How bad is it? Biden's White House press secretary dumps the Democratic Party

Things are so bad for Democrats right now that President Biden’s press secretary quit the party.

Amid dreadful poll numbers and ugly brawls over party leadership, former White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre is walking away from the Democratic Party after serving for years as one of its chief messengers.

Her shock announcement was paired with a sneak preview of her new book, coming in October, about her decision to abandon the party and become an independent.

The book, according to the publisher, will provide Ms. Jean-Pierre’s “revelatory assessment of America’s broken two-party system” and will detail the three weeks last summer that preceded Mr. Biden quitting the 2024 race and “the betrayal by the Democratic Party that led to his decision.”

Mr. Biden, once a moderate, tough-on-crime Democrat who migrated left, was forced out of the race by party elders amid diminishing support in the polls and mounting evidence of cognitive decline that was showcased in his incomprehensible June debate performance.

Vice President Kamala Harris, a far-left liberal who replaced him on the ticket in August, lost definitively to Mr. Trump after a lackluster and directionless campaign performance.

Among her fumbles, she refused to distance herself from even the most unpopular policies implemented by Mr. Biden, including leaving the Southern border wide open, letting biological men participate in women’s sports and providing taxpayer-funded sex change operations for convicted murderers.

Democrats have been floundering ever since, and pollsters say Ms. Jean-Pierre’s departure symbolizes the party’s inability to reconnect with voters.

“Nobody, including President Biden’s minister of propaganda, wants to be a Democrat anymore. Their policies and brand are toxic,” Trump pollster Jim McLaughlin said.

The Democratic National Committee did not respond to an inquiry from The Washington Times.

Ms. Jean-Pierre is leaving the party amid new polls that showed Republicans maintain a huge advantage over Democrats on the economy — a key issue that decided the 2024 election for President Trump and one in which Democrats in the not-too-distant past enjoyed a wide advantage over the GOP.

The GOP maintained leads of 8 and 12 points on the economy, according to polls by CNN and Reuters/Ipsos, respectively, despite Mr. Trump’s whipsawed tariff policies and hyped-up warnings from Democrats that the Republican tax cut bill will starve the poor and middle class on behalf of the rich.

The CNN poll found that Democrats and Republicans were tied on which party voters believed best represents the middle class, a title that Democrats once owned by a comfortable margin.

“How is that possible, Democrats!?” a CNN polling analyst implored.

Ms. Jean-Pierre, who also served as a senior adviser to Mr. Biden, said she has an answer, and it’s not one the Democratic Party is likely to embrace.

“I think we need to stop thinking in boxes and think outside of our boxes, and not be so partisan,” Ms. Jean-Pierre explained in a video about her decision, posted online Wednesday.

Ms. Jean-Pierre’s tenure at the briefing room podium was marked by frequent sparring with reporters over Mr. Biden’s cognitive decline and her staunch defense of the Biden administration’s left-wing policies.

Four months after leaving the White House, she said she’s now part of “the growing fractured electorate that is independent,” according to her book publisher, Hachette.

The Democrats have been largely sidelined since Mr. Trump trounced Ms. Harris on Nov. 5 and Republicans took full control of Congress.

They’ve struggled with messaging and leadership infighting and are engaged in an ideological tug-of-war over the party’s direction.

The DNC was mocked last month over its $20 million, two-year plan to win back young, male voters who abandoned them for Mr. Trump. The plan, according to reports, involves buying ads in video games and studying “the syntax, language and content that gains attention and vitality in these spaces.”

Social media users lampooned a new video showing Rep. Eric Swalwell, California Democrat, eating a taco and dropping an F-bomb, in a largely failed attempt to troll Mr. Trump on his tariff policy.

Democratic National Committee Vice Chair David Hogg, meanwhile, is causing a meltdown inside the party.

The 25-year-old is threatening to use his political action committee, “Leaders We Deserve,” to oust “asleep at the wheel” incumbents in Democratic primaries in favor of younger and more liberal replacements.

The DNC elders want to throw him out of the leadership and is set to vote June 9 on whether to invalidate his election to vice chair ostensibly over a procedural issue. The move has split the party further.

Veteran Democratic strategist James Carville called Mr. Hogg “a contemptible little twerp,” while top liberal leaders on Capitol Hill warned the DNC against removing the young activist.

“The DNC will prove itself to be irrelevant as a political organization if they punish duly elected leaders like David Hogg because they disagree with him,” said Rep. Marc Pocan, Wisconsin Democrat.

Ms. Jean-Pierre, 50, appeared smiling above the fray of her former party Wednesday as she described her new life as an independent.

“In an era of misinformation, disinformation, the regressiveness of social policy, what we’re seeing currently, right now, what I have decided to do, and I really have thought long and hard about this, is to follow my own compass,” she said. ” And that’s what I’ve done, and that’s what this book does.”

Her book, “Independent: A Look Inside a Broken White House, Outside the Party Lines,” goes on sale in October.