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It seems worth noting that, while this woman will never be in the limelight again, she clearly wants to stay in dem politics. And absolute, unconditional loyalty to the boss, even retroactively, is... something politicians value.
Except Biden isn't the boss anymore, and she's questioning the judgment of the people who are in charge now. If she had just kept her mouth shut then she might have had a future. Then again, maybe she knew she had no future, and figured her only chance was to criticize D leadership for the election loss.
She's trying to sell books likely because she heard (somewhat incorrectly) that it's a good way to earn money. I mean, who is going to hire her? Maybe some kind of lazy progressive nonprofit, but that seems it.
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I mean we can write that off as ‘she’s stupid and bad at her job’.
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I wonder. There does seem to be a power struggle going on between the faction of the party that is, let's take Platner as an example: "we need to ditch the more extreme progressive/idpol/lefty stuff and move towards the centre to appeal to a broader set of voters" versus the "hell no we need fifty Stalins" faction right now, in the wake of Harris' defeat.
Look at what Jean-Pierre was saying in that New Yorker interview about black women being the backbone of the party. I think she's pinning her hopes that the progressivists will come out on top, and she's staking her claim: you guys need the black vote, particularly since the Hispanics/Latinos are ditching you for the other lot. You need the blacks and the LGBT+ set, and if you want to make history by having the First Female President, you need Harris instead of (let's say) Newsom.
So she's signalling her loyalty to the party line about "we did nothing wrong, Biden was great, it was sexism and racism that lost the race for Harris not any flaw on her part, and giving in on any of this is throwing the black and queer vote under the bus and appealing to the Nazi fascist element in the party".
I wonder how much influence Biden (or his inner circle) still have. He had a long career in politics, he made a lot of alliances and presumably has a lot of favours still banked. Crossing him or his faction could be a real mistake, while signalling loyalty may be more of a help than we think. Who exactly is in charge of the Democratic party right now? The old guard are hanging on, even while others are attempting to shove them off the stage, and some of the ones wanting to do the shoving are the progressive elements. "I am a queer black woman and if you try to shove me out of the way I will cry racism sexism homophobia" is still a credible threat.
Biden has very little influence. He has cancer, he's bitter at people, he's blamed by almost everyone in turn, his presidential library (a useful barometer) has been receiving hardly any donations, and he never extended much trust to people outside the inner circle in the first place so it's no surprise as there weren't many true-believers to begin with. And he even managed to dumpster his own reputation in record time with stuff like breaking his promise and pardoning his family (handing an invitation to Trump on a golden fucking platter to abuse the pardon power himself). I'm a moderate, I liked Biden as a person, I even liked some of the stuff about his governance, but that last bit alone was more damning that anything else he ever did, in my eyes.
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