Former DNC chair Jaime Harrison has a new podcast. His first guest? Hunter Biden, the man many blame for playing a major role in the downfall of the last Democratic president.
If an excerpt from that chat is any indication, neither guest nor host took many lessons from 2024.
Hunter Biden, whose shockingly bad behaviour (stemming from past trauma and drug addiction) evolved into a fanatical, loyalty-driven effort to insulate his father from criticism, now blames that same criticism for sinking his father’s career. So did Harrison, who graduated from losing a Senate race in South Carolina as a candidate to losing multiple Senate races, a presidential race and House races as DNC chair.
The younger Biden reportedly spent much of 2024 managing Democratic allies’ access to his father and encouraging him to stay in the race when polling showed he was on track to deliver the party a historic defeat, much worse than the one endured by his vice president on election night.
But in the interview with Harrison, he presented that tunnel vision as a virtue, not a vice, and suggested that his party emulate something it has openly condemned for five years: the refusal of Republicans to break from Donald Trump under any circumstances, including the impeachment trial in the wake of January 6.
Democrats “lost the election because we did not remain loyal to the leader of the party,” Biden summed it up.
The former DNC chair couched his own feelings on the matter when asked by NBC News whether he agreed, but didn’t reject Hunter Biden’s analysis, either.
“If the waters get a little choppy, some of the folks in our party are the fastest to abandon ship, get off in a hurry and then torch the damn ship when they get off,” Harrison told NBC News.
He cautioned: “Not to say that it’s always the right thing that Republicans have done, but sometimes Democrats need to sit back and pause and think about the long-term ramifications of that early abandonment.”
“Because I can tell you, it did not sit well with the base of the party, particularly Black voters,” Harrison continued. “I remember a rally in Georgia right after the debate and people were pissed off. These are middle-aged, older Black men and women who were so upset the party was almost shivving Joe Biden, stabbing him in the back.”
Democratic voters had a right to be angry in the summer of 2024. When Joe Biden revealed himself onstage as unable to follow his opponent’s remarks, whispery and visibly confused, the fear that rippled through both Biden loyalists and the broader Democratic Party base was palpable.
Director Rob Reiner reportedly screamed at Doug Emhoff, husband to Harris, that Biden and his team were going to hand the election to Trump.
The idea that internal party hand-wringing or the hurt feelings of party loyalists caused millions of voters to stay home is not supported by evidence.
Those voters who were furious with their party for supposedly “shivving” Biden would have had the time, place and freedom from the urgency of the moment to make those arguments in favor of loyalty to the president if the Democratic Party — if Jaime Harrison — had put on a real primary. If Biden had been on the debate stage in January instead of June, the debate would have taken place over weeks, instead of a matter of hours or minutes in some households.
This, of course, did not happen. Biden hid from long-form sitdowns with tough interviewers and conducted heavily managed public appearances until it was too late. Then his team’s demand for “loyalty” fell on the deaf ears of frontline representatives and senators who had their own futures and campaigns to think about.
MAGA Republicans should be thrilled to hear this (though maybe they though calibrate their enthusiasm, given how unlikely anyone is to listen to this duo).
The only thing more destructive for a political party than blind loyalty to a winner could be blind loyalty to a loser.
