June 10, 2026, 4:03 a.m. ET
In politics, attention is currency, and timing is all about how you spend it.
And the Democratic Party has been looking lately as if its fortunes are turning around, thanks to President Donald Trump’s distracted and scandal-prone administration and his listless, lie-down Republican allies in Congress.
But then came a week of headlines about former President Joe Biden and his family. And that’s exactly not where the Democratic Party wants to be spending any attention, with the midterm elections that will determine which party controls Congress less than five months away.
But there they were, a party roiled by a reemergent Biden family, casting a light on just how desperate the Democrats are to stay focused on Trump and his astounding array of sideshows and screwups.
Former President Joe Biden decided to promote his book
Let’s start with the head of the family.
President Biden’s 2024 bid for a second term was derailed by serious questions about his age and health, a controversial conversation that exploded into a full-blown scandal after he flamed out in his first – and only – debate with Trump.
That troubling memory, which led to Biden dropping out of the race and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris, is nothing the Democrats want to be talking about from now to November, or after that, really.
But Biden’s wife, Jill, has a new memoir that just dropped – “View From The East Wing” – about her time as first lady. And the former president, who attended one of his wife’s recent book events, seemed a little overeager for a sliver of her spotlight.
“My book, which comes out in September, read it,” The New York Post reported Biden as saying as his wife’s event wound down in front of the audience in New York on June 2.
That memoir, which The Wall Street Journal in 2025 reported was sold to publisher Little, Brown and Co. for about $10 million, will certainly capture a lot of attention when it drops. But the Democrats don’t want that attention just before the midterms.
A spokesperson for Little, Brown and Co. did not respond to my requests about when the book is set to publish. TJ Ducklo, a Biden family spokesperson, told me that the former president is still working on his book, and that the publication date is still to be determined.
So, even if Biden’s book doesn’t arrive in September, his saying that in public in June is an obvious gaffe that ripples through an anxious Democratic Party, creating unnecessary tensions.
Jill Biden puts a spotlight on her husband’s failure
Jill Biden’s book tour has seen some bumps and clashes, too.
She recounts in the book her experience watching his June 2024 presidential debate, which went so poorly that she was scared that her husband was having a stroke on stage.
That, of course, runs full counter to what the first lady had to say just after that debate, when she praised her husband at a rally and said he “did such a great job. You answered every question. You knew all the facts.”
Sure, that was her trying to bolster her husband at the time, before she knew his political career was coming to an end. But it also rolls back the screen that she and his allies had used to protect him from scrutiny about his health and age.
Andrew Bates, who worked on Biden’s presidential campaign and in his White House, told the New York Post that he didn’t expect the stir about the former first lady’s book to impact the midterms. Even so, Bates questioned “why that painful conversation for the party needed to be publicly reopened right now.”
Jill Biden ratcheted up the concern to hostility, saying at another book event that Bates should “say it to my face.”
This is not the look the Democrats want to wear right now. They want the fight to be with Trump.
And then there is Hunter Biden on social media
A third – and the most controversial – Biden also caused a stir in the past week. Hunter Biden, the son of the president known for his drug addiction and continuing recovery, took to the social media cesspool known as X and started posting with serious fervor.
And here’s something unexpected: Hunter Biden’s posts were surprisingly disarming, open and honest reflections on his troubles in public and private life and with the law, mixed with sharp-elbowed retorts for anyone looking to run down his family.
In one extraordinary exchange, Hunter Biden dismantled a troll who used a photo of Johnny Cash as a profile picture. By recounting Cash’s recovery from his own addictions, Biden crafted a rebuke based on aspiration and education.
There was something captivating in that ‒ unless, of course, you’re part of a Democratic Party desperate to focus on Trump’s second term and the future and not on the Bidens and their pasts.
But this is the balancing act the Democratic Party must now pull off. Memoirs from presidents and their wives are the norm. And some of the children of presidents seeking to capitalize on attention have also become expected.
So the Biden family will linger in the news from here to November, and the Democratic Party will have to roll with that while working to keep Trump front and center.
Follow USA TODAY columnist Chris Brennan on Bluesky, @bychrisbrennan.bsky.social, and on X, @ByChrisBrennan. Sign up for his weekly newsletter, Translating Politics, here.
