Joe Biden’s name wasn’t on the ballot, but history will likely remember Kamala Harris’ resounding defeat as his loss too.
As Democrats pick up the pieces after President-elect Donald Trump’s decisive victory, some of the vice president’s backers are expressing frustration that Biden’s decision to seek re-election until this Summer — despite long-standing voter concerns about his age and unease about post-pandemic inflation as well as the U.S.-Mexico border — all but sealed his party’s surrender of the White House.
“The biggest onus of this loss is on President Biden,” said Andrew Yang, who ran against Biden in 2020 for the Democratic nomination and endorsed Harris’ unsuccessful run. “If he had stepped down in January instead of July, we may be in a very different place.”
Biden will leave office after leading the United States out of the worst pandemic in a century, galvanizing international support for Ukraine after Russia’s invasion and passing a $1 trillion infrastructure bill that will affect communities for years to come.
But having run four years ago against Trump to “restore the soul of the country,” Biden will make way after just one term for his immediate predecessor, who overcame two impeachments, a felony conviction and an insurrection launched by his supporters. Trump has pledged to radically reshape the federal government and roll back many of Biden’s priorities.
“Maybe in 20 or 30 years, history will remember Biden for some of these achievements,” said Thom Reilly, Co-Director of the Center for an Independent and Sustainable Democracy at Arizona State University. “But in the shorter term, I don’t know he escapes the legacy of being the President who beat Donald Trump only to usher in another Donald Trump administration four years later.”
Biden on Thursday avoided directly addressing the electorate’s seeming repudiation of his presidency. Instead, he noted that Americans will feel the effects of the administration’s signature legislative efforts for years to come.
“Don’t forget all that we accomplished,” Biden said in a brief Rose Garden address attended by Cabinet members and top aides but not by Harris. “It’s been a historic presidency — not because I am President but because of what we’ve done. What you’ve done.”
He issued a statement shortly after Harris delivered her concession speech Wednesday, praising her for running an “historic campaign” under “extraordinary circumstances.”
Some high-ranking Democrats, including three advisers to the Harris campaign, expressed deep frustration with Biden for failing to recognize earlier in the election cycle that he was not up to the challenge. The advisers spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly.
Biden, 81, ended his re-election campaign in July, weeks after an abysmal debate performance sent his party into a spiral and raised questions about whether he still had the mental acuity and stamina to serve as a credible nominee.
But polling long beforehand showed that many Americans worried about his age. Some 77% of Americans said in August 2023 that Biden was too old to be effective for four more years, according to a poll by the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs.
The President bowed out on July 21 after getting not-so-subtle nudges from Democratic Party powers, including former President Barack Obama and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California. Biden endorsed Harris and handed over his campaign operation to her.
Yang argued that Democratic Party leaders also deserve blame for taking too long to push out Biden. With few exceptions, most notably Minnesota Rep. Dean Phillips, Democrats shied away talking publicly about Biden’s age.
“Why was this not coming from any Democratic leaders?” Yang said. “It’s a lack of courage and independence and an excess of careerism, if I just keep my mouth shut, we’ll just keep on trucking along.”
The campaign was also saddled by anger among some Arab American and young voters over its approach to Israel’s conflicts in Gaza and Lebanon. U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, an ally of Biden and Harris, said in a statement that Democrats lost the thread on working class Americans’ concerns.
“Will the big money interests and well-paid consultants who control the Democratic Party learn any real lessons from this disastrous campaign?” the Vermont independent said. “Will they understand the pain and political alienation that tens of millions of Americans are experiencing?”
Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison took to social media Thursday to push back on Sanders’ critique, saying that Biden was “the most-pro worker President of my life time.”
Harris managed to spur far greater enthusiasm than Biden was generating from the party’s base. But she struggled to distinguish how her administration would differ from Biden’s.
