Outgoing DNC chief: Democrats should have stuck with Biden
Source: MSN
The outgoing chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) said in a wide-ranging interview published Friday that the party should have stuck with President Biden as its nominee during the 2024 election.
DNC Chair Jaime Harrison called Biden “the most successful of my lifetime legislative president” in the interview with The Associated Press, noting the former president had poured resources into making sure members of his party got elected to office.
“And then when he hits a roadblock, when he hits a bump in the road, do we stick with him, or do we jettison him? That’s the mentality that I had going into this,” Harrison told the AP.
“And my nature is, ‘I’m on the team with you, you’re my quarterback. You got sacked a few times. But you know what? I’m going to block the hell out of the next person that’s coming at you,’” he added “And that is not always the mentality of everybody in my party. And so sometimes, people look on the sidelines, ready to call in the backup.”
Read more: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/outgoing-dnc-chief-democrats-should-have-stuck-with-biden/ar-AA1ybA6Q?apiversion=v2&noservercache=1&domshim=1&renderwebcomponents=1&wcseo=1&batchservertelemetry=1&noservertelemetry=1
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ForgoTheConsequence
(5,186 posts)We should be focusing on stopping, blocking, and obstructing every single Trump action.
bhikkhu
(10,789 posts)And I wouldn't forget the midterm elections are coming up (though it might seem like ten years before we get there).
brush
(61,033 posts)He was exhausted and it showed at the degate.
No way he could continue after that disastrous debate performance.
yellowdogintexas
(23,696 posts)Some major some minor; some personal, some professional.
This is all history now and unless there really is a parallel universe and we have all been shifted into the wrong one we can not do a DAMN thing at this point except move forward.
A local (fiercely Democratic) playwright once wrote a play called "The Noses and The Toeses and the Shoulda Coulda Wouldas" I Quote this to myself when I find myself thinking "Damn I should not have done THAT, or Damn I wish I had done that other thing".
We can't fix what already happened and no amount of second guessing is going to tell us what actually would have happened if we had done something different.
Hindsight is easy.
Scrivener7
(59,522 posts)
LisaM
(29,634 posts)The fact that the media deliberately ignored all of Biden's accomplishments is going to go down in history as a de facto coup against him.
Shermann
(9,062 posts)However, they have been slow to make the connection to the discrepancy between Biden's performance and his approval numbers.
Joinfortmill
(21,169 posts)We can blame the media for a huge part of the mess we are in. MSM IS THE OPPOSITION!
LisaM
(29,634 posts)They could have, should have, started out congratulating him on his successful hostage negotiation. Instead, Tapper sandbagged him on inflation, again failing to point out that the US has navigated it better than anyone. After putting a fatigued Biden on the defensive, Tapper then neglected to do anything remotely comparable to Trump, never once referring to his failed presidency.
Then the media drumbeat against Biden started pounding. I will never understand why he didn't get the credit he deserved. Never.
thesquanderer
(13,006 posts)Biden HAD to know that he'd get a question about inflation, and in fact it was the very first question. The way I see it, it was a softball question. Not sandbagged at all,. This was it:
Tapper's job is to ask the question, not answer it. It was a simple question, perfectly teed-up for a well-prepared Biden to come back with something that included "the US has navigated it better than anyone." The fact that that info was not communicated was on Biden, not Tapper. This was not by any means a "gotcha" question, it was as predictable as they come. You can't blame the questioner for not supplying the answer.
LisaM
(29,634 posts)Instead, he led with a bunch of statistics that put Biden in a corner. He did not need to do that.
thesquanderer
(13,006 posts)So sure, you could argue that Tapper could have asked the question without including the statistics. Tapper could have also asked this question of Trump without mentioning the 34 felonies:
The question works without the first 10 words, but similar to the inflation question, the details further emphasize the point and the reasons people are concerned.
Getting back your earlier post, then, you said "After putting a fatigued Biden on the defensive, Tapper then neglected to do anything remotely comparable to Trump" -- I've demonstrated Trump getting a comparable setup, but also, as I said, it was the first question. There was no indication (yet) that Biden might have been "fatigued." Though still, even whether that would have been a rationale to treat him more gently is highly questionable. Would you have wanted him to use kid gloves on Trump if Trump had seem fatigued?
