Will Democrats and the Press Own Their Joe Biden Mistakes?
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Democrats are aghast and I think it's fair to say depressed at Donald Trump's second term. But did they help reelect him by covering up for President Biden's mental and physical decline that came close to letting him run for reelection? That's the question Democrats are facing anew today.

as new evidence emerges, that there were a lot more signs of President Biden's decline than the party and the press were willing to admit in 2023 and 2024.

So what does that mean for the party going forward? That's our subject for today on Potomac Watch. I'm Paul Gigot, editor of the Wall Street Journal Opinion Pages with my colleagues Kyle Peterson and Kim Strassel. First, let's acknowledge the president. News late on Sunday that he has been diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer that has spread to his bones. This is a very

tough diagnosis, though the announcement said it's a form of cancer amenable to hormone treatment, which is good. We certainly wish the president well as he undergoes treatment. And we'll talk a little more about the prostate issue later in the program. But first, let's talk about the debate the Democrats are having.

about President Biden's health and the 2024 election. A new book by Jake Tapper of CNN and Alex Thompson of Axios has come out, and that's triggering much of this debate. And they write that they talked to 200-some Democrats.

about Biden, and then they came up with this book. It's called "Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again." The book is written as something of an expose, but the question they're telling us about is that this is really a cover-up, and that the American public, as if almost they're telling the American public something it didn't know. But the public, Kim, was telling the press

throughout late 2023 and 2024 that they had figured out the cover-up, that in fact it was right in front of their eyes what they were observing with President Biden. And they said, no, he should not run for reelection. We want a different nominee. But the party said, no, no, no, no, sharpest attack, as good as ever.

And we're going to make that happen. Did we need a book to tell us all this? You didn't need a book just to see what you saw with your own eyes. And obviously, those questions were front and center. We'd had Joe Biden, look, I think you can go all the way back to 2020 and that campaign. And our colleague Barton Swaim has a really good piece today about

covering Joe Biden at the South Carolina primary events in 2020, which he was not up to par. So it's pretty clear that already back then you had folks like Jim Clyburn, the South Carolina congressman who were endorsing him and helping stage that South Carolina victory when there were a lot of

questions about Biden's fitness. And we know now, too, that probably what allowed him to cloak that and get away with it was COVID and his ability to largely stage a campaign from his basement. But then you go through the years while he's in office, we've watched him stumble and falling down, his inability to remember basic names, having to be led off of a stage. And now suddenly we have this book from these journalists who, by the way,

I would note Jake Tapper was scornful of some of the coverage in 2024, including from our newspaper in June when we began writing about this, our news side, very dismissive of it and almost a little hostile, suggesting that anybody who was asking this was being inappropriate. Now coming out and saying, oh,

oh, everybody was right all along. And this to me is the most interesting part of the book, Paul, is the descriptions of the lengths and efforts that were taken to hide this, not just from the public, but from members of Congress, et cetera, and who knew what and when. The question is, Kyle, why didn't more Democrats speak up about this? I'm not buying that they didn't observe in their meetings with him, members of Congress and others,

that the president had declined, notwithstanding the efforts that Kim describes of White House efforts to conceal his decline. There's no question that they kept his appearances very limited. They tried to protect him as much as possible. Remember the story shielding him from walking from the White House to Marine One because they didn't want him to stumble.

But Dean Phillips, the Minnesota congressman, did speak up. He came in to see us in the early winter, spring of 2024 and said, I don't think the president can win. I don't think he beat Donald Trump. And I don't think he can serve another term. And for that, he was vilified. But why didn't more Democrats speak up? Our colleague, James Toronto, calls it a collective action problem, right? If some person, individual goes out, you take all the spears. Of course, it was what Dean Phillips did. So none of the people who have their eyes

on becoming president in the future wanted to be the Democrat who was seen by his fellow party mates as somehow taking down Joe Biden. I definitely think that's part of it. I would also add that it seems that there had been some conversations with Joe Biden about this, and he and Jill Biden made the decision that he was fine, or fine enough at least, to run again, and they didn't want to give up power.

