In a candid moment that reflects the chaos enveloping the Democratic Party, Mike Donilon, a former top advisor to Joe Biden, declared during a discussion at Harvard University that the Democratic Party “lost its mind” after Biden’s disastrous debate performance last summer.
But I’m sure that doesn’t mean what you think it means. He was actually chastising his party for abandoning Biden.
“Lots of people have terrible debates,” he insisted. “Usually, the party doesn’t lose its mind, but that’s what happened here. It melted down.”
It’s astonishing to witness this level of disconnect within the Democratic establishment, given the evidence that Biden's debate performance wasn't simply a rough patch but rather a pivotal turning point in presidential politics.
The New York Post has more:
Donilon, who has known Biden for more than four decades, described the Democratic Party’s reaction as “insane.”
“I think the party lost its mind,” he said. “If you ask people about this period of time, they’ll tell you Biden was losing the polls, he was going to lose. … They were saying this in a margin-of-error race.”
He added he had never seen a situation where a candidate was down three points nationally in the summer of a general election and his party decided he could not win.
“But that’s what happened, right?” Donilon said. “If you actually go and look at the polling in the first couple of days after the debate, the margin between Trump and Biden got closer. It didn’t get bigger.”
He discussed focus groups that convened on the night of the debate, noting while they believed Trump won overall, they voiced concerns about both candidates.
“They will say they’re worried about Biden’s age, but they’ll also say something else,” Donilon said. “They were really worried about Trump. They were worried about the fact he said he wouldn’t accept the results of the election. They were worried that he said, ‘I had nothing to do with Jan. 6.’ The sense from him was that he was not on the side of people.”
Sure, I understand why some people remain loyal to Biden, but we’re talking about an unprecedented level of cognitive dysfunction here. To argue that Democrats should have kept Biden as their nominee — after a performance that showcased both his confusion and the party’s desperation — verges on madness. It’s hard to fathom how anyone could believe that keeping him on the ticket would somehow safeguard the party against Trump’s return.
Now, you have to ask yourself why Donilon is still defending Biden. That’s simple. Former DNC insider Lindy Li previously revealed that Donilon was one of the key Biden advisors who was running the White House for Joe.
In response to a question from podcaster Shawn Ryan about who was running the show because Biden wasn’t, Li named names: “Steve Ricchetti, Anita Dunn. Mike Donilon. Ron Klain. Jeff Zients. Bob Bauer, Biden's personal lawyer," she said. “I’m going to get in so much trouble for saying all this — please give me credit for it — but these are the people who ran our country for the last four years.”
Is Donilon upset that Biden got sidelined or that he lost his gig running the country as one of Biden's co-shadow presidents?
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