Democrats Trapped Between Trump Fear and Biden Loyalty

Penguin Random House

This month, Jeff Bloodworth takes a look at the topics revealed in Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson's book on Joe Biden, Original Sin, and how the recent presidential election could have gone differently for Democrats.

Tear gas. ICE raids. Bunker-bombs. Salvadoran prisons. At least 5 million "No Kings" protesters. We Americans, as the ersatz Chinese proverb goes, are "living in interesting times." And Donald Trump's second term is only at the 6-month mark. Jim Wertz spoke for many in telling me, "It is all a little overwhelming." The former chair of the Erie County Democratic Party described the president's actions as "a punctuation mark on our Constitutional crisis." But for now, Wertz admitted, "We just watch in awe and horror."

But what if I were to tell you that the awe and horror were avoidable? The sting of this might burn, but it also lights the path out of Trumpism. In politics, popularity, as you might guess, is important. When a candidate dips far below 50 percent approval, they lose: see Trump, Donald. In his first term, Trump averaged a 41.1 percent approval rating. In November 2020, he lost to Joe Biden by 7 million votes. By July 2023, 63 percent of Americans still disapproved of him. Trump was beatable. The problem for Democrats was Biden's 38 percent approval rating and that only 26 percent of the party faithful wanted him re-nominated.

Inflation at home and disorder abroad concerned voters. But 73 percent of Americans thought Biden was simply too old for a second term. And they were not alone. Lindsey Helfrey, chair of the Crawford County Democratic Party, told me, "I thought he [Biden] would be dead, and we'd have a contested convention." Aides to Vice President Kamala Harris had even game-planned succession scenarios. Such concerns were not fantastical. Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson's Original Sin recounts Biden's physical decline. 

Thanks to Tapper and Thompson, we now know what the average voter realized in their bones: Father Time is undefeated. Slowed by age, Biden had accrued a solid legislative record. But by 2024, the rigors of the world's most demanding office slammed into him like an actuarial sledgehammer. Functional between the hours of 10 a.m. and 4 p.m., the president no longer held regular cabinet or staff meetings. The "Politburo," a team of five to six White House loyalists, ran the presidency. Contradictory facts can be simultaneously true. Trump was beatable. Biden was too old. And yet, as one senior Democrat admitted, "There [wa]s no Plan B [to Biden]."

Conor Lamb, a former Congressman from western Pennsylvania, understands the simple calculus. He told me, "The American people saw it [Biden's age]. The elites couldn't catch up to it." In 2023, White House officials decided: they were "Ridin' with Biden."

After reading Original Sin, Wertz admitted, "I was shocked at how quickly and easily they closed ranks, took the wheel, and fell behind him running." Revisiting Biden-world is not an act of political masochism. Rather, assessing how Democratic elites slow-walked into political disaster is to understand what ails American democracy.

Lamb rightfully dismisses the notion of a Biden "cover-up." He told me, "The American public figured out what they thought. It was [political elites] who were not aware." Biden's infirmities were hiding in plain sight. Wertz explained that the distance between the average American's opinion of Biden and those of Democratic elites is "a reflection of a larger problem with…[elites] not knowing the [temperature] of the nation." In this, Wertz is right. Democratic elites constantly called 2024 the most consequential presidential race of the era. But for this race, they tried to run an elderly man who few Americans believed was capable for the job.

Helfrey is no D.C. insider. But as a program specialist for adults with cognitive issues, she possesses unique insight into the Biden fiasco. She told me, "I've been to multiple events where he [Biden] was really good – he even ad-libbed." She explained, for someone of Biden's age "taking dynamic questions is different. Nimbly being able to bounce around questions, it is a hard ballgame." This, according to Helfrey, is when staffers or any "people around [them] will unconsciously fill in the gaps in their abilities." Because of her political and professional experience, Helfrey understood: "Biden hired the best people and let them do their job. The people who didn't see it were the people doing the job of the presidency."