And that puts the party in a very difficult position because in the United States system, unlike a parliamentary system, for example, if the leader of a party becomes a political problem or an embarrassment, the party can ditch the leader and stay in power. There's no mechanism for that in the United States. So you have an incumbent president.

who has decided to run for re-election, is filing the paperwork, is getting together a campaign, and then Democrats have a choice. Are they going to try to cover for that campaign because they think that a Joe Biden, even if he's too old to run, even if they would acknowledge that privately, is still better than Donald Trump?

Or do they publicly oppose their own party, which is what Dean Phillips did? And he got the backlash from the party. And the question for him now, I guess, is where does he go to get his reputation back after putting it all on the line and taking all of that incoming fire from Democrats for doing so? We are going to take a break. And when we come back, we'll talk about the important event that happened in February 2024 with the Robert Herr report that could have been the time Democrats changed.

on Joe Biden when we come back.

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Welcome back. I'm Paul Gigo here on Potomac Watch, the daily podcast of the Wall Street Journal Opinion Pages, and I'm here with Kim Strassel and Kyle Peterson. There was a key moment in 2024. Early February, it was the release of the report by Special Counsel Robert Herr, appointed by Merrick Garland, Biden's Attorney General, to investigate Biden's handling of classified information. In that report, Herr concluded that

While the president may have violated the law, probably did in mishandling classified information, he wasn't going to charge the president because the jury would see him as an elderly old man who was forgetful and was not likely to convict.

Those interviews took place with Biden over two days by her in October, early October of 2023. OK. And then the report came out in 2024, early February. Let's listen to now the recently released audio clip of her interview with the president as he tries to recall when his son Bo died. At this point, even though I'm a man, I hadn't walked away from the idea that I might run for office again.

If I ran again, I'd be running for president. And so what was happening, though, was the boat dying. It was May 30th. It was May 30th. It was May 30th. It was May 30th. It was May 30th. It was May 30th. It was May 30th. It was May 30th. It was May 30th. It was May 30th. It was May 30th. It was May 30th. It was May 30th. It was May 30th. It was May 30th. It was May 30th. It was May 30th. It was May 30th. It was May 30th. It was May 30th. It was May 30th. It was May 30th. It was May 30th. It was May 30th. It was May 30th. It was May 30th. It was May 30th. It was May 30th. It was May 30th. It was May 30th. It was May 30th. It was May 30th. It was May 30th. It was May 30th. It was May 30th. It was May 30th. It was May 30th. It was May 30th. It was May 30th. It was May 30th. It was May 30th. It was May 30th. It was May 30th. It was May 30th. It was May 30th. It was May 30th. It was May 30th. It was May 30th. It was May 30th. It was May 30th. It was May 30th. It was May 30th. It was May 30th. It was May 30th. It was May 30th. It was May 30th. It was May 30th. It was May 30th. It was May 30th. It was May 30th. It was 30th. It was 30th. It was 30th. It was 30th. It was 30th. It was 30th. It was 30th. It was 30th. It was 30th. It was 30th. It was 30th. It was 30th. It was 30

is that it has, and Trump gets elected in November of 2017, 2016, 2016. All right. Wow. That is really painful to listen to, Kim. And there are other audio tapes show a lot more of this. That was the moment where Democrats might have been able to say,

Mr. President, you can't do this. And backed out, it would have given the party time to have an open primary instead of waiting until June 27th, the disastrous debate, and then the president a month later or three and a half weeks later finally dropping out. Yeah, could have, should have, would have, Paul. And, you know, that transcript alone, and remember what we got in early 2024 was a transcript of

But it was painful just to read it because you could see all of that. Now hearing it in particular, it's even more painful to listen to. And it wasn't just not being able to. There was a moment in those clips. He can't remember whether the year was when Bo was deploying or when he was dying. By the way, there's a seven year gap between those two events.

