Biden's Many 'Original Sins'

"Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again," by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson, pulls from 200 interviews in order to expose Democrats' coverup of Joe Biden's cognitive and physical decline from his son Beau's death in 2015 through his presidency and into his misbegotten 2024 reelection campaign. The book's thesis is that Donald Trump's return to power was the direct result of Biden's decision to run again despite his dementia, symptoms of which caused his catastrophic debate performance and subsequent withdrawal from the race.

Like a motorist gawking at the debris of a gruesome accident, I couldn't put down this eulogy for American electoral democracy. Part of it, I'll admit, was how thoroughly "Original Sin" vindicated my own assessments of Biden dating back to 2020, which did not make me popular with Democrats. Mainly, though, it's a page-turner.

What Biden and his coterie of minders did to himself, the Democratic Party and the country -- far and away the biggest political scandal in U.S. history -- is too big to fit into one book, no matter how essential or well-written, both of which "Original Sin" is.

An "original sin" is a metaphor that recalls Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit. It is a foundational error, systemic problem or inherent defect that leads to future negative consequences. Frederick Douglass argued that slavery was the "great sin and shame of America" -- the nation's original sin. William Jennings Bryan said "the fruits of imperialism ... is the one tree of which citizens of a republic may not partake."

In the same way that a number of factors contributed to humanity's expulsion from the Garden of Eden -- Eve's insistence, Adam's deference and curiosity, and of course that rascally snake -- the Democratic Party's plot to install a mentally diminished Biden into the White House, keep their ruse going for four years and overplay their hand by trying for another four stemmed from motivations and had ramifications that don't appear in Tapper and Thompson's book.

When I evaluate sin (Is it one? If so, how serious?), I put myself in the shoes of the perpetrator and ask myself: Might I have done the same thing in the same circumstances? Reading "Original Sin," I have to say, no way. No one with a scintilla of decency would have done what Jill Biden and a cabal of self-appointed Biden gatekeepers nicknamed "the Politburo" -- former White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain, senior advisers Mike Donilon and Anita Dunn, and deputy chief of staff Jen O'Malley Dillon -- did.

They carried out a silent coup d'etat.

They're traitors.

It gets short shrift in the book, but a big portion of the original sin of the Biden presidency is the raison d'etre of his first campaign -- to stop Bernie Sanders. Bernie was the early favorite in the Democratic primaries. Party bosses should have been pleased. He consistently led Trump in national head-to-head polls during February and early March 2020, with margins ranging from 4 to 9 points, often outperforming or matching other Democratic candidates like Biden, who finished fourth in Iowa, fifth in New Hampshire and a distant second in Nevada.

But Sanders' attacks on corporations and the "billionaire class," and promise to turn away big-money contributions, pissed off the party's wealthy donors and corporate-aligned leaders. His proposals to break up big banks and tax billionaires threatened the financial elite who held sway over the Democratic National Committee. Better to lose with a corporate candidate, they decided, than to win with a self-described "democratic socialist." On Feb. 27, 2020, The New York Times ran a piece with a shocking headline: "Democratic Leaders Willing to Risk Party Damage to Stop Bernie Sanders." A few days later, the day before Super Tuesday, party leaders secretly orchestrated joint high-profile endorsements from rival candidates Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar and Beto O'Rourke, who dropped out and backed Biden.

Would it really have been so awful to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour and give sick people access to Medicare for All? For the billionaire class, obviously yes.

But why Biden and not one of the other 21 primary contestants? Klobuchar didn't have enough name recognition. Buttigieg didn't do well with Blacks. Like Bernie, Elizabeth Warren was too radical for the big corporate donors.

Establishment Democrats claimed Biden was the most electable. But that wasn't why they elevated him. Bernie, after all, was at least as electable as Biden. It came down to politics -- Biden was a corporatist -- and familiarity. And Biden was mentally and physically weak. For the big-money people, the ability to push him around was a feature, not a bug.

Roughly one-third of American vice presidents have become president, whether by succession or getting elected on their own. The main job of a vice president is to be qualified and prepared to become commander-in-chief.

Choosing a vice presidential running mate, therefore, is obviously not a decision to be undertaken lightly. That goes double when the presidential candidate is, at age 77, the oldest ever elected (at the time). According to "Original Sin," the universal consensus in Bidenworld was that Kamala Harris was unpleasant, untalented and not up to the job of running for president, much less serving as one. When the president dropped his reelection bid, most people in the party leadership didn't want her to jump in because her polls were no better than his.

The book doesn't spend much time on how and why Harris got the nod for veep. But surely a significant part of the original sin that led to Trump 2.0 was the party's inability to quickly transition to an appealing figure to replace Biden. Kamala's campaign was such a disaster, polling in the low single digits, that she was forced to withdraw in 2019, without having participated in a primary. On that basis alone, she never should have been considered to run with Biden.

Biden pulled out of the race in July 2024. Four years too late.

By all accounts, he had become utterly incapable of doing the job as president. Yet he remained in office another six months. What if World War III had broken out during that time? It made no sense to tacitly admit Biden was senile while allowing him to continue pretending to work as president.

He should have resigned when he dropped out, leaving Harris as the incumbent president. Her campaign would have benefited from the optics of taking the oath of office, governing, and being seen with foreign leaders. And Biden would have made history by bringing about the first presidency by a woman of color.

Last but certainly not least, the book barely touches upon the Gaza war. It takes note of the fact that many younger voters decided not to vote at all rather than to turn out for Biden due to his age. But many were also furious at both Biden and Harris for supporting the Israeli onslaught against the innocent people of Palestine.

So many original sins! Sadly for the nation, it's not just Democrats who must atone.

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Ted Rall, the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, is the author of the brand-new "What's Left: Radical Solutions for Radical Problems." He co-hosts the left-vs-right DMZ America podcast with fellow cartoonist Scott Stantis and The TMI Show with political analyst Manila Chan. Subscribe: tedrall.Substack.com.