You wanted Tapper to start by "congratulating {Biden} on his successful hostage negotiation." Putting aside the fact that, AFAIK, there was no successful hostage negotiation at the time, the moderators are not there as cheerleaders or to flatter the participants. They raise the issues and criticisms that they think are likely to be on people's minds and their goal is to try to be (and certainly appear!) objective. Was he supposed to find something to congratulate Trump on as well?
As an aside, I googled to try to find out what ~June 2024 hostage negotiation you were talking about, and all I could find were proposals that had already been rejected by both sides:
https://allisrael.com/hamas-said-no-to-president-biden-s-hostage-deal-proposal-what-happens-next
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/06/24/israel-hamas-war-news-gaza-palestine/
Did you mean something else, that I missed?
Ritabert
(2,446 posts)So there could have been a real primary. I like Kamala but we should have heard from Newsom, Murphy, Raskin, Beshear, Klobuchar, etc.
Biden was a great president, but he was getting too old to run again. If he had bowed out and allowed a primary I believe Mark Kellly or the other guy Shapiro? or some other strong guy could have beaten Trump. I have nothing against Kamala Harris and she would have been good, but the American populace just did not allow it. I think think the male macho types that went for Trump would have chosen a another man instead of Trump. As they say, it just is what it is.
PortTack
(35,820 posts)I think our great president over estimated his ability to stay in the game in his later years.
LymphocyteLover
(9,848 posts)Last edited Sun Feb 2, 2025, 08:42 AM - Edit history (1)
He had a great SOTU and seemed at the top of his game. He passed a lot of huge bills.
Also, he knew historically presidents who have an open primary after their first term don't do well. The Dems knew that too, which is why no high profile Dems challenged him.
What happened is the GOP took the House though and rabidly went after Joe and Hunter and changed the whole dynamic. Rightwing media really stepped up their attacks on Biden being too old and weak, etc.
Ritabert
(2,446 posts)DSandra
(1,719 posts)Ritabert
(2,446 posts)
SharonClark
(10,497 posts)Most people I know were worried way back in January that Biden was not up to the task.
But I guess you had to have been paying attention to come to that conclusion because too many DUers had their heads in the sand.
LearnedHand
(5,500 posts)It's pretty wrong-headed to imply that Harris was the reason Dems lost. It may be unfair in the big picture, but Biden couldn't afford a single misstep, given the media environment. It's also unfair that he's punished for his age when TSF is not, but TSF is able to SEEM vigorous. I hate the whole fucking situation, but Biden dropping out is not the reason we are here today.
Polybius
(21,902 posts)A year or even 6 months earlier would have given Harris or someone else more time to campaign.
LearnedHand
(5,500 posts)It feels so much like one man's hubris put us here.
Midwestern Democrat
(1,029 posts)It's just unfathomable to me that party leaders like Pelosi, et al, are being demonized for FINALLY stepping in in July - what the hell were they supposed to do - just stand on the bridge of the Titanic and passively watch the Biden team ram the ship straight into the iceberg?
hadEnuf
(3,616 posts)because that's what the Right Wing media does.
Dems abandoning Biden like that did damage to the party's reputation in the eyes of the people, IMO.
Harris did amazingly well in the time she had but it gave the right fresh meat to savage, even though she was part of Biden's success.
Terry_M
(820 posts)That is saying this.
niyad
(132,446 posts)some damned game with no real-life consequences, we are in a battle for our very lives. And was it necessary to slam Kamala like that?
getagrip_already
(17,802 posts)Im sure they were wrongly convinced they were right, but they couldnt have been more wrong.
It wasnt just pushing him out when they did, they were lobbying for it for 6 months before that.
They ripped the administration apart in an effort to get him out. And that crippled our chances.
A strong front, damn the torpedoes attitude would have worked. Look what tsf had going against him.
Disgusting failure.
SharonClark
(10,497 posts)screwed our chances? Well, that’s very revealing since he was the chair of the Democratic party.
alarimer
(17,146 posts)And they also lost the House and Senate. I think the DNC chair also bears some responsibility.
twodogsbarking
(18,785 posts)Trump does great things, has never happened. Force feeding the public.
DSandra
(1,719 posts)Yavin4
(37,182 posts)All polls indicate that Biden would've lost worse than Kamala. His performance at that June debate was atrocious. Kamala actually did very well given the hand that was dealt to her.
