David Plouffe, a top Democratic adviser and White House aide to former President Barack Obama, laid the blame for the 2024 election squarely on former President Joe Biden in a new book chronicling the striking lead-up to the party’s calamitous defeat.
“It’s all Biden,” Plouffe told reporters Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson, the authors of “Original Sin,” per an excerpt in The Guardian. “He totally fucked us.”
The book, which is one of several to document Biden’s deterioration and last-minute decision to drop out of the presidential race, highlights Democrats’ long-standing concerns about the former president’s health and the consequences of his refusal to relinquish his candidacy.
After a disastrous debate performance in June 2024 exposed Biden’s faltering ability to make policy statements and fueled doubts about his fitness for the presidency, he ultimately waited three additional weeks before stepping aside and endorsing then-Vice President Kamala Harris.
That delay, in addition to a lengthy cover-up of Biden’s health issues, was catastrophic, many Democrats — including Plouffe — have emphasized.
“[It] was a fucking nightmare,” he said, of Harris’ attempts to field a competitive campaign in just 107 days.
Plouffe, who worked as a Harris campaign adviser, has taken aim at Biden obliquely in the past as well. Previously, he posted on X about Democrats’ “devastating” loss, noting that they had to dig out of a “deep hole” from the get-go.
He’s among roughly 200 sources that Tapper and Thompson spoke with for their book, which also revealed that concerns about Biden’s mobility were so dire, advisers considered having him use a wheelchair during the campaign.