There was twice he couldn't remember the name of the thing called a fax machine. He wasn't sure when he was in the Senate and when he was vice president and when he was actually the president of the United States. It goes on and on for hours. And of course, her instead of Democrats taking that moment, he was reviled. He was called a

partisan. He'd been out to get the president from the beginning. Now, Paul, when we listen to these tapes, we actually understand how kind he was in this and gentle. He almost has this voice throughout as if he knows he's talking to an elderly grandfather type figure. He's not aggressive. He's seriously, legitimately working hard to get the information. And he had a duty. I think he's exactly right. One of the

aspects of these reports when they come out is to be clear to the attorney general who you're writing the report for. Is this a witness that is likely to be convicted or one that will make an argument to the jury that will get them off? Right. And

he was being honest in that assessment. Democrats could have used that. Instead, they not only argued that this meant nothing, they then fought the release of the audio transcript for the ensuing months because they knew somehow, Paul, they knew what we're all hearing now. And I think that that's just further proof that they understood they had a problem and they were not willing to step up and be honest with the country about it and reorient their party. Of course, the Democrats said that

to themselves, I think, "Well, we can't admit any of this because this will help Donald Trump," right? But by denying all this, not being honest about it, they ended up helping Donald Trump, helping re-elect Donald Trump, Kyle. Exactly. Because they waited so long before they gave the party a choice. Remember, after June 27th in the debate, Nancy Pelosi, and I think President Obama played a role here too,

helped lead what essentially was a coup against Biden's candidacy, saying you can't run again. But it was so late in the game, and they didn't have the courage, I think it's fair to say, to open up a debate before the convention, have an open convention, have the convention decide who we're going to do. Kamala Harris would have run, of course, but others might have too. Instead, they anointed Kamala Harris, and she went on to lose. David Plouffe, who helped lead her campaign effort and who had worked for President Obama, said,

the Biden folks just left us too little time. We didn't have enough time to develop a campaign. I don't know if that's true or not. There's some people who think, well, actually a shorter campaign helped her. You know, that's unknowable. But the thing I think is,

is undeniable is that by not dropping out in 2023 to let his party have an open primary, he denied the voters, the Democratic voters, and ultimately the country a choice of a younger, more vigorous nominee to compete against Donald Trump. And I would argue, Kyle, that he also denied Republicans the chance at what might have been a more open primary because rather than

thinking that Donald Trump was the guy who deserved a second chance at Joe Biden. They might have had, if you had a more vigorous, younger Democrat who looked to be the nominee, Republicans might have said to themselves, hey, we need one too.

Right. I agree with that entirely. If you recall the Republican primary, one of the strongest arguments that Nikki Haley made was that Donald Trump is going into this election with all sorts of baggage, the January 6th stuff. And, you know, he was taking a risk. If Republicans nominated him, they were taking a risk with what should be on the merits of

given the border crisis, given inflation, a resounding Republican victory. And notably, the period in the Republican primary when Donald Trump began to really pick up some steam and those challengers, including Nikki Haley, fell was when President Biden's own polling

started to crater because then I think many Republican primary voters said, we don't need to worry about electability because Biden's approval is so bad that we can pick whatever candidate we want. And ultimately that was borne out. And so I think a lot of the blame here, I mean, you can Monday morning quarterback what the Democratic Party should have done in the middle of 2024.

or after that disastrous debate, I tend to agree with you that a more open process might have led to a better outcome for them. But that's way too late in the game. I think the real first mistake was ignoring that polling in 2023. There's an August 2023 poll by the Associated Press. 77% of Americans say that Joe Biden is too old

for another term. He wanted to stay in office until he was 86 years old. That 77% included 69% of Democrats and 74% of independents. That was the polling that Joe Biden and Joe Biden looked in the face and ignored and said, we're going to go full steam ahead anyway. And now we know what happened. Kim, I want to give you a chance to talk about the press and the role of the press in all of this.

I remember writing an editorial in February tied to her report that said Democrats just have to move on to Biden. But others had written about it much earlier. We had long said that the president was too old, but that her report was a real opportunity. But the press didn't want to hear it.

