In the immediate hours following Vice President Kamala Harris’ defeat in the 2024 presidential election, several Democrats started to point fingers at President Joe Biden for the loss, according to Politico.
Former President Donald Trump was elected the 47th president of the United States in the early morning hours Wednesday as he swept all key swing states. The defeat of Harris, after the election seemed to be a coin flip for weeks due to polls, has left many Democrats blaming Biden for not leaving the race sooner, Politico reported. (RELATED: White House Officially Claims Biden Has Made 148 Mistakes During 2024 Public Remarks)
“She ran an extraordinary campaign with a very tough hand that was handed to her,” Mark Longabaugh, a Democratic strategist and former adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders, told Politico. “The truth of the matter is, Biden should have stepped aside earlier and let the party put together a longer game plan.”
Democratic officials and operatives told Politico that because Biden took too long to decide when to drop out after the debate he left Harris with a short campaign that was forced to deal with “too many challenges and far too little time to build a winning case for herself.” Others blamed Biden for his handling of top issues, such as the economy and inflation, ahead of the election.
“There was a Biden weariness,” James Zogby, a three-decade veteran of the Democratic National Committee, told Politico. “And he hung on too long.”
Entrepreneur Andrew Yang, who ran for the Democratic party nomination in 2020, told The Associated Press that had Biden stepped down months earlier, Harris would have had a shot at winning.
“The biggest onus of this loss is on President Biden,” Yang told the outlet. “If he had stepped down in January instead of July, we may be in a very different place.”
Democratic presidential nominee, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris departs after conceding the election, at Howard University on November 06, 2024 in Washington, DC. After a contentious campaign focused on key battleground states, the Republican presidential nominee, former U.S. President Donald Trump was projected to secure the majority of electoral votes, giving him a second term as U.S. President. Republicans also secured control of the Senate for the first time in four years. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
A Democratic donor admitted to Reuters that the party should have been more concerned about the president’s health early on so that a candidate change would have been possible.
“Why did Joe Biden hold on for as long as he did? He should have not concealed his [health] and dropped out a lot sooner,” the donor told the outlet.
Early in Harris’ campaign, her staff reportedly sought to distance herself from Biden but as the race to the White House continued, the vice president failed to differentiate herself. When appearing on ABC’s “The View,” she didn’t name anything she would do differently than the president if elected.
Allies of the campaign privately questioned why she wasn’t separating herself from Biden, especially as the team wasn’t trying to capitalize on the administration’s record, another Politico article reported.
“We ran the best campaign we could, considering Joe Biden was president,” one Harris aide told the outlet. “Joe Biden is the singular reason Kamala Harris and Democrats lost tonight.”
While other officials blame Biden for the loss, some White House aides are contemplating whether Biden should have stayed in the race, Politico reported. Others are reportedly feeling like it would have been hard for any Democrat to win had they been in Harris’ position.
“People, for whatever reason, feel it was better four years ago — and I don’t think we could fight that,” one longtime Democratic operative told Politico, citing the amount of Latinos and Black voters who flipped their vote to Trump. “We just have a bad brand right now.”
Supporters become emotional as Democratic presidential nominee, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris as she concedes the election, at Howard University on November 06, 2024 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
The vice president’s team sidelined Biden in the final weeks of its campaign, despite willingness from the president to hit the campaign trail in support of Harris, three people familiar with the dynamic told Axios. The president was reportedly cast to the side because the Harris campaign worried he was a political “liability.”
After the report that Biden was being kept off the campaign trail surfaced, the president called Trump supporters “garbage,” a comment that overshadowed Harris’ closing argument, which were occurring at the same time. The White House and the president himself tried to clean up the comments, but the vice president was still forced to answer questions about the remarks before hitting some final campaign stops the next day.
Biden also skipped Harris’ watch party the night of the election, opting to stay at the White House with aides and the first lady.
“It would have been better if we had had a primary, even if Harris was the eventual victor,” Democratic Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton told Politico. “And it was necessary for the Democratic nominee to separate him or herself from an unpopular incumbent, as much as we love Joe Biden. None of those things happened.”