Wertz agreed. He compared it to "boiling the frog." To him, as a staffer, "You are just there and not seeing it the same way, as Jon Favreau [a former Obama speechwriter] who saw him twice in 16 months and was shocked [by the decline]." Lamb concurred in telling me, "I think there were people who loved and believed in him." Lamb, who last saw Biden in August 2021, is like Wertz and Helfrey, an outsider trying to decipher the inner workings of a White House. Biden staffers viewed Trump as an existential threat. They knew Biden was elderly and politically vulnerable. But their love for and proximity to the president caused a group delusion. My trio of western Pennsylvanian politicos aren't wrong about the benign sources of this group delusion. The road to hell, as they say, is paved with good intentions.

"Washington," Senator Gary Hart is said to have once warned, "is always the last to know." As if to prove this maxim, Helfrey, who resides 328 miles from the Capitol, always understood, "America was never going to [re]elect him [Biden]." Meanwhile, only one Democratic congressperson, Dean Phillips, acted on what Helfrey knew to be obvious. In December 2023, Phillips, a soft-spoken Minnesota moderate, launched a primary challenge to Biden. And this is where the bee's sting becomes a venomous bite.

Every poll indicated Trump was beatable and Biden weak. But no Democrat, except Phillips, budged. Sensing doom, Gregg Hurwitz rushed to help. In 2018, the best-selling novelist and Hollywood scriptwriter had turned his "deep interest in storytelling and narrative" toward politics. In that midterm, his content and messaging strategies for various candidates helped flip 20 "purple" House seats blue, including Phillips' suburban Minneapolis district. Five years later, Hurwitz assisted Phillips during his presidential run. What he experienced still shocks him. He told me, "Everyone agreed privately with Dean [about Biden]." But when it came to endorsements or working for the campaign, "not one single person – was willing to face getting blackballed and having their careers destroyed by the Dems. It was awful."

In other words, Democrats in Congress knew Biden had few paths to victory. They all feared Trump 2.0. Unlike White House staffers, they were close enough to see Biden's decline but far enough to have some critical distance. Yet, they stayed mum. But as if that was not enough, they also threatened to ruin the careers of anyone who would endorse or work for Phillips. Nearly two years later, he said of the pretense about Biden's fitness to run, "It was as reckless as any lie for power has been in my lifetime. As terrible as Trump's need to have won an election he lost."

Eva Posner sees it much the same way as Hurwitz. She thinks Trump is terrible, but she blames Democratic elites for not stopping it. A political consultant and CEO of Evinco Strategies, she told me, "I'm not mad at Trump. He told us his goals and people said 'sure.'" Posner sees a corrupt political class in Washington as the real culprit. To her, elites, old and young, make power an end in itself. She told me, "It isn't just old people who won't give up power. You have young staffers around them who turn them [elderly officeholders] into meat puppets for their own gain. They are 100 percent doing this to hold onto power."

As for Kamala Harris's 100-day run, Posner pronounces it an "absolutely textbook campaign, for 2012." Far from blaming Harris, she thinks Democrats lost because "we don't know where our people are because we haven't talked to them in 20 years." Indeed, no Democrat has run a 50-state primary campaign since Obama in 2008. Had Biden dropped out in 2023, a barnburner of a Democratic primary would have made the eventual nominee sharper and built the party. In June 2024, Joe Biden performed political self-immolation on national television. One hundred days later, an untested vice president very nearly won on the back of a campaign held together by scotch-tape and cardboard. Trump was beatable.

In 2025, Wertz's awe and horror abound. But possibly the worst lasting effect is what Posner admitted to me, "The Democratic Party did this shit to itself. Now, we don't trust each other because they lied to us. I don't know if it's true that we believe in the same things."

Jeff Bloodworth is a professor of American political history at Gannon University. You can follow him on Twitter/X @jhueybloodworth or reach him at bloodwor003@gannon.edu