President, in which Trump falsely claimed China needed to make a deal more than he did and bizarrely refused to say the work “nuclear”? Also buried there on the bottom.
For Fox News, a cherry-picked excerpt of Robert Hur’s interview of President Biden merited the entire top of the page, with six different stories based on that cherry-picked release to Marc Caputo and Alex Thompson.
So it’s pretty clear why the GOP is so focused on this old story dressed up in new headlines selectively cherrypicked to relitigate the tired old narrative of Biden 2024 being too old to run in 2024. But what do the Democrats gain out of this? Is this to somehow supposed to HELP them win in 2026-2028?
Yet there are some people-not just elected Dems from whom bad and counterproductive strategy is not exactly surprising-but some well meaning members of the #Resistance-who have convinced themselves that ‘we can’t just sweep under the rug’ the question of what happened in 2024. No-they’ve bought into the canard that there was some kind of grand “coverup” in Biden’s world preventing him from stepping down earlier.
FN: Link to Elizabeth? podcast
This bad narrative has been shopped to-Politico, a very good place to foment bad narratives. Again it’s pretty smart-in their evil way-for the Republicans to be fomenting this phony scandal. It’s the opposite of smart for the Democrats. And yet we read:
“The Biden question hanging over the 2028 field.”
Why is it hanging over 2028? Only one reason-Some Democrats are causing it to.
“Some Democrats argue their leaders aren’t owning up to the truth about Biden — and risk keeping the issue alive indefinitely.”
This is completely backwards. The way to keep it alive indefinitely-as the GOP hopes to do-is to keep talking about it. So it is that the Democrats are helping the GOP and media create the 2028 version of But Her Emails three years prior to.
Joe Biden may have cost Democrats the White House in 2024. Their inability to admit it, some Democrats fear, could hobble them in 2028.”
First of all this is just a great adventure in begging the question-why would Democrats not even involved in the 2024 campaign have anything to “admit”-it presumes there’s something to admit but this only makes sense if you assume literally everyone in the party KNEW FOR A FACT Biden COULD NOT WIN-something even now we don’t know for a fact as he didn’t end up on the ballot.
Even if in retrospect you accept the premise that Biden should have gotten out earlier that doesn’t mean every member in Democratic politics knew this at the time.
“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.’
This is literally exactly backwards based on the fallacy there’s this perfect answer that will “nip it in the bud” but there is no such answer just like there was no perfect answer as to why Hillary “REALLY” setup the private email server-even though as we saw in Chapter Comey the real reason was actually it was Bill’s first and it seemed natural for her to use it too.
The more you foment this-phony contrived-scandal the more it will-foment. The best way to keep perpetuating it paradoxically enough is to keep perpetuating it.
Regarding the question of wether Biden should have gotten out earlier-I would argue it doesn’t matter so there’s no value in relitigating it. I say this based on my own premise that-as I laid out in considerable detail-in Chapter Sometimes the Bad Guys Win-that Kamala COULD have won-. I DON’T buy the premise that because she got in so late she could never have won so the question as to wether Biden should of gotten out earlier-as the conventional wisdom today assumes-is irrelevant. It would be relevant if there was a remote possibility in the next 100 years the Democrats are going to haven’t 81 year old incumbent but such an attenuated scenario will likely not obtain in the next 300 years. It’s very clear based on the plausible candidates we’ve seen discussed so far that no one will be close to 81. So there’s no way to plausibly argue rehashing this for the next three and a half years will do anything but bail out the GOP from having to defend their complicity with Trump’s assault on the Constitutional order and needless destruction of the US economy and our geopolitical standing in the world to say nothing of his assault on the very machinery of government up to attempting to destroy Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security.
Yet Joe Cunningham thinks we should spend any significant time relitigating Joe Biden’s old?
UPDATE: To underscore the strange lack of proportion here is the latest headline today Sunday 5/18/25:
Again as discussed din Chapter Bad Guys win her big mistake I believe is listening to bad consultant advice-stop saying Republicans are weird or that we’re not going back or about corporate price gouging… That’s why I would argue it doesn’t matter. The teachable moment SHOULD BE to stop taking bad consultant advice. Speaking of which-Semafor:
“With their party out of power in the White House and in the minority in Congress, Democrats have spent much of the last several months probing potential ways to detoxify their image with independent voters — or at least reinvigorate their own supporters and bring some who have strayed from the party back into the fold..”
I would argue that the first step to “detoxifying their image” is to stop calling it toxic.
Indeed, I would argue that even if we knew for a fact that forcing Biden out earlier-assuming this were possible-was the right call as the “conventional wisdom” would have it-as noted elsewhere in this book as a Nietzschean cum Zarathustrean I can never use this phrase without more than a little irony-the people who think that the ideal road was to get Biden out so as to have an open primary are greatly underestimating how much it would have alienated the Democratic African American base if Biden were replaced with ANYONE other than Kamala Harris. While I have mixed feelings about Richard Allen/Amie Paris-going back to 2016 they seem to specialize in a certain kind of anti Democratic campaign porn-at least Allen realizes as he stated in his interview with The Daily Bean that if they had replaced Kamala Harris all hell would have broken lose. Indeed I have somewhat mixed feelings about Elissa Slotkin but Allen/Parnes quoted her-quite correctly-warning there was no way to drop Harris.
Indeed with all the dismal talk of a ‘coverup’ the question the book further begs for me is the clear disdain that it shows Pelosi and Friends had for Harris. During the fiasco the party went through back in July 2024 Roland Martin calimed that he had sources that told him Pelosi had actually tried to throw Harris off the ticket-well before the post debate fiasco which once again rasies the question for me-were all the calls in the party and from the donors rreally motivated by the certainty Biden couldn’t win? Or was it that they weren’t sure he couldn’t? Going back to how much Mark Cuban and his fellow oligarchs hated Biden’s carried interest tax?
FN: Once again see Sometimes the Bad Guys Win.
If the goal of the Democrats is to “reinvigorate” their own supporters the answer is not to spend the next three and a half years running against Biden but Trump’s assault on our country.
UPDATE: Keith Olermann also discussed the absurdity of the current Biden Derangement Syndrome
For God’s sake President Biden has cancer and Fox News response is this is more gist for Biden’s health Truthers-that you “can’t trust anything” Bidenworld says? This from the party of Signalgate where they bombed the Houthis without getting Trump’s permission?
How is continuing to foment Biden Derangement Syndrome supposed to HELP Dems in 2026-2028?
www.politico.com/news/2025/05…
This is where the latest round of Biden Derangement Syndrome gets us
This is why Democrats lose-here we have Chris Murphy who’s done a pretty good job of resisting Trump-far better than many elected Dems-but he’s now taken the bait on relitigating 2024 which is a big mistake. Trump is literally arresting members of Congress-maybe focus?