{"id":23357,"date":"2026-05-28T23:02:30","date_gmt":"2026-05-28T23:02:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/the-bidens-keep-pushing-2024-into-the-spotlight-to-democrats-dismay\/"},"modified":"2026-05-28T23:02:30","modified_gmt":"2026-05-28T23:02:30","slug":"the-bidens-keep-pushing-2024-into-the-spotlight-to-democrats-dismay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/the-bidens-keep-pushing-2024-into-the-spotlight-to-democrats-dismay\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bidens keep pushing 2024 into the spotlight, to Democrats\u2019 dismay"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Democrats want to move on from 2024. The Bidens won\u2019t let them.<\/p>\n

Former first lady Jill Biden put a glaring spotlight back on the debate that ended her husband\u2019s political career while promoting her new memoir. Former President Joe Biden is drawing attention again to his audio interviews with Special Counsel Robert Hur as he sues the Justice Department to prevent their release. And his scandal-ridden son Hunter Biden, whose past Republicans repeatedly weaponized on the campaign trail, is making headlines again \u2014 this time for appearing on a podcast with flame-throwing conspiracy theorist Candace Owens.<\/p>\n

Jill Biden\u2019s stunning admission this week that she thought her embattled husband was having a stroke on the debate stage in June 2024 stood in stark contrast to her positive spin and staunch defense in the moment<\/a>. And it ripped open barely healed wounds from Democrats\u2019 disastrous effort to hold the White House, setting off a fresh round of backward-looking fingerpointing less than a week after the party\u2019s botched autopsy of the 2024 presidential election<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Leading Democrats say it\u2019s an unnecessary distraction as they push to keep their party focused on a critical midterm \u2014 and what voters truly care about.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don’t need to be distracted by what the DNC says about the autopsy. I don’t need to be distracted about anyone’s book,\u201d New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, a Democrat, told reporters on the sidelines of a Democratic National Committee meeting in Washington on Thursday. \u201cWhat I need to do is to focus on making a difference in the lives of people. And that’s what I think they’re getting really frustrated about, is all this nonsense. I don’t think the average Democratic voter, honestly, particularly in New Mexico, gives a damn about that book or the debate anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lujan Grisham, who sat on the national advisory board for the 2024 Biden-Harris campaign, stressed that she didn\u2019t mean \u201cany disrespect\u201d to Jill Biden and later said she is a \u201cbig Joe Biden fan.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Former<\/p>\n

Still, Jill Biden\u2019s confession that she was \u201cfrightened\u201d<\/a> by her husband\u2019s debate performance landed with a thud among former Biden White House and campaign staffers who were told in the moment to treat the then-president\u2019s halting and haphazard debate performance as little more than a blip.<\/p>\n

Meghan Hays, a former special assistant to Joe Biden in the White House who left before the 2024 reelection bid, cautioned that the timing and context of the former first lady\u2019s memoir risks dealing Democrats a setback at a time when they\u2019re on an electoral hot streak.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that they need to sell books, and I think that Dr. Biden wants her story out there,\u201d she said on C-SPAN\u2019s \u201cCeasefire,\u201d hosted by Blue Light News\u2019s Dasha Burns.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is not welcome from Democrats,\u201d Hays said. \u201cWe have a lot of momentum in our favor \u2026 and when we get pulled back into conversations about age and the election in \u201824, it\u2019s never gonna be a good place for Democrats. I think it\u2019s a tough place to be.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hays wasn\u2019t the only former Biden official who expressed frustration.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy reaction was basically: \u2018Welcome to the club.\u2019 Every person across America and in your administration wondered the same thing, and instead of acknowledging that, we were told for days to ignore it \u2014 that it was just a bad night, just an anomaly,\u201d said another former Biden White House staffer, granted anonymity to speak candidly.<\/p>\n

Still, several prominent Democratic strategists, former party leaders and past Biden-Harris officials downplayed the significance of this latest bout of 2024 relitigating, dismissing it as little more than white noise that wouldn\u2019t have much effect on the party\u2019s prospects in 2026 or 2028.<\/p>\n