Florida Dem
(57 posts)100% agree. It would have been a bloodbath. That debate was a death blow. There was no recovering from that. And yes, I like Biden. He was unable to translate being a great President to being an effective candidate; not all his fault (inept media and woefully uninformed electorate). Kamala was a far superior communicator and candidate.
TheBadWolf
(67 posts)That's probably not a reliable barometer any more.
Yavin4
(37,182 posts)Most of the polls showed a tight race, and that's exactly how the election turned out.
lonely bird
(2,943 posts)This is war.
Republicans hate this country. They hate anyone who is not white. The few Blacks or Latinos who are Republicans and in office on a federal level would be marched off to the camps when their usefulness was ended.
Trump must be confronted on every single lie by being called a liar.
Use his terminology against him: “some say…”
Do not offer respect.
Do not offer respect or oxygen to his enablers and sycophants.
If Musk truly took information from the databases at the Treasury Department then push on every bit of media no matter where for his immediate arrest.
This. Is. War.
There is no longer “we go high”. That ship has sailed.
MichMan
(17,151 posts)During the election season, any polls that showed we were behind were attacked as being fake, deceptive, manipulated, media or Putin conspiracies and other derisive terms.
dalton99a
(94,140 posts)brights that was fast approaching
SunSeeker
(58,283 posts)Polybius
(21,902 posts)A sitting President can never drop out the same year as the election. LBJ did a similar thing in 1968.
SunSeeker
(58,283 posts)There's a whole shitload of other much more pressing things to post in LBN.
Lonestarblue
(13,480 posts)
William769
(59,147 posts)Refreshing.
Trust_Reality
(2,291 posts)We have a current problem and we need to pull together now. Right now.
andym
(6,066 posts)Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi among others have served long enough to see what high cost of living and inflation did to the campaigns of Gerald Ford , Jimmy Carter (though the hostages were perhaps more important), and especially George HW Bush, where Clinton used the high prices against him masterfully.
Unless Joe was betting that prices would fall on their own, since the GOP House would never allow any new program to help get passed, he miscalculated by not withdrawing from the race early enough to have a primary. Joe was hoping Bidenomics would be the second coming of Reaganomics and would help him win in a landslide. But there was a big difference, Reagan not only had a strong economy as Joe had, but prices and inflation were under control by 1983. Keep in mind that Between 1981 and early 1983 Reagan's poll numbers were underwater because of inflation (and a recession early in his term). Mondale and other Democrats thought they would beat him up until then.
Kamala was hamstrung by her close association with Joe, which allowed the GOP and Trump to link her to the high prices. This was one election where a Democratic outsider would have had the best chance as they could not be assigned blame for the prices (or Gaza by pro-palestinians or even immigration-- which was an issue that Joe and Kamala tried to pin on Trump but could never get traction).
MichMan
(17,151 posts)Once in 188 years. Bush in 1988
question everything
(52,134 posts)
Bluethroughu
(7,215 posts)We have a Rouge anti-American republican party deliberately trying to overthrow our Democracy with a bunch of sick and twisted billionaires.
LauraInLA
(2,248 posts)divide us at this point.
Evolve Dammit
(21,777 posts)mcar
(46,059 posts)
Vinca
(53,994 posts)sakabatou
(46,151 posts)nowforever
(586 posts)two years ago he would not pursue a second term. His vanity wouldn't let him and it cost us dearly.
Bengus81
(10,165 posts)his fucking job. Trump would have been in prison or prevented from running. With him out the way and his NAZI platform IMO Biden would have never gone for a second term.
MichMan
(17,151 posts)Frank D. Lincoln
(894 posts)I watched him say it on a TV show, but I don't remember which one.
Polybius
(21,902 posts)I bet even in 1984 the DNC Chairman didn't say Mondale was gonna lose.
Frank D. Lincoln
(894 posts)To be consistent, either:
A. Jaime Harrison shouldn't have publicly predicted Harris was going to win (in other words, not made a prediction either way--especially since no one can predict the future anyway). Or
B. He shouldn't be saying now that Biden shouldn't have dropped out (which is just 20-20 hindsight because his prediction proved to be wrong).
I see that as inconsistent, logically speaking.
That's just my opinion. You're perfectly free to disagree.
