Democrat hopefuls for 2028 are already running into a brick wall.
The Biden legacy is hanging around their necks like an anvil.
And Pete Buttigieg watched his town hall go off the rails as the 2028 race starts to take shape.
Presidential hopefuls face tough questions about Biden’s condition
The 2028 presidential election may be years away, but potential Democratic candidates are already hitting the campaign trail and facing a barrage of uncomfortable questions.
Pete Buttigieg, the former Transportation Secretary under President Biden, got a taste of what’s to come during a recent town hall with veterans in Iowa.
The first question reporters threw at him wasn’t about policy or his vision for America. Instead, he was asked point-blank: “Did President Joe Biden experience cognitive decline while in office?”
Buttigieg tried to sidestep the question by responding, “Every time I needed something from him from the West Wing, I got it.”
But when pressed further on whether Democrats would have been better off if Biden hadn’t run for re-election, Buttigieg finally conceded, “Maybe. Right now, with the benefit of hindsight, I think most people would agree that that’s the case.”
The exchange highlights the predicament facing Democrats with White House ambitions. They must navigate the politically treacherous terrain of acknowledging Biden’s apparent mental decline without appearing disloyal to the former president.
New book exposes White House cover-up of Biden’s condition
The questions come amid new revelations detailed in the book Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again, which alleges a deliberate cover-up of Biden’s deteriorating mental state during his presidency.
Biden dropped out of the 2024 race last July, just one month after his catastrophic debate performance against Donald Trump that left millions of Americans shocked by his confused and rambling responses.
By then, the damage was done. Vice President Kamala Harris went on to lose the general election to Trump, and Democrats lost control of the Senate and failed to recapture the House.
Different Democrats, different answers
How potential 2028 candidates are handling these questions varies widely depending on their proximity to the Biden administration.
Rep. Ro Khanna of California, who was once one of Biden’s staunchest supporters during the 2024 cycle, has made a complete about-face.
“To rebuild trust, Democrats must be honest. In light of the facts that have come out, Joe Biden should not have run for reelection, and we should have had an open primary,” Khanna wrote on social media.
In a statement, Khanna added, “I have always admired Biden’s resilience and the grit he has shown after the loss of his son — and often compared that strength to Rocky. I was a surrogate for the president of my party, whose policies I backed.”
“But obviously we did not have the full picture, and in hindsight it is painfully obvious that President Biden should have made the patriotic decision not to run,” Khanna concluded.
Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut was equally blunt when asked by Politico whether Biden had experienced cognitive decline, responding, “there’s no doubt about it.”
Murphy didn’t mince words about the impact of Biden staying in the race too long: “I mean, isn’t that self-evident? We lost. Obviously, in retrospect, we should have done something different.”
Some still playing political games
Not all potential candidates are being so forthcoming.
Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, another possible White House contender who served as a top Biden surrogate in 2024, tried to dodge responsibility during a CNN interview this week.
When asked about Biden’s cognitive abilities, Whitmer claimed ignorance: “As a governor in a state halfway across the country who was working her tail off, 160 stops on a bus tour that I had lined up through swing states, I was busy working. I was busy doing the voter connection and registration, and so can’t speak to that directly.”
She added, “I didn’t see the president frequently.”
But then Whitmer threw in a vague acknowledgment that raised more questions than answers: “It does make me question a lot of the things I thought I knew over the course of the last year and a half.”
Voters want honesty, not political games
Longtime New Hampshire radio host Chris Ryan told Fox News that Democratic voters are “still trying to sort through what happened and why.”
Ryan explained that how candidates address Biden’s decline “is one of the top things that they do want to know about,” noting that “it’s different for each potential candidate based on their level of proximity to President Biden.”
The grilling comes as Biden himself pushed back against accusations of cognitive decline during an appearance on ABC’s The View last week.
But with the revelations in the Original Sin book and the firsthand observations of millions of Americans who watched the debate, Democrats hoping to run in 2028 will need to find a way to acknowledge reality while charting their own path forward.
As Buttigieg noted after his tough questioning in Iowa, “We’re not in a position to wallow in hindsight. We’ve got to get ready for some fundamental tests of the future of this country and this party.”
The question remains: Will Democratic voters trust candidates who refused to speak the truth about Biden’s condition when it mattered most?