So what's your view of our esteemed colleagues? Well, seeing as how what has kicked this off is a book by two journalists saying, oh my gosh, shock, horror, look at what the political class did to the country. We have a media for the purpose of assuming, like when you are in the media, you are meant to assume the politicians are lying to you.

not to broadcast what they say and be their narrators and their script writers. And the press was all too willing over the last five years because they were rooting for the Democrats to say everything is fine. And it wasn't just Biden's health. I remember when Kamala Harris was nominated. Oh, my gosh. She's like suddenly the world's best campaigner. They had been

ridiculing her for four years. But now, oh, no, she's the best hope the Democratic Party has. Also, a huge fiction, which didn't help the party and didn't help the country, because if they'd have engaged in a different process, they might have ended up with a better nominee. But one thing that's interesting to me, Paul, is all the reviews of the book note that while there is a lot of meditation on the 200 officials that were interviewed for this book, apparently there is no meditation in the book at all about

the press's failure in this part. And that's the true unexplored aspect of this. Everybody understood that the political class, democratic political class, was closing its eyes to a problem, but not talking about what not had a reckoning yet for the press, which also closed its eyes to this. And, you know, again, the two authors of this, Jake Tapper, you can go. There's some great montages online right now. Jake Tapper, all through 2024,

ridiculing and scorning anyone who suggested that there was any Biden mental or physical problems. We're going to take another break. And when we come back, we'll talk a little bit more about former presidents' prostate cancer diagnosis when we come back.

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From the opinion pages of The Wall Street Journal, this is Potomac Watch. Welcome back. I'm Paul Gigo here on Potomac Watch with Kyle Peterson and Kim Strassel. All right, let's turn briefly here before we go to the former president's prostate diagnosis. And I want to talk about this because...

This is really an advanced cancer, and of course, it's very dangerous and very sad to hear. But it's notable because Zeke Emanuel, who is the brother of Rahm Emanuel, a medical doctor himself, worked in the Obama administration, said on Morning Joe on MSNBC today that Biden would clearly have had cancer.

this cancer throughout his presidency. He probably had it before he was president. And he surprised, Emanuel said, that cancer wasn't diagnosed earlier, given that it is now at such an advanced stage.

So, Kyle, that has some implications because it means that, you know, had he continued to run and won reelection, he would almost certainly be handing the presidency off in his second term to Kamala Harris, which is what some of us worried about all along. Not necessarily because Kamala Harris would have been a disaster, but because the voters would have been denied the choice.

of whether to elect her. Right. And you can argue that even without this diagnosis, that was the likelihood over a second four-year Biden term. The thing that this diagnosis does raise, though, is the question of transparency of these medical tests, these annual physicals that the president of the United States gets.

I saw that same interview by Ezekiel Emanuel, and I think he was talking about how there are legitimate medical debates about whether some of these prostate problems are overtreated. And so there's a debate about whether the PSA test is recommended for people who are over certain ages. Yeah, 70, I think, is the age that some people think is aligned. Right. But you've got to think that there is a higher standard in

A, for the President of the United States, who you would imagine when he goes in to get his physical, gets A to Z everything, and B, for somebody who also is asking to be the President of the United States for another four years. I don't know. I hope we find out more information about this, whether he received that PSA test or declined that PSA test. I mean, he's the patient.

He has the right to do that. But certainly Americans, I think, are maybe not legally owed more information by the people who are in that office. But as a matter of politics and practicality, it certainly seems like voters ought to know the health of voters.

these candidates and the president of the United States, the person who is in office making these decisions about weighty matters, war and peace, whether they're going to be there for the four years that they're asking to fill that role. I want to be clear. We are not asserting that we know that there's some kind of cover up here, but I do think it's a fair question to ask. And I assume it will be asked of former president's physicians, which is,

Why wasn't this diagnosed earlier, Kim? No, I think that's the big question is assuming there was not a cover up. Look, most Americans, rightly or wrongly, and this is the big question that's going to come up from this, is most Americans assume that our president is getting the most amazing medical care.

right? Like the things are being checked right and left. They have these amazing doctors. And if anyone we need to feel secure, we know that they are on top of that. It is the president of the United States. And here we now are told that a man who was in office only a few months ago has been diagnosed with a very advanced stage of a cancer that is incredibly common for older men. How exactly did that happen? Dr.

Prostate cancer after lung cancer is the biggest cancer killer of men. And also a president, by the way, who clearly was having a lot of physical problems if it was not. Why was this not considered a real possibility and something that people investigated? All right, Kim, you're going to get the last word here. Thank you, Kyle. Thank you, Kim. Thank you all for listening here on Potomac Watch. We're here every day and we appreciate you joining us. Thanks for listening.

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