... Politico? Yes, as surprising as that may be. However, they're only talking about it because their usual sources in the Democrat establishment can't stop discussing Karine Jean-Pierre's meltdown. And as David noted yesterday, KJP's performance speaks volumes about the nature of DEI policies and identity politics.
If the insider whispers have reached the pitch that Politico suggests, Democrats must be horrified:
Some former West Wing staffers are privately texting one another wondering why she can’t answer questions about her own book with greater clarity or coherence. Others are bristling at her emphasis on identity politics.
Most just hope that she will be ignored, another bad news cycle with a short shelf life that doesn’t do lasting damage to an already tarnished brand. ...
“A car crash is fascinating to watch,” said one longtime Democratic communications strategist. “She was the top communicator for the president of the United States and she can’t get through basic interviews.”
The strategist, like over a dozen former Biden officials and allies interviewed for this story, was granted anonymity to speak with candor, likened Jean-Pierre’s interview this week with The New Yorker’s Isaac Chotiner to “watching Mike Tyson fight a baby.”
Well, let's talk about the strategist's observation. How did Karine Jean-Pierre get picked to be Joe Biden's "top communicator" in the first place? She started under Jen Psaki, who at least had a track record of some competence on basic PR and comms-shop skills. Psaki had the misfortune of working for a demagogue who was already moving through the stages of dementia when Psaki stepped down. Jean-Pierre did have at least some media work on her resumé by the time she got to Biden's presidential campaign, but she was a "senior advisor" there after a MoveOn gig and a year or so at MSNBC with no particular distinction.
Biden then made KJP the Deputy Press Secretary of the transition team rather than just leave her in an advisory role. Either of these would have been inexplicable in retrospect; what experience did Jean-Pierre bring to these positions? She had a year and change at MSNBC, and otherwise most of her work had been in organizing. It's equally mystifying to think that KJP had much "advice" to give based on her resumé. Having watched her operate in public over two years as Psaki's replacement -- and especially on this book tour -- no one could possibly argue that KJP survived the Biden Regency because of her towering intellect, wise judgment, or sparkling personality.
Even Democrats talking off the record aren't trying to make those arguments.
So how did she get -- and hold -- these jobs? David rebuked Jonathan Chait yesterday for feigning ignorance of the obvious:
Jonathan Chait knows exactly how KJP got the job, and the same applies to so many people the Democrats elevate to the highest positions in the land. Jean-Pierre, in her incoherent way, said it herself: she was black, an immigrant, and a lesbian, as we were told a million times. She was a "first." ...
Hiring a "first," not a "best," was always the goal. DEI. It's how we got Ketanji Brown Jackson, who cannot say what a woman is and who thinks of herself as "disabled" because she is black. Competence is utterly beside the point, and Chait knows that.
Everybody does.
Sure, everybody does, but hardly anyone talks about it. Identity politics is KJP's only raison d'etre and only point of interest. Joe Biden (and/or his regents) went into office playing the identity game, having started with his other inexplicable choice of Kamala Harris as a running mate. The Biden White House sent out a blizzard of statements hailing the "historic" nature of each Biden appointment, as though that mattered more than competence -- a quality that was already in desperately short supply in the Biden Regency.
At least one can say fairly that KJP fit perfectly in that environment.
That's why her fellow Dems want her to shut up about DEI and identity politics. Jean-Pierre is the poster girl for all the ways in which it fails, a conclusion that voters are already reaching even without KJP's performance-art pieces in the media in support of her utterly incoherent memoir.
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