Some allies of US Vice President Kamala Harris have begun to blame outgoing President Joseph Biden for her defeat in the presidential election, saying he should have dropped out of the race earlier.
As Democrats seek to do damage control after Republican Donald Trump's Nov. 5 election victory, some of Kamala Harris' allies say the outcome was "sealed" by Biden's decision to stay in the race until the summer, despite longstanding voter concerns about his health and discontent. due to high inflation and a massive influx of migrants.
Several unnamed senior Democrats, including three advisers on Kamala Harris' campaign staff, expressed deep displeasure that the 81-year-old Biden had not seen earlier that he was not up to the challenge.
Biden, 81, ended his re-election campaign in July, weeks after a debate with Trump raised questions about his ability to be a convincing presidential candidate.
However, opinion polls have long since shown that many Americans are concerned about Biden's age. As recently as August 2023, about 77 percent of Americans said Biden is too old to be effective for another four years, according to a poll by the Associated Press and the Nork Public Opinion Research Center.
Biden dropped out of the race on July 21, following not-so-subtle calls for him to step down from influential Democrats, including former President Barack Obama and former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. Biden then supported the candidacy of Kamala Harris.
Strategists hired as advisers to Kamala Harris' campaign staff said the short campaign made it even harder for her to differentiate herself from Biden.
According to them, if Biden had retired at the beginning of the year, the Democrats would have had enough time to hold internal party primaries, which would have forced Kamala Harris or another candidate to more aggressively point out the differences compared to Biden.
Politician Andrew Young, one of Biden's opponents in the 2020 primary, who later endorsed Kamala Harris, said the "biggest burden" of losing this week's election rests with the current head of state.
"If he had retired in January instead of July, we might be in a completely different place," Jang said.
During his four-year term, Biden led the US out of the worst pandemic in 100 years, encouraged international support for Ukraine after the Russian invasion, and passed a law providing $1.000 trillion for infrastructure, the benefits of which will only be seen in the years to come.
Tom Reilly, co-director of the Center for an Independent and Sustainable Democracy at the University of Arizona, said that "history may remember Biden in 20 or 30 years for some of those achievements," but that in the short term he will be seen as a president "who beat Donald Trump just to returned him to the head of the administration four years later".
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