In the wake of former President Donald Trump’s resounding defeat of Vice President Kamala Harris—in which he improved his 2020 margins in nearly every key demographic—Democrats are facing a reckoning about what went wrong, and many are openly pointing the finger at President Joe Biden.
President Joe Biden addresses the nation in the Rose Garden at the White House in Washington DC, ... [+]
Democratic strategists, pundits and lawmakers have publicly blamed the loss on Biden’s refusal to exit the race until late July, even as his unpopularity in polls surged and an increasing number of Americans said he was too old to serve another term.
David Axelrod, former President Barack Obama’s strategist, told Time magazine, “the story might have been different if” Biden “made a timely decision to step aside,” but noted that any Democrat may have been doomed by his unpopularity, adding, “no incumbent party has ever won with a president with a 40% approval rating or under.”
Andrew Yang, who ran against Biden for the 2020 Democratic nomination, told the Associated Press, “the biggest onus of this loss is on President Biden,” noting party leaders who refused to speak out against Biden earlier were also at fault.
Veteran Democratic National Committee member John Zogby had a similar take, telling Politico Biden “hung on too long” and his aides “failed to see his inability to step up his game.”
Biden biographer and Atlantic staff writer Franklin Foer wrote, “Biden cannot escape the fact that his four years in office paved the way for the return of Donald Trump. This is his legacy. Everything else is an asterisk.”
Jim Manley, a top aide to former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, told Politico, “He’s a good man who can be proud of his accomplishments. But his legacy is in tatters,” adding the “country is headed in a very dangerous direction and it’s due in part to his arrogance.”
Manley is reportedly among nearly a dozen officials and party operatives who pinned Harris’ loss on Biden in interviews with Politico, including former adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., Mark Longabaugh, who told the outlet: “the truth of the matter is, Biden should have stepped aside earlier and let the party put together a longer game plan.”
Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., the first congressional Democrat to publicly call on Biden to step down, told Politico, “it would have been better if we had a primary, even if Harris was the eventual victor.”
New York Times columnist Ezra Klein wrote in a post mortem for the paper, "President Biden, at 81 years old and hovering beneath 40 percent favorability in most polls, should never have run for re-election."
Thom Reilly, co-director of the Center for an Independent and Sustainable Democracy at Arizona State University, told the Associated Press, “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.”
Democratic strategist Max Burns tweeted, “it seems short-sighted to heap blame on Kamala Harris for not running ahead of Joe Biden's 2020 numbers when even Joe Biden was trailing his own 2020 numbers before dropping out of the race entirely.”
Atlantic columnist Tyler Austin Harper wrote in a piece bluntly titled “Blame Biden,” that while Harris bears some responsibility, “she had an 81-year-old albatross hanging around her neck: Joe Biden.”
Writer Ross Barkan, who also titled his Substack column “Blame Biden,” wrote that Biden’s “ego blinded him and his myopic advisers enabled a foolhardy campaign,” opining that Biden should have announced his retirement in 2022 and allowed Democrats to hold an open primary.
“The View” host and former Trump Pentagon press secretary Alyssa Farah Griffin, who endorsed Biden, asked Thursday on the show, “why didn’t Biden give her six months or a year to run?”
Biden spoke to the nation for the first time Thursday after Harris’ defeat, acknowledging that for some, Trump’s win is “a time of loss,” but urging Americans not to “forget all that we accomplished,” Biden said. “It’s been a historic presidency—not because I’m president—because what we’ve done, what you’ve done—a presidency for all Americans.” Biden called Trump Wednesday to congratulate him and express “his commitment to ensuring a smooth transition,” the White House said in a statement, adding he also invited Trump to meet with him at the White House. White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, when asked on Thursday if Biden feels any responsibility for the loss, defended Biden and said, “he believes he made the right decision when he stepped aside,” adding “we can’t rewrite history.”
Trump gained points among a vast array of demographics—shifting voters in rural, urban and suburban counties further right, winning Latino and Black voters by wider margins than he did in 2020, and outperforming his previous support among counties with large shares of younger, middle-age and older residents, according to a New York Times analysis of all counties where at least 95% of the vote has been reported. Trump has won five of the seven swing states so far, and is on track to also take Arizona and Nevada, though the results have yet to officially be called by the Associated Press.
Democrats dismissed concerns about Biden’s age until his consequential June 27 debate with Trump. In the following weeks, a growing number of Democrats publicly called on the president to step down, and he ceded to the pressure on July 21, promptly endorsing Harris, who announced the same day her plans to seek the nomination. Harris enjoyed a brief honeymoon period in polls, bolstered by positive reviews of her debate performance, but Trump narrowed the gap as Election Day neared. With just 107 days to campaign, Harris and the party faced an uphill challenge in separating her from Biden—and are widely viewed to have failed to do so, a shortcoming epitomized by a response Harris gave on ABC’s “The View” when asked what she would have done differently during her time in the White House and said “there’s not a thing that comes to mind.” The Trump campaign seized on Harris’ links to Biden, repeatedly highlighting the quote in ads, speeches and statements. “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,” Moulton told Politico.
Some have observed that the party platform as a whole, rather than Biden himself, led to Harris’ defeat. Democrats failed to capitalize on voters’ concerns about the economy and immigration—the two top-rated issues for Americans in this year’s election—and instead focused too much on “identity politics, rather than understanding that the vast majority of people in this country are working class,” Sanders told The New York Times. Former Biden Labor Secretary Marty Walsh also told Politico Biden wasn’t solely to blame and that the administration’s messaging “just didn’t resonate with people.” Democratic strategist Julie Roginsky told CNN Thursday “This is not Joe Biden’s fault. It’s not Kamala Harris fault. It’s not Barack Obama’s fault. It is the fault of the Democratic Party in not knowing how to communicate effectively to voters.” Former DNC Chair Howard Dean told CNN Thursday Republicans outworked Democrats in the grassroots ground game. “The Democratic Party ought to be putting a lot of money into school board races, and into city council races, and into local representative races, including in very red states, and they’re not doing that,” Dean said.
Election 2024: Harris Concedes Election—Says ‘We Must Accept The Results’ (Forbes)
Harris Won The College-Educated Vote—But Trump Gained Young And Latino Voters. Here’s The Breakdown. (Forbes)
Sen. Joe Manchin Joins Major Surge Of Democrats Calling On Biden To Quit (Forbes)