The books have detailed a president increasingly unfit for the task of taking on Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election and his top aides in denial about it, or actively seeking to cover it up, even as the administration warned about the existential threat Trump posed to American democracy.
Journalists Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes were first out of the gate with Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House. Revelations included how Biden aides planned for his withdrawal in 2023, then when his disastrous June 2024 debate against Donald Trump supercharged calls for him to quit, “aggressively” argued that he should not, given Harris would be a “disaster”.
Then Chris Whipple, author of a book about Biden’s 2020 win, released Uncharted: How Trump Beat Biden, Harris, and the Odds in the Wildest Campaign in History. Whipple’s book is slim, at just 204 double-spaced pages. But it hits hard. Ron Klain, a former White House chief of staff, describes debate preparations in which Biden seemed “out of it”, unable to “grasp … the back and forth”, and also says that after the debate disaster, Biden declined to do political work necessary to survive, preferring to enjoy the trappings of power.
When Biden stood on the stage with Harris after taking office I turned to my wife and said, "We're looking at our next President." I really thought they would put a lot of energy into promoting her as a logical successor. And even that would have been eleventh-hour politicking. The party should have been cultivating younger candidates years and years ago. AOC and her "squad" notwithstanding, US liberal politics is far behind the curve in promoting younger politicians, meaning not elderly.