The Democratic Trust Deficit
Voters may rent us their vote in 2026. In 2028, we'll need them to trust us.
It’s like they never left.
The Bidens are back in the news. Jill Biden has a book out this week where she tries to set the record straight about the debate, President Biden’s health, and his decision to run again.
In an interview with CBS News, Jill Biden said the following about her reaction to the debate.
I don’t know what happened. As I watched it, I thought, ‘Oh, my God, he’s having a stroke.’ And it scared me to death.
Biden went on to say that she had never seen him like that before or since, and in the book, she writes about how it was possible that the president may have accidentally taken codeine cough syrup or Ambien.
These comments infuriated many, including a lot of former Biden staffers, because they were such a stark contrast to what she said publicly after the debate and the way the Biden high command reacted to anyone who called out Joe Biden’s abysmal and alarming performance in that debate. As someone who was pretty vocal about Biden dropping out after the debate and caught a lot of slings and arrows from the Biden White House, it was stunning to see Jill Biden essentially admit that she and everyone else had been gaslighting us for years.
The whole thing has reignited a big intra-party fight of 2024 between people who blame Biden for Trump’s return and those who blame the people who wanted Biden to drop out.
Like many of you, I am pretty tired of that debate (perhaps that’s because my social media mentions are still filled with people very, very mad at me for thinking Biden should drop out of the race). That conversation is relevant for the history books, and at some point, I would love to see some of the people involved take even a modicum of responsibility for their actions.
But Jill Biden’s reemergence and her admission that she was lying to all of us in 2024 is emblematic of a much larger problem that still plagues the Democratic Party with implications for 2026, 2028 and beyond.
The broken trust that comes from the President and most of the party telling the public not to believe their eyes when it comes to Biden’s age, and that they were silly to think that an 82-year-old shouldn’t run for reelection.
The party’s approach to Biden’s age was part of a broader pattern. They told voters that inflation wasn’t real, that a genocide wasn’t happening in Gaza, and that they had a plan to win when they never did.
Working to rebuild that trust needs to be at the center of the Democratic Party’s strategy.
A Broken Trust
Much digital ink has been spilled in this newsletter and elsewhere about the Democratic Party’s brand problem. For much of the 18 months since the 2024 election, Democratic Party approval has been at or near an all-time low.
To use a technical term, the party’s approval has been in the toilet.