Appearing on ABC’s “The View” in September, Harris was not able to identify a decision where she would have separated herself from Biden. “There is not a thing that comes to mind,” Harris said, giving the Trump campaign a sound bite it replayed through Election Day.
The strategists advising the Harris campaign said the compressed campaign timetable made it even more difficult for Harris to differentiate herself from the president.
Had Biden stepped aside early in the year, they said, it would have given Democrats enough time to hold a Primary. Going through the paces of an intraparty contest would have forced Harris or another eventual nominee to more aggressively stake out differences with Biden.
The strategists acknowledged that overcoming broad dissatisfaction among the American electorate about rising costs in the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic and broad concerns about the U.S. immigration system weighed heavy on the minds of voters in key states.
Still, they said that Biden had left Democrats in an untenable place.
Harris senior adviser David Plouffe in a posting on X called it a “devastating loss.” Plouffe did not assign blame and said the Harris campaign “dug out of a deep hole but not enough.” The post was later deleted.
At the Vice President’s concession speech on Wednesday, some Harris supporters said they wished the Vice President had had more time to make her pitch to American voters.
“I think that would have made a huge difference,” said Jerushatalla Pallay, a Howard University student who attended the speech at the center of her campus.
Republicans are poised to control the White House and Senate. Control of the House has yet to be determined.
Matt Bennett, Executive Vice President at the Democratic-aligned group Third Way, said this moment was the most devastating the party has faced in his lifetime.
“Harris was dealt a really bad hand. Some of it was Biden’s making and some maybe not,” said Bennett, who served as an aide to Vice President Al Gore during the Clinton administration. “Would Democrats fare better if Biden had stepped back earlier? I don’t know if we can say for certain, but it’s a question we’ll be asking ourselves for some time.”
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Republished with permission of The Associated Press.
7 comments
A Day without La Migra
November 7, 2024 at 3:23 pm
Support of Israel war in Gaza,you have Judah Netanyahu in glee of Trump
Red Storm
November 7, 2024 at 3:33 pm
Ya think that maybe Hamas is having second thoughts on its Oct 6 invasion?
I Am Garbage
November 7, 2024 at 3:25 pm
Kammy was never a good candidate as proved by her failure to be competitive in the Demo Presidential primary in 2020. It’s obvious why Joe picked her as VP. Fast forward to this election and really it was an advantage to Kammy to enter as late as she could, because the more we all saw and heard from her it was obvious she was an empty vessel without her teleprompter and fixed interviews, and sit downs. She also had the burden of being number 2 in clearly the most inept administration in a lifetime with all the baggage of inflation, immigration, and foreign policy screw ups. Bottom line is people wanted change.
KathrynA
November 7, 2024 at 3:37 pm
I think Joe Biden did fine and so did Kamala as a candidate. She proved she was intelligent, caring, great humor and ready to lead and ran a great campaign, but people want to believe the fake news propagated by Russia and live in fear of things not even true. She was also a woman and black and I think, sadly, that was more of the reason. Now, look how Putin is gloating. American sold their soul and probably our freedom and obviously, democracy.
Red Storm
November 7, 2024 at 4:00 pm
You can’t be serious. Maybe you are injecting humor here.
Michael
November 7, 2024 at 4:40 pm
Sure, they did ‘fine’ in the sense of being civil and decent with some incremental additions to a ‘keep the faith’ approach to traditional government solutions to problems. But, the U.S. population is becoming more and more self-centric, equating wise-ass, in-your-face behavior with strength and fortitude. There are no ‘better angel personalities’ voting for Trump, just ‘improve my status quo’. Given this mindset, Trump was vote-clever to become a walking, nay, waddling, billboard for a protectionist economy and a xenophobic society. Of course, it can’t work because America doesn’t have enough self-contained sustaining resources for the times.
Bill Pollard
November 7, 2024 at 5:03 pm
The majority of people have willingly decided they would rather end our democratic government and install a dictatorship. They know what Trump is like. I thought the majority of voters were better than this, but they’re not.