Pelosi Links Election Defeat to Biden’s Late Withdrawal as Intra-Party Criticism Mounts

Former US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi has indicated that the Democratic Party’s performance in Tuesday’s election could have been stronger had President Joe Biden withdrawn from the contest earlier. Pelosi, recognized as one of Washington’s most influential political figures, informed the New York Times that “had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race”. These comments represent the most recent instance of blame being assigned among Democrats, following the party’s loss of the White House and the potential loss of control over both legislative chambers on Tuesday. It has been widely reported that Pelosi spearheaded the Democratic effort to remove Biden from the race; he ultimately withdrew at the close of July, subsequent to weeks of pressure stemming from an unfavorable debate showing against Donald Trump. Upon concluding his campaign, Biden promptly endorsed Vice-President Kamala Harris as his successor. Harris subsequently experienced a significant defeat against President-elect Trump on Tuesday. Pelosi stated to the New York Times: “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary.” Such an open primary process would have entailed multiple Democratic candidates vying for selection by party members to become the nominee for the White House, succeeding Biden. Pelosi contended that Harris would have performed effectively in such a primary and that it would have rendered her “stronger going forward”. “But we don’t know that. That didn’t happen. We live with what happened,” remarked the California congresswoman, who secured re-election for her 20th term in the House on Tuesday. She added: “And because the president endorsed Kamala Harris immediately, that really made it almost impossible to have a primary at that time. If it had been much earlier, it would have been different.” Aides to Harris, in discussions with the political news outlet Politico, similarly attributed responsibility to Biden, suggesting he ought to have withdrawn earlier. An unnamed aide commented, “We ran the best campaign we could, considering Joe Biden was president,” further stating, “Joe Biden is the singular reason Kamala Harris and Democrats lost tonight.” Conversely, a former aide to Biden informed Axios, another political news source, that Harris was offering justifications. “How did you spend $1 billion and not win?” the aide questioned, including an expletive. This week, an anonymous former Biden aide conveyed to Politico that advisors to former President Barack Obama were culpable, alleging they “publicly encouraged Democratic infighting to push Joe Biden out, didn’t even want Kamala Harris as the nominee”. Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, a Democrat, assigned responsibility for the election defeat to individuals who conspired to remove Biden. In an interview with the political outlet Semafor, he stated, “For those that decided and moved to break Biden, and then you got the election that you wanted, it’s appropriate to own the outcome and fallout.” Congressman Tom Suozzi, a Democratic representative from New York, indicated that the election loss was partially attributable to the party’s emphasis on “being politically correct”. He further explained that the party had encountered difficulty in countering Republican criticisms concerning “anarchy on college campuses, defund the police, biological boys playing in girls’ sports, and a general attack on traditional values”. Ritchie Torres, also a Democratic congressman from New York, utilized X, previously known as Twitter, to assign blame to “the far left”. He asserted that radical elements within the party had “managed to alienate historic numbers of Latinos, Blacks, Asians, and Jews from the Democratic Party with absurdities like ‘Defund the Police’ or ‘From the River to the Sea’ or ‘Latinx’”. Independent Senator Bernie Sanders, who sought the presidency as a Democrat in both 2016 and 2020, issued an extensive statement accusing the party of neglecting working people. He wrote: “While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change,” adding, “And they’re right.” He posited that Democrats would likely fail to draw lessons from the election’s result. However, Democratic National Committee Chairman Jaime Harrison countered on X, characterizing Sanders’ accusation as “straight up BS”.