Biden World Starts Its Rehabilitation Tour
And not everyone is thrilled.
Biden aides want back in
ROB FLAHERTY, DEPUTY CAMPAIGN MANAGER for Joe Biden and then Kamala Harris, re-emerged this week when he took to the New York Times opinion section to argue that Democrats need to become more culturally relevant and reach people who don’t consume political news.
His article provided some modest insights into the current media and digital landscape and the changes that Democrats need to make within it. And it raised more than a few eyebrows among Flaherty’s contemporaries, who wondered whether the person in charge of shaping the Democratic party’s digital media strategy over the past few years was best suited to be charting out its future course.
But Flaherty is just one example of a larger phenomenon happening in the party (and unnerving some members within it): More and more former Biden staffers and officials are coming back into the public eye, popping up on cable news, opining on podcasts, and penning opinion essays in top newspapers. The desire to re-engage in the public square is strong enough that some former officials have begun soliciting communications professionals for help.
Brian Deese, who served as director of the National Economic Council during the first two years of the Biden administration, published his own guest essay in the Times this week arguing that President Donald Trump’s tariff agenda would hurt the U.S. auto industry. Former National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, who has largely stayed quiet since Biden left office, made an appearance on ABC’s This Week. Former Secretary of State Antony Blinken sat down with CNBC earlier this month for his first interview since leaving office (and was today’s guest on The Bulwark Podcast with Tim Miller).
Even Biden himself wrote an op-ed this week in USA Today honoring Pope Francis. And tonight, former Vice President Kamala Harris will take the stage at a gala event in San Francisco for what Politico described as her “most extensive public remarks since losing to Trump last fall.” Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz—who, to be fair, has had plenty to say since the election—has continued his media appearances, with a lengthy public discussion this week at Harvard University and a profile in the Atlantic. Tonight, as this newsletter is hitting your inbox, he is joining Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) for a MoveOn-hosted livestream on Trump 2.0’s first 100 days.
Losing elections doesn’t mean politicians and their top aides are cast off to political Siberia never to be heard from again. But the re-emergence of these Biden figures is coming at a delicate time, with the Democratic party still confronting questions about how to deal with the 2024 election and the party’s handling of the ex-president’s health and capacities.
Many party members have been unable to shake their belief that Biden and his top aides purposefully misled the public, prioritizing their own egos and professional ambitions over defeating Trump. Some view the recent flurry of activity from Biden aides as a frustrating attempt to rehabilitate their public images and maintain influence, along with the lucrative consulting contracts that can come with that influence. While Democrats acknowledge that everyone has a right to defend their record, they worry that the visibility of some top Biden decision makers only makes it more challenging for the party to move on.
“Clinton, Obama, and Biden each represent the past, and it’s time for Democrats to reinvent the party for the future,” said former Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.). Phillips was one of the few Democratic officials warning in 2023 that voters thought Biden was too old. And he ultimately launched a primary challenge against him. “The Democratic arsonists now acting like firefighters should use their skills to light a fire under next-generation, common-sense candidates who can lead that process.”
But there is a flip side to this argument, too. By virtue of having run the campaign, of having sat in the White House, of having been thrust into the modern media climate, these Biden figures have insights and knowledge that others may lack. And while Biden himself may remain an albatross around the party’s neck, there were elements of his record—and of the campaign that Harris ended up running—that deserve defending.
In an interview with The Bulwark, Flaherty said he wrote the Times piece because “there’s a lot of important lessons that we learned in this election that are worth sharing and worth having a conversation about.” Sullivan, for his part, told ABC that he “stayed quiet” after he left the White House because he “didn’t want to be a backseat driver.” But he added: “When you see the car start careening towards the cliff, you got to say something.”
“I think there’s probably a relationship [between] Trump starting to crater and these folks starting to feel more safe offering critiques,” said a Democratic strategist, referring to the president’s softening approval rating. “I think the honest-to-God truth is there is still a lot of feelings from Democrats about the Biden folks and perceived shortcomings politically in the last eighteen months or so of the Biden presidency. So these folks are incentivized to remake their public image a bit.”