\u201cLet everyone finish venting about \u201824 now and get it out of their systems,\u201d former Rep. Susan Wild (D-Pa.), who narrowly lost her reelection that year as Trump carried her state, said in a text message to Blue Light News, adding that \u201cvoters won\u2019t remember any of this in 2028.\u201d<\/p>\n

But, she added, \u201cI am a bit unhappy about the DNC\u2019s delayed release of the autopsy of 2024. We don\u2019t need those reminders in writing and we certainly don\u2019t need to give the Republicans any more oppo to remind voters of everything we did wrong in 2024.\u201d<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for the Bidens declined to comment. A former Biden White House and campaign staffer, granted anonymity to speak candidly, said in a text message that the party writ large has moved on.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile it feels painful and traumatic for those who had to deal with this at the time, the public is focused on the current president and related concerns: high gas prices, immigration concerns, [Jeffrey] Epstein,\u201d the person said.<\/p>\n

The renewed firestorm around the two-year-old debate comes as other moves by the Biden clan force Democrats to again confront his decline in real time.<\/p>\n

Joe Biden is suing the Trump administration<\/a> in an effort to block the release of recorded interviews with a ghostwriter that were obtained by the Justice Department during a now-shuttered probe of whether he had mishandled classified information. But his effort to stop the tapes and transcripts from going public is dredging up another painful encounter that derailed his second term hopes.<\/p>\n

Hur chose not to charge the president in that investigation because he believed jurors would likely see Biden as an<\/a>\u201celderly man with a poor memory,\u201d a moment that set off a political firestorm. The audio of Hur\u2019s interviews with Biden, released last year, backed that up<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As Biden tries to keep those tapes under wraps, his son made recent moves to draw more attention to himself and his family.<\/p>\n

Hunter Biden has triggered a raft of headlines in recent days after he taped a podcast with Owens, the conspiratorial conservative influencer who has repeatedly attacked the Biden family and the former president\u2019s mental capacity. In the interview, Owens promised not to disparage Joe Biden and even commended Hunter Biden for defending his father. But the widespread media coverage<\/a> still generated backlash within the party.<\/p>\n

\"Hunter<\/p>\n

Some Democrats are simply ready to sweep the Bidens into the dustbin of history so their party can move forward.<\/p>\n

\u201cNobody wants to relitigate the worst debate performance since the Greek Republic. Why are we talking about this? Why are we talking about Hunter Biden? Why is Hunter Biden talking about Hunter Biden?\u201d said Pete Giangreco, a longtime Democratic strategist who worked on Barack Obama\u2019s campaigns but was not involved in Joe Biden\u2019s or Kamala Harris\u2019 bids.<\/p>\n

\u201cYour time has passed, move on. \u2026 The Republicans and all their super PACs are going to outspend us three-to-one, four-to-one \u2014 that\u2019s what we need to be focused on,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

But the Bidens \u2014 and Harris \u2014 show no signs of slinking back into the shadows. Harris, who released a book last year criticizing the president with whom she served<\/a>, has signaled she could mount a third presidential bid<\/a> in 2028. Joe Biden, for his part, has begun endorsing his former administration officials who are running in midterm contests; one of his picks, former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, won her gubernatorial primary last week in the key swing state of Georgia. Jill Biden is embarking on a book tour to promote her work.<\/p>\n

And other Democrats say they\u2019re less frustrated at the Biden family itself than they are with their party\u2019s most vocal factions, which descend into a circular firing squad<\/a> with each drip of new information about 2024.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would rather not have to talk about it. But they both have the right to do what they’re doing,\u201d Maria Cardona, a prominent Democratic strategist who backed Biden\u2019s reelection bid, told Blue Light News on the sidelines of the DNC meeting. \u201cBut we also are in control with how we react to it. So let them do their thing. They are no longer in control of the party. We don’t have to rehash every single word that comes out of it.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Democrats want to move on from 2024. The Bidens won\u2019t let them. Former first lady Jill Biden put a glaring spotlight back on the debate that ended her husband\u2019s political career while promoting her new memoir. Former President Joe Biden is drawing attention again to his audio interviews with Special Counsel Robert Hur as he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23358,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23357"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23357\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}