President Joe Biden is furious that he is being blamed for Kamala Harris’ failed campaign and is going to war against his detractors in a bid to reunite the Democratic Party behind his middle-class credentials.
Biden remains convinced that his longtime ties to the trade unions and working-class men would have swayed the 2024 presidential election vote in his favor. Right to the end of the campaign, he insisted he would have beaten Donald Trump.
Less than six weeks before election day, he said his polling figures had been promising and he went on The View to insist: “I was confident I would beat Trump. He’s a loser.”
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While no one will ever know how the president’s re-election campaign would have fared, Harris only managed about 67 million votes, with some counts continuing, compared to the 81 million votes Biden won in 2020, the most ever cast for a candidate in a U.S. White House election.
Most distressing for Biden’s supporters was Harris’ performance in Pennsylvania, the “Blue Wall” states, and in reliably blue-collar strongholds like New Jersey and New York which she won with much-reduced majorities.
The president’s circle was enraged that the finger-pointing had already begun in the Harris campaign within hours of Trump’s resounding victory, with most of the barbs aimed directly at the Oval Office.
According to Politico’s ‘Playbook’, Biden loyalists were especially bitter over unnamed quotes in a Politico article claiming the president was the “singular reason” for the damning defeat and saying a Democratic primary race would have given Harris more time and opportunity to run a better campaign.
The Biden aides blamed Barack Obama’s advisers for the Harris missteps that ultimately cost her any hopes of the White House.
“There is no singular reason why we lost, but a big reason is because the Obama advisers publicly encouraged Democratic infighting to push Joe Biden out, didn’t even want Kamala Harris as the nominee, and then signed up as the saviors of the campaign only to run outdated Obama-era playbooks for a candidate that wasn’t Obama,” a former Biden staffer told Playbook.
The aide added they’d like a shot of “whatever they’re drinking if 100 extra days of campaigning for Harris instead of Biden would have changed the results of last night!”
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was at the forefront of efforts to depose Biden in July, and she admitted mid-October that she had not spoken to the president since her intervention pressured him to quit in July.
She told the Guardian that some of Biden’s camp had not forgiven her for damaging his legacy through her actions.
The loss of Pennsylvania was particularly vexing for the president, who won the state in 2020.
“The deposing of Biden will remain a great source of controversy within the Democratic party. It’s clear that Biden, even with his cognitive disabilities, would have performed better than Harris in states like Pennsylvania,” political scientist Steven Schier told Newsweek.
Determined not to be a lame duck president for the remainder of his term, Biden is seeking to be a uniting force in the party, say Democratic Party sources. While he is determined to offer a gracious transition to the incoming administration, he is being urged by supporters to make his final months count as the party rebuilds.
Olympic gymnast Simone Biles was among those urging positive action, posting on X: “Mr Biden, I need you to stand up, straighten your back and make some things shake before your departure xoxo the women in America.”
But Republicans were quick to jump on the Democratic Party’s internal retribution as they reveled in Trump’s victory.
Donald Trump Jr posted on X after his father’s emphatic win: “The only person happier than me this morning. has to be Joe Biden.”
Aides insist that the president is far from happy, but he is determined to protect his legacy of 52 years of service for the Democratic Party and the country.
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