If you haven’t read the new book by CNN’s Jake Tapper and Axios’s Alex Thompson, “Original Sin,” you should. The book details how former President Biden’s top aides, advisers and media contacts lied to the American people about the president’s fitness for office and his suitability as a candidate, and argues that this series of cover-ups is ultimately responsible for President Trump’s 2024 victory.

If its revelations are even half true (and there is every reason to believe they are truer than that), this book should chill and sober Democrats, independents and anyone else who would prefer an alternative to Trump’s GOP.

"Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again" raises one profound question with implications that extend far beyond 2024 or even 2028: Why did top Democrats think that they not only could but should shoehorn a sadly diminished and dangerously unfit Biden into a second presidential term?

Here’s one answer: Democrats’ perception of their own virtue has somehow become inextricable from their unwillingness to acknowledge reality as it actually is, rather than as they would like it to be.

It would have been quite convenient if Biden circa 2024 was in fact indistinguishable from Biden circa 2016 or even 2020. The fact that this was obviously not the case did not deter Democrats’ insistence on it as not just true but unquestionable. The depth of this problem for the party cannot be overstated.

The definitional tic of today’s Democrats is a belligerent unwillingness (which ultimately seems to beget a helpless inability) to acknowledge any truth that they find

© The Hill