The Democratic campaign in 2024 had a strange dynamic, like nothing since Lyndon Johnson gave away to Hubert Humphrey in 1968. President Joe Biden was running, he dropped out and was replaced by Vice President Kamala Harris. Much of Biden’s campaign team remained in place, while the campaign headquarters remained located in Delaware.
Now that the campaign is over and the Harris-Walz ticket has lost, the finger-pointing has begun.
On CNN this week, reporter MJ Lee reported that an unnamed Harris senior official had said that Biden “will hold a lot of blame for, and frankly… he should.” My Biden? The official seemed to blame him for running for a second term in the first place.
While Biden had never promised to only serve a single term, he did pitch himself in the 2020 primaries as a transition figure in the party who would soon make way for a new generation of Democratic leaders.
CNN Reports Senior Harris Campaign Official Throwing Biden Under the Bus: He Holds ‘A Lot of Blame’ https://t.co/SQ90RcWxsT
— Mediaite (@Mediaite) November 6, 2024
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“Democrats are looking back on all of this and thinking about what about that parallel universe where Joe Biden had not sought a second term, and there had been a full Democratic primary contest, where the party actually chose whoever they thought was going to be the strongest person to run a full campaign,” Lee said on CNN.
In the hours after the defeat, some Democrats have also asked whether it might have been better for the party to hold an open primary or contested convention, once it became clear that Biden would not be the candidate. Instead, the party coalesced around Vice President Harris.
Imagine a scenario where Biden announced in early 2023 that he wasn’t running…and the Democrats had an open primary with debates, town halls, interviews, and their own voters could choose their nominee.
That could have happened if Biden didn’t insist on running in his 80’s.
— Elex Michaelson (@Elex_Michaelson) November 6, 2024
The New Republic, meanwhile, referred to Biden after the election as “a wildly unpopular figure who many see as doddering and fundamentally incapable of doing the job of the presidency,” adding that “Long before Biden’s disastrous performance in his late-June debate with Trump, it was obvious that most voters had concluded that his presidency was a failure.”
Harris obviously deserves blame here, but it’s Biden who deserves the greater share. It was clear two years ago that voters had concluded that he was too old to serve a second term, but he stubbornly clung on. https://t.co/YYfO5rNPYP
— The New Republic (@newrepublic) November 6, 2024
There will likely be more leaks of blame tossed in both directions, in the coming days.
Photo courtesy of the Political Tribune media library.