SEPARATE FROM THE DEBATE over image rehabilitation is one about whether the advice and commentary being offered by Biden alumni is all that helpful. A number of former Harris campaign staffers told The Bulwark that they found Flaherty’s op-ed frustrating, noting that it’s been obvious for years that Republicans were crushing Democrats in their efforts to reach apolitical audiences. The fundamental problem, they argued, was not a lack of imagination within the ranks; it was that for too long they stuck with a geriatric candidate who was incapable of effectively communicating.
“Its like a coach who had Michael Jordan on their bench and he says to the media, ‘Well I had him on the bench, but me not playing him isn’t the reason we lost,’” said a Democratic consultant who worked closely with the Harris campaign, referring the Flaherty’s op-ed. “Why should people take your fucking advice?”
In his interview with The Bulwark, Flaherty said being more literate in digital media wasn’t a challenge specific to Biden, but rather a “stylistic adjustment that a lot of Democratic candidates need to make.”
“There were certainly things that the campaign should have done better in both the Biden era and the Harris era. And there were things the campaign did well in the Biden era and the Harris era,” he added, noting that it would require a “partywide effort” to rethink Democrats’ style of politics.
Whether that partywide effort will include Biden alumni is unclear.
“I can’t speak for other folks,” Flaherty said when asked about the re-emergence of Biden officials. “This is sort of a thing I’ve been thinking about for a while.”
🫏 Donkey Business:
— I don’t know if this political moment is necessarily screaming for a former Biden official to try to take the reins, but former Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo isn’t ruling it out. Asked at a University of Chicago Institute of Politics event whether she is considering running for president in 2028, Raimondo gave a straightforward answer: “Yes.”
Raimondo, the former governor of Rhode Island, compared this moment in the Democratic party to the twelve years between the elections of Jimmy Carter and then Bill Clinton. “I don’t know where we are in that cycle,” she said. “The stakes are high and this is going to be really hard. And for us to have a chance, it has to be just that right person at that right moment to make it happen.”
— Semafor’s David Weigel has a report about the ongoing efforts to oust David Hogg from his role as one of the vice chairs of the Democratic National Committee after he doubled down on his commitment to spend $20 million from a PAC he leads on primary challenges to incumbent Democrats.
Weigel reports that Kalyn Free, a Native American attorney and party activist who lost the vice chair spot to Hogg, is now challenging that defeat, and that the DNC’s credentials committee will meet on May 12 to consider her case. Free is arguing that she lost a “fatally flawed election that violated the DNC Charter and discriminated against three women of color candidates,” and asks for “two new vice chair elections.” If DNC members side with Free, it could give those who are furious with Hogg an opportunity to get rid of him.
— If you don’t subscribe to Adrian Carrasquillo’s Huddled Masses, you are truly missing out. Adrian’s edition out today was an especially excellent piece about how House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has privately discouraged Democratic lawmakers from making additional trips to El Salvador to advocate for the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia and the other men wrongly shipped to the country. “They want to let the El Salvador stuff slow down,” a senior House staffer told Adrian.
Jeffries’s office denied the report after it was published, saying Jeffries is committed to fighting for the release of Abrego Garcia. But the episode is emblematic of the debate within the Democratic party about how much it should focus on mass deportations compared to other issues like the economy. And as Adrian writes, “Jeffries’s eagerness to sidestep it suggests that the party is far from a consensus.”
My open tabs:
— Is Trump breaking up his winning coalition?
Get off Biden's case. He was not a criminal and he WAS SANE! The FELON who ran against him is NOT SANE. ENOUGH already!!
"how much it should focus on mass deportations compared to other issues like the economy"? I'm with Sarah: This is a false choice. What's important about the mass deportations is the violations of the Constitution. People are getting what due process means. It's not an immigration issue, which favors Trump.