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.
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.”
