CNN
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Prominent Democrats – from congressional leaders to potential 2028 presidential contenders – are grappling with revived questions about former President Joe Biden and the party’s handling of the 2024 election.
The reemergence of the 82-year-old Biden – fueled by the former president’s own appearances in addition to revelations in a forthcoming book detailing his physical and mental decline – presents a fresh challenge for Democrats who are trying to rebuild their brand following their bruising defeat by President Donald Trump in November. It also comes as the party strives to wage a more forceful opposition against Trump and his agenda, including the GOP’s sweeping tax and spending cuts legislation.
The party’s response to the book – “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again” by CNN’s Jake Tapper and Axios’ Alex Thompson – has ranged from a dose of introspection to a desire to turn the page.
“House Democrats have been very clear: We’re moving forward. We’re not looking backward,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told CNN’s Manu Raju Thursday.
“We supported Joe Biden’s decision to pass the baton to Vice President Kamala Harris.”
The revelations also are testing Democrats eyeing potential presidential bids in 2028. Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is among those acknowledging Democrats may have been better off if Biden hadn’t run for reelection.
“Maybe,” he said when asked that question by a reporter in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, this week.
“Right now, with the benefit of hindsight, I think most people would agree that that’s the case.”
“We’re also not in a position to wallow in hindsight,” he continued.
Buttigieg, who served in Biden’s Cabinet, defended his former boss when faced with questions about his cognitive decline, saying, “Every time I needed something from him, from the West Wing, I got it.”
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, who said he did not see signs of deterioration in Biden, said the former president should have either remained the party’s nominee or not sought a second term.
“Certainly, either he needed to be the Democratic nominee, as he promised he would be, or he needed to drop out before the Democratic primaries,” Pritzker said on CNN, noting the timing of Biden’s eventual exit from the race, less than four months before the November election, made it “near impossible” for Harris to introduce herself to the public.
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who served as a co-chair of Biden’s campaign, suggested she did not see Biden often enough to say whether she saw signs of diminishment. She said it’s unclear whether Trump would have won the election if Biden had decided not to seek reelection from the beginning of the race or dropped out earlier in the campaign.
“It does make me question a lot of things I thought I knew over the course of the last year and a half,” she said Thursday on CNN.
As the new reporting emerged this week, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez attempted to explain why she publicly backed Biden after the June debate, arguing it was a “major risk” to have a new Democratic nominee so far along in the process.
“I think, for me, and for many of us at this time, we – there was this sudden discussion about after a full primary process, about changing the nominee like 90 days before a presidential election. And so, in my assessment, something that was that unprecedented, having a brand-new nominee 90 days before a presidential election against a nominee that had been running for four years straight, was a major risk,” she said.
The book from Tapper and Thompson – which is based on more than 200 interviews, mostly with Democratic insiders, almost all of which occurred after the 2024 election was over – raised questions about Biden’s physical and mental capabilities in office.
Among the anecdotes included in the book: Biden did not recognize George Clooney when he arrived for a record-breaking June 2024 fundraiser the movie star was co-hosting, and some aides discussed Biden potentially needing a wheelchair in a second term.
South Carolina Rep. James Clyburn, one of Biden’s closest allies on Capitol Hill, said he had “no idea” if Biden was capable of running for reelection last year. “I don’t have a medical degree,” he told CNN.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who in a private meeting urged Biden to exit the 2024 race after his disastrous debate against Trump, brushed off a question this week about whether he was being honest with Americans about Biden’s mental capacity in light of the new reporting.
“Look, we’re just looking forward,” he said.
The book’s revelations come as the Democratic Party’s favorability rating among Americans fell to a record low this year, according to a CNN poll conducted by SSRS in March. Among the American public overall, the Democratic Party’s favorability rating stood at just 29%, and only 63% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents reported a favorable view of their own party.
Despite the headwinds, Jeffries contends the Democratic Party remains on strong footing, pointing to victories by Democratic candidates in several elections this year.
“Every single one, the voters are saying we support the Democratic vision for the United States of America,” he said.
Biden’s team has pushed back on the book’s claims. “We continue to await anything that shows where Joe Biden had to make a presidential decision or where national security was threatened or where he was unable to do his job. In fact, the evidence points to the opposite – he was a very effective president,” a spokesperson for Biden told CNN.
Ahead of the book’s publication, Biden appeared in a round of interviews where he defended his time in office, shooting down claims he suffered cognitive decline while serving as commander-in-chief.
“They are wrong,” Biden said on ABC’s “The View” last week. “There is nothing to sustain that.”
Some of the most forceful pushback has come from his wife, former first lady Dr. Jill Biden, a fierce defender of her husband’s decision to run and his time in office.
“The people who wrote those books were not in the White House with us,” Jill Biden said as she appeared on “The View” with her husband. “They didn’t see how hard Joe worked every single day.”
But some top Democrats think its ill-advised for the Bidens to reengage in the political conversation.
“The only person talking about Joe Biden every day is Donald Trump. And he likes to set up this straw man invidious comparison between a president who is no longer there and himself because he thinks he benefits from that,” said David Axelrod, CNN’s chief political analyst and former senior adviser to former President Barack Obama
He added that Biden’s decision “injecting himself back into this is not only a disservice to himself” but said it is also “a disservice to the Democratic Party and the country … that wants to look forward and not back.”
Biden has yet to speak out publicly since the revelations from the forthcoming book emerged.
On Wednesday, the former president had lunch at a Washington, DC, restaurant with Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the former ambassador to the United Nations under Biden, who said she was “delighted” to see him.
“Beyond honored to have served as his Ambassador to the United Nations and four years in his Cabinet,” Thomas-Greenfield posted on X alongside a photo from her lunch with Biden. “Under his leadership, our alliances were strengthened and multilateral diplomatic engagement was reinvigorated.”
CNN’s Jeremy Herb contributed to this report.
