Matt Taibbi:

It seems possible the advertised “braintrust” had leeway to make policy choices, up to a point. Klain for instance seems significantly responsible for the too-online-wokester quotient in the Biden presidency, trying to name pestilent Internet creature Neera Tanden to head the OMB. Having been “Ebola Czar” under Obama, he also seems to have been the force behind the push for mandates and the generally hyper-obnoxious tone of White House vaccine policy, appearing to physically arouse Chuck Todd when discussing vaccines during the peak of the pandemic.

On larger questions, it’s not clear Klain figured at all. Responding to criticisms that he let a helpless outpatient sink the 2024 ticket, Klain blamed voters. “There was no cover-up,” he just told The Guardian. “A Democratic congressman ran against him in the primary in 2024, with age as the only issue, and voters overwhelmingly voted for Biden.” This was after the party barred the congressman in question, Dean Phillips, from its numerous closed primaries and spent small fortunes on legal challenges to keep other candidates like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Cornel West, Jill Stein, and the No Labels party from opposing Biden.

These are the key questions. Who fixed the primaries, directed the ballot access suits, crushed third parties, and green-lit myriad Trump prosecutions and other lawfare schemes? Most importantly, who kicked Biden off the ticket and replaced him with Kamala Harris? There’s not a lot of evidence that either Biden or Harris had much to do with those decisions. Jill Biden noted recently that “Joe has an incredible capacity to forgive,” but “that means I end up being the holder of grudges,” a remark seemingly directed toward Pelosi. As the Washington Post just put it, in a story that is about Jill Biden’s memories of last summer yet somehow completely avoids explaining who decided her husband’s career was over during that time: