Liberal New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg responded to recent revelations of former President Joe Biden's inner circle covering up for his mental decline, arguing that the Democratic Party engaged in "groupthink" and refused to allow dissent, especially in the critical final months of the campaign.
"There was certainly some covering-up going on, especially among Biden’s insular inner circle," Goldberg wrote in a Times column published on Friday. She was responding to a book by CNN's Jake Tapper and Axios' Alex Thompson revealing the Biden team's "cover-up" for the former president.
"But more than lying to the public about Biden’s increasing infirmity, I think too many Democrats were lying to themselves," Goldberg wrote. "The ‘original sin’ that party leaders now need to grapple with is their tendency toward groupthink, inertia and an extreme and wildly counterproductive risk aversion."
The book, "Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again," included revelations that aides discussed the possibility of Biden needing a wheelchair if he was elected to a second term and that the former president didn't recognize A-list actor George Clooney at a political fundraiser in June.
Goldberg, who also raised questions about Biden's cognitive ability in the months before the election, said that the Democratic Party's senior leadership is facing a reckoning for denying those concerns.
"For many people, Republicans especially, the Democratic Party’s ongoing insistence that Biden was basically fine looks like a fraud committed against the electorate," Goldberg wrote.
"But while his closest associates might have hidden the worst of the erosion, it was plain enough to anyone willing to see it," she said. "Again and again, voters told pollsters that the president was too old to run for re-election. If ordinary people recognized the problem, why couldn’t the insiders?"
Goldberg argued that the normalization of "gerontocracy" in American politics, while one explanation for the Democratic Party's refusal to come to terms with Biden's mental decline, is not as comprehensive an answer as its tendency toward "groupthink."
"They needed less deference and more courage," Goldberg said of House Democrats who refused to speak out on Biden's mental decline. "They still do."