Democrats, You’re Doing It Wrong. Again.
Deal with the news about Biden quickly & embrace generational change. Then shut the fuck up and get to work opposing Trump.
We’re four months into Trump’s second term, and the Democratic Party is still sleepwalking through a national emergency.
While Trump consolidates power, installs loyalists across federal agencies, and carries out his revenge agenda with methodical cruelty, Democrats are once again obsessed with the wrong crisis. The headlines are full of outrage, not over Trump’s authoritarianism, but over Joe Biden’s final year in office. Suddenly, everyone wants to unpack whether Biden was mentally and physically fit to run for reelection. Spoiler: he wasn’t. And the people around him knew it.
As much as we may love Joe Biden, and respect his legacy, it seems clear that he and his team fucked up and miscalculated. Bigly. Yesterday’s sad news only drives this home.
Let’s get this out of the way: Yes, Biden was cognitively diminished during his final year. Yes, his inner circle tried to downplay it. Yes, this is a scandal. It’s a betrayal of public trust, and it will forever stain his legacy. I’m sorry to say that; I like ol’ Joe. He accomplished an enormous amount of good during his time in office. And now he may be remembered more for this deception than for his deeds, and that’s unfortunate. But if we don’t pivot—and fast—toward the real emergency, we’re going to lose more than the White House or Congress. We’re going to lose the country.
In 2020, Joe Biden promised to be a “transitional president.” He gave voters the impression he would stabilize the country, undo Trump’s damage, and then step aside to let a new generation rise. He was very successful at those first two promises, but he failed at the third.
Biden ran for reelection in 2024, despite obvious signs of mental and physical fatigue. According to reporting from The New York Times, Vanity Fair, and The New Statesman, the White House increasingly shielded Biden from unscripted interactions and questions about his mental sharpness. His handlers controlled access, canceled public events, and turned the presidency into a carefully choreographed performance—one that many voters saw through. And he lost.
Look–if we had all the time in the world (and we don’t), this is an old-fashioned scandal that would have brought down a president, put some senior aides out of work and possibly behind bars, and it would have scarred his reputation forever. It still will. It was wrong, and we can’t ignore that.
But again, I say—we don’t have time for sideshows.
Yesterday’s breaking news only adds complexity. On May 18, The New York Times revealed that Biden has been diagnosed with prostate cancer. This is devastating, and not the final act that Biden deserved. We can pray for his speedy recovery, while also acknowledging that mistakes were made. Those who will yell it’s too soon don’t yet understand the assignment: we need to process this information while we move faster against Trump.
There’s no public evidence that the diagnosis occurred while he was still in office, but in the context of what we now know, the timing raises real questions. If his health was in decline during the campaign, it only strengthens the argument that he should not have run again—and that those closest to him failed him, the party, and the nation. If somehow Biden had been re-elected, he’d be stepping down right now, today.
Hubris, ego, and bad advice carried Biden into a campaign he shouldn’t have pursued. And we’re all living with the fallout.
The people who enabled this decision—who closed ranks, ignored red flags, and spun fairy tales for the press—should not be leading the Democratic Party now. They’ve proven they can’t be trusted with power. They should never be allowed leadership in the party or any campaign, ever again.
Meanwhile, in our hideously real present-day timeline, Trump is back in the Oval Office. And every day that Democrats focus on Biden’s past instead of Trump’s present, they cede ground.
Here’s the thing: I don’t give a fuck about Joe Biden’s cognitive decline at this point. But I am terrified about Trump’s very similar challenges–and the complete lack of media interest in them. With Trump, we’d be only too lucky if his cognitive decline was the worst of our challenges–but it’s not. We all know it’s not.
The threat of Trump and MAGA authoritarianism is not theoretical. This is fascism with a calendar. Trump lied during the campaign and said he knew nothing about Project 2025. According to the Project 2025 Tracker, about 42% of the Project 2025 plan has been implemented, with more happening every day. How can we possibly afford an intra-party food fight while democracy dies before our eyes?
The Democratic response is still fractured. Still reactive. Still tangled up in blame games about what went wrong last year.
We cannot afford this. Not now.
If you’re wondering whether the Democratic Party is actually learning anything, look no further than the recent treatment of David Hogg.