LisaL
(47,423 posts)
Frank D. Lincoln
(894 posts)Polly Hennessey
(8,834 posts)LisaL
(47,423 posts)
bluestarone
(22,179 posts)We have to talk about things we can do something about!
SnoopDog
(2,695 posts)Once again, where was the Dem leadership?
BeyondGeography
(41,101 posts)For two years prior to the debate Biden had problems putting two sentences together without incident. His insistence on running for reelection meant we were saddled with a candidate who could barely communicate in the most important election of our lives. He was using teleprompters at fundraisers ffs. The debate wasn’t a “speed bump.” It was the end of the line. Now go away Jaime while someone else tries to clean up the resulting mess.
SharonClark
(10,497 posts)Dunnjen
(82 posts)If Biden had any sense, he would have passed the baton to Harris in time for the primary. If he had resigned in 2022, she could've made her case in real time. Harris unhindered, not being careful with his precious legacy, she would have made a strong candidate in 2024 and we'd be able to carry on with normal democratic activities.
For now I have to watch my suffering 401k no pension future and hope I still have a job.
4catsmom
(667 posts)you should have been preaching this in October
MichMan
(17,151 posts)A month before the election? For what purpose, to try and put Biden back in?
What good would that have done other than create a lot of problems for Harris?
Blasphemer
(3,623 posts)Rightly or wrongly, he was blamed for inflation. As was Harris. The same thing is going to happen across the Western world. Leaders blamed for the unprecedented post-pandemic times that we are in. People are stupid.
ificandream
(11,837 posts)Remember how he was sinking in the polls after that first debate? That and the Republican propaganda machine is what killed us. Harris was far and away the better candidate, though. If we were a smarter nation, we would have elected her. But we aren't.
MichMan
(17,151 posts)would have been saying when Biden lost, that they should have replaced him with Harris because she would have won.
Midwestern Democrat
(1,029 posts)
Sober Retiree
(40 posts)Shoulda woulda coulda, famous last words. How about built in forgetter. The U.S. constitution does not have a wrench for every nut in this dysfunctional Republic..... Built in forgetter did not account for all the Racist, homophobic, Nazi bastards. Big mistake. Don't forget Reagan fired the traffic controllers back in the day, planes went down then to, am I overreacting?
LudwigPastorius
(14,728 posts)With that perfect hindsight of his, I wonder what he said we should have done.
C0RI0LANUS
(3,017 posts)Negating mortality rates for both Blue and Red States, between the winning 2020 and losing 2024 elections, Democrats lost 6,265,888 voters. If we liberally subtract the entire 1,698,570 Arab-American vote (1.1% of the US population), that leaves us with 4,567,318 missing voters.
Green Party candidate Jill Stein won 628,129 votes across the US (doing best in New Jersey).
Subtracting that number, nationwide that leaves 3,939,189 Democratic voters unaccounted for in 2024.
Meanwhile, between 2020 and 2024 Trumpf increased his support from 74,223,975 to 77,302,580 or 3,078,605 ballots.
Were these the same three million or so voters?
Historical footnote:
In 1864, General McClellan promised a quick end to the bloody Civil War. With horrific casualty numbers in the North and South, Abraham Lincoln was nevertheless re-elected in a landslide and the Union won the Civil War, abolishing slavery.
Steadfast "Honest Abe" in 1864.
Polio-stricken FDR in a wheelchair was re-elected in 1944 during WWII with terrible casualty counts and Americans wanting an end to the bloodshed (along with food rationing, paper drives, and shortages).
The architect of the "New Deal."
Sources:
https://www.historyonthenet.com/lincolns-landslide-victory-in-election-of-1864
https://www.newsnationnow.com/politics/2024-election/how-jill-stein-fared-2024-election/
markie
(24,017 posts)I love President Biden, however, he would not have won.... "the times they are a changin'" and I don't mean in a good way
mdmc
(29,377 posts)but whatever
Hope22
(4,746 posts)Talk to the elected officials who routed him out from within! This is something you should have kept to yourselves! And now….we wait for what you all will do! Ummm…the country is on fire and yet we wait!!
question everything
(52,134 posts)We’ve ever hears of losing the first three states and coming back and winning?
Biden, and my Senators Klobuchar, would not participate in the freebies offers on social media that determined who participated in the debates.
Governors usually are reliable candidates. There were four and did not make a dent.
I think that our 2028 candidate will be one.
Just go away. Please.