New Books on the US Election Are Damning

[PeterRS]

Stand by for a slew of new books about why Joe Biden hung on to power well beyond his sell-by date and the Democrats remain struggling to come out of the mess of losing the election. Many will have more than a few nuggets of truth, but undoubtedly many will also depend on unnamed sources. Still, from all the advance PR, Biden is going to come out of it as the villain of the piece with others around him being in virtually the same category.

Let me start with a small remembrance. More than 30 years ago I was sitting with friends in their Tokyo apartment when the Senate hearings on President Bush I's pick for the Supreme Court was being grilled. Clarence Thomas had been touted as the best man for the job even though he had been a judge for just one year. His good character was one of the reasons put before the committee for his suitablity (well, we now know what a lie that was) but a gremlin had suddenly appeared. Now a Professor at Brandeis University, Anita Hill one of Thomas's previous employees stated before the committee that she had been sexually harassed by Thomas. She mentioned a pubic hair he had left on a can of coca cola. He allegedly spoke about his own sexual prowess and described a part of his anatomy. Four female witnesses were waiting to speak and confirm Hill's testimony. As reported in the LA Times, the Chairman of the committee did a deal with its Republican representatives to ensure they were not called and their statements never included in the record. That Chairman was Joe Biden.

A polygraph test showed Hill was telling the truth, Thomas refused to take one. The committee gave him 24 hours to come up with a rebuttal to Hill's allegations. Instead of doing so, he was a Shakespearean Shylock in the guise of Lady Macbeth all but shouting at the Committee it was putting up with a "high-tech lynching for uppity blacks." As I watched that, I was shocked. It was obviously a case of "methinks he doth protest too much." It was clear to my colleagues and me that Hill had spoken the truth. Yet Biden's committee approved the Thomas nomination. It was on that occasion that I lost any faith in Biden.  

Back to the books. Arguably the most visible will be "Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-up and his Disastrous Choice To Run Again" by CNN's Jake Tapper and Axios Correspondent Alex Thomson.  Tapper, you may recall, was the moderator in the disastrous Biden/Trump televised debate. They write “what the world saw at Joe Biden’s one and only debate was not an anomaly — it was not a cold, it was not someone who was under or overprepared, it was not someone who was just a little tired. It was the natural result of an eighty-one-year-old man whose faculties had been diminishing for years.”

The book is embargoed until publication on May 20. A release issued by the publisher Penguin Books states, “What you will learn makes President Biden’s decision to run for reelection seem shockingly narcissistic, self-delusional, and reckless — a desperate bet that went bust — and part of a larger act of extended public deception that has few precedents" . . . Biden, “his family, and his senior aides were so convinced that only he could beat Trump again, they lied to themselves, allies, and the public about his condition and limitations”.

https://edition.cnn.com/2025/02/26/media/joe-biden-book-jake-tapper-alex-thompson/index.html

Another is Chris Whipple's "Uncharted: How Trump Beat Harris, Biden and the Odds in the Wildest Campaign in History." He argues that Biden's wife and close advisers were in a "fog of delusion and denial" over what to them was clearly Biden's failing health and unfitness for continuing in the job. Whipple notes that in the days leading up to his disastrous debate with President Trump, Biden "was in a terrible state. He was absolutely exhausted. He was unable really to follow what was happening in the campaign. He was tuned out . . . Early on, he walked out of a [debate preparation] session in the Aspen Lodge, the president's cabin, went over to the pool, sank into a lounge chair, and just fell sound asleep."

https://www.npr.org/2025/04/08/nx-s1-5354956/bidens-decline-uncharted-chris-whipple

Earlier this month, one book was released. In "Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for The White House", authors Jonathan  Allen and Amie Parnes claim the writing was on the wall for Biden long before his frailty was exposed in the debate with Trump. In an interview published in The Guardian, they allege that top Democrats began having “hush-hush talks” as early as 2023 to plot how to handle Biden’s risky reelection bid, preparing the party to be ready for every possible scenario in which Biden was unable to continue his campaign. "One veteran operative summed up the sentiments of Democrats who worried they would get stuck with Harris but still wanted Biden out: "Well, at least she has a pulse," the book notes.

https://people.com/biden-looked-heartbreaking-up-close-post-debate-interview-uncharted-book-11706428

Harris might have had "pulse", but she blew her campaign out of the water on the US TV show "The View". When asked  the question that everyone but Harris seemed to know was comiing, "What would you do differently from Joe Biden?" Despite weeks of preparation she froze and said, "Well, I can't think of a single thing." Her campaign from then on was effectively dead in the water.