The Parkland school shooting survivor and activist was elected Vice Chair of the DNC’s Youth Council in a grassroots, enthusiastic campaign. But now, party leadership is moving to void that election—along with the concurrent election of Malcolm Kenyatta—citing procedural technicalities. The final vote hasn’t happened yet, but the message already feels chilling: step out of line, and the establishment pushes back.
Why? Hogg was too vocal in his call for generational change. Because he dared to say the quiet part out loud: the Democratic Party has a leadership problem. It’s old, it’s stale, and it keeps losing.
In Lauren Gambino’s article in The Guardian, Hogg states this as clear as day:
Now, Hogg argues, is the moment for the party to act with urgency – and accountability, after leading Democrats brushed aside voter concerns about Joe Biden’s age and ability to run for a second term.
“People felt like we were not honest with them,” he said. “When they told us the president was too old. We said: ‘No, he’s not.’ And then at the last second: ‘Yes, he is.’ And then when they told us prices were too high, we said: ‘No, they aren’t. Look at this graph.’
“It doesn’t matter what the data says if that is not what people feel,” he added. “What you have to respond to is what people feel and explain what you’re doing today.”
This is exactly the kind of insight the party needs to incorporate as soon as fucking possible. Hogg wanted to make the message clear that the times require every elected member to do their part—no seat-warmers or lilly-livered incumbents need remain in power. It’s all hands on deck, or GTFO.
Instead of seeing Hogg as a rising star, the party treated him like a threat. Instead of embracing his urgency, they punished it. The message is loud and clear: if you challenge the status quo, we’ll shut you down.
That’s political malpractice. And it’s happening while Trumpism barrels forward.
Let’s stop pretending this is about “experience.” The real issue is power.
Democratic leaders have clung to power far past their primes, even when the moment clearly demands fresh leadership. The average age of top Democratic figures is decades out of sync with the voters they need to win. The same consultants, strategists, and power brokers who misread the 2024 electorate are still shaping messaging, still controlling the money, still steering the ship into the iceberg.
The result? A party that cannot get out of its own way. A party that talks about protecting democracy while refusing to protect its own credibility.
Joe Biden’s final year in office should have been a controlled handoff to Vice President Harris so that she could run as an incumbent. It wasn’t. And the refusal to face that reality handed Trump the space to return.
It’s not enough to say “we tried our best.” Not when the stakes are this high.
At this crucial moment in time, we need our best, sharpest players in the game. We need an A-Team, not a retirement home. Silent Generation leaders like RBG, Feinstein, and Biden had the hubris to assume they were indispensable. They and the retirement-age Boomers aren’t stepping aside to allow younger leaders to rise.
GenX folks like me are nearing retirement and will likely never see a real opportunity to lead. But with five decades-plus under my belt, I can see how we're disenfranchising young voters, the very ones we need to embolden and empower if we're going to shift our current trajectory.
We don’t need unity for unity’s sake. We need competence. We need fire. We need strategic minds who understand how to build coalitions, organize digitally, and speak with moral clarity.
We need a massive housecleaning across Democratic leadership. We need older politicians to mentor—not block—rising leaders. We need the people who failed to see the 2024 writing on the wall to step aside and let new voices lead the fight.
The lesson is clear. We must learn it, quickly process it, and then move forward with new leadership and strength.
Joe Biden should not have run for reelection. The people who encouraged him to do so should be held accountable and barred from running anything again. But that is a process story, and none of it changes where we are now.
Trump is president. The fascist project is underway. And the Democratic Party is still debating whether to say the word “crisis” out loud.
We don’t have time for therapy sessions. We need action.
We need to learn the lesson, clean house, and rebuild a party that can win again—not in 2028, but now. At the state level. In the courts. In the streets. In our messaging. In the hearts and minds of voters who are desperate for someone to fight for them.
So Democrats: for the love of God, acknowledge that Joe Biden running for re-election was a bad strategy and a bad idea. His mental and physical health sucked, and he and others lied about it to cling to power. It’s just the obvious truth.
And then SHUT THE FUCK UP ABOUT IT.
Get to work. Embrace change. Focus on Trump. Focus on saving the nation now!
Because our only other choice is to point fingers at each other while we’re all rotting in CECOT.
God help us all.
Well fucking said, Lawrence!
The only real point in talking about past failures is to learn how to avoid future failures.