I wrote on Power Line a few days before my cousin Dean (i.e., Dean Phillips) announced his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination: “When Dean throws his hat in the ring, it won’t be because he thinks it will advance his career. It won’t. This past summer he called for some prominent Democrat to challenge Biden because he thinks challenging Biden is the right thing to do — the right thing for the United States. Democrats have been stabbing him in the back (and the front) since then.”
Tunku Varadarajan now notes in his May 20 Wall Street Journal review of the new Tapper/Thompson book:
The authors assert that “Biden, his family, and his team let their self-interest and fear of another Trump term justify an attempt to put an at times addled old man in the Oval Office for four more years.” By holding their party and the country hostage until July 21, 2024—the day Mr. Biden announced he’d be dropping out—Team Biden handed the election to Mr. Trump. Dissenting Democrats, such as Rep. Dean Phillips—whose decision to put himself forward as a nominee for president may have seemed quixotic but was in fact an act of civic heroism—were shut down and ostracized. It was only after the presidential debate that the party’s grandees mustered the courage to tell Mr. Biden and the first lady that the game was over.
Well, “courage” isn’t the right word, but, otherwise, as I was saying…
Varadarajan’s review appears under the fitting headline “A Conspiracy in Plain View.”
