| While lawmakers on Capitol Hill are working away at President Donald Trump’s big, beautiful bill, Washington’s chattering class is focused on a book about his predecessor. Joshua Green writes today about Original Sin and how looking back distracts from Democrats’ goals. Plus: Customers love sports documentaries, but streaming services are getting more choosy. If this email was forwarded to you, click here to sign up. The plan Democrats want to follow during Donald Trump’s presidency is simple: work together every day to spotlight the many chaotic and unpopular things he’s doing, so that fed-up voters will return them to power. Instead, Democrats have spent the past several weeks pointing fingers at one another over President Joe Biden’s disastrous decision in April 2023 to run for a second term—a choice that paved the way for Trump’s once-unimaginable return to the White House. The cause of this Democratic infighting is a juicy new book, Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again, by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson. The veteran Washington journalists conducted more than 200 interviews with campaign staffers, political strategists, lawmakers and White House officials in an effort to understand why a frail president already in his 80s insisted on running for reelection, and why advisers and party leaders allowed this to happen, despite clear signs of his personal decline and terrible polling. As the authors note, “The public had concluded—long before most Democratic officials, media, and other ‘elites’ had—that he was far too old to do the job.”  In fact, Biden’s physical and cognitive struggles were fully apparent to those who worked closely with him, according to many of the people interviewed for the book. Ever since copies of Original Sin began circulating, Washington chatter has centered on the many jaw-dropping examples the authors furnish of Biden’s growing incapacities. He didn’t recognize the movie star George Clooney, who was headlining his fundraiser. He forgot the names of longtime aides such as his national security adviser Jake Sullivan, whom he called “Steve,” and his communications director Kate Bedingfield, whom he addressed simply as “Press.” He’d lose his train of thought midsentence and speak so softly no one could hear. One Democrat who witnessed Biden late in his White House term told the authors it “was like watching Grandpa who shouldn’t be driving.” A Biden spokesperson told Axios nothing in the book “shows Joe Biden failed to do his job, as the authors have alleged, nor did they prove their allegation that there was a cover-up or conspiracy.” But the few Biden allies who did express doubts about mounting a reelection campaign were “flicked away like lint,” the authors write. One Democrat who didn’t stay quiet was Minnesota Representative Dean Phillips. Alarmed by Biden’s infirmaries and worried he couldn’t win reelection, Phillips tried to enlist a younger generation of ambitious Democrats to run for president. He told the authors that Illinois Governor JB Pritzker and Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer wouldn’t take his calls. On Meet the Press, Phillips suggested that Governors Tim Walz of Minnesota, Tony Evers of Wisconsin and Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania would also be strong contenders. None got in. Eventually, Phillips ran himself but never caught fire.  Phillips, during a roundtable interview in Manchester, New Hampshire, in 2024, ahead of the primaries. Photographer: Mel Musto/Bloomberg Ultimately, Biden’s withdrawal from the race and Trump’s victory over Vice President Kamala Harris highlighted just how damaging the “original sin” of Biden’s decision to run for reelection would be for the Democratic Party. Among other things, the book’s arrival has forced a belated public reckoning. Biden’s announcement on Sunday that he has prostate cancer has only intensified the debate over his fitness for office. Meanwhile, Republicans have eagerly amplified the authors’ claim of a cover-up and worked to sow further discord among Democrats sniping at each other over their failure to oust Biden sooner. “In some ways,” Vice President JD Vance said, “I blame him less than I blame the people around him.” Biden’s return to the headlines has made it even more difficult for Democrats to distance themselves from their former leader and move ahead. Polls show that the party remains stuck in a state of deep unpopularity. A sweeping analysis of the 2024 election by the Democratic data firm Catalist offers a detailed account of the fallout: Almost every demographic group, and particularly key Democrat-leaning ones like Black and Latino voters, shifted away from the party. Why that happened and who’s responsible will no doubt be litigated in the 2028 primaries, which are already quietly taking shape. Democrats will once again face the test they failed in 2024: offer up a new standard-bearer that a majority of Americans actually want to support. | 
