Dems maintain they’re 'looking forward' as questions about Biden loom

Democrats thought they were done with Joe Biden. Now, new revelations about his mental and physical decline while in office are putting a harsh spotlight back on him — and Democrats’ failings last year — at a critical moment in the party’s attempts to move on.

On the Hill, Democrats rallying against the GOP megabill that could slash Medicaid benefits and enact sweeping tax cuts instead ran into blaring headlines this week about Biden’s deteriorating condition and doomed campaign.

“It’s a discussion that was overdue. I don’t know if it’s helpful, but it’s unavoidable,” said Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.), the 78-year-old who called for Biden to step aside from the ticket last year.

In interviews with more than two dozen other Democrats on Capitol Hill, lawmakers met questions about Biden’s campaign failings and mental lapses with heavy sighs and topical pivots. Many talked about "looking forward" — to combating President Donald Trump, to retaking control of Congress — in a sign of how awkward and potentially damaging the recriminations about Biden have become.

Many in the party had treated Biden with kid gloves in the aftermath of Kamala Harris’ loss to Trump, with lawmakers publicly and privately lauding Harris’ effort and eliding Biden’s drag on the ticket.

Now, most in the party are desperate to talk about anything else.

“Our energy needs to be in our priorities to be looking forward, not backwards,” said Rep. Greg Stanton (D-Ariz.). “This relitigation is backwards looking, and that's not very helpful to us.”

Top Democratic congressional leaders also shrugged off Biden when confronted this week with the latest divulgences about his mental and physical acuity — and whether they helped cover them up.

“We’re not looking backward, we’re looking forward at this moment in time,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said in a Tuesday press conference. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer echoed him hours later: “We’re just looking forward.”

A Biden spokesperson declined to comment.

But the party's problems aren't going away with Biden. All week, while contending with news coverage and a forthcoming book about the past president, the party was also confronting turmoil at the Democratic National Committee over a DNC official’s effort to challenge “asleep at the wheel” Democrats. House Democrats raced to shut down a rogue Trump impeachment effort by Rep. Shri Thanedar (D-Mich.). And there was a spate of negative press about one of the party’s own senators, John Fetterman.

Some Democrats welcomed the renewed conversations about Biden, worried their party has yet to fully reckon with last year’s electoral shellacking. It has been a point of tension in the party since last year, flaring up for some House members at the White House Christmas party. One Democratic lawmaker approached Harris in the photo line to tell her “we love you,” according to a person familiar with the interaction and granted anonymity to speak freely. When the lawmaker got to Biden, the then-president asked, “Well, do you love me, too?”

Even today, there are Democrats who think the party should be doing more to learn from their mistakes in 2024.

“Joe Biden clearly just was not capable of delivering the message we needed to deliver in 2024,” said Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) “Why did it take so long? Why was it so hard to recognize that and make the change? So I guess to some degree it is helpful to have that conversation.”

“It’s OK for us to come to grips with our failures so that we can make the changes necessary to win. And while I am very much focused on the future, I'm concerned that there's still a lot of denial in our party about how badly we've lost,” said Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.), who was one of the first Democrats to call for Biden to step aside last summer.

He added: “Some of the same people who just want to move on are the same people who are basically in denial that we lost.”

Others like Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.) acknowledged that the former president clearly lost a step, but didn’t believe it was a death knell to the party’s prospects of winning future elections.

“Look, most Democrats … had no idea that Biden had lost some of it — not all of it — but he lost some of it. It's one of those things that happens in all aspects of life. You don't want it to happen at that level, but it does,” Cleaver said. “I think some people in the White House who were trying to be helpful, didn't talk to the right people who … could have addressed it a little better. But it's not like that's going to destroy the Democratic Party.”

But their views are far from the prevailing ones. Instead, on Capitol Hill, Democrats were rushing to shift the public’s focus to the House GOP’s megabill — and a moment of unity for Democrats as they lined up in opposition to Trump’s domestic agenda. Ideological disagreements on taxes, immigration and entitlements have largely been paved over with the legislation giving Democrats plenty to oppose.

“We have more important things to talk about,” said Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Minn.) when asked questions about revelations about Biden’s mental acuity this week — a far cry from where she was some 10 months ago, when she joined an ever-growing caucus of Democrats calling for the then-president to leave the Democratic ticket.

Others saw this moment as another chance to take a dig at the GOP.

“There's nothing more unifying than watching Republicans try to rip [health care] away and absolutely destroy our economy," said Rep. Hillary Scholten (D-Mich.).

"So I think important conversations are being had about the values that unite us.”

Andrew Howard contributed to this report.