Joe Biden’s slowness in exiting the 2024 presidential election has cost Democrats dearly, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, days after Kamala Harris was defeated by Donald Trump.
“We live with what happened,” Pelosi said.
Pelosi spoke to The Interview, a New York Times podcast, in a conversation that the newspaper said would be published in full on Saturday.
“If the president had come out sooner,” Pelosi noted, “there might have been other candidates in the race.” The expectation was that if the president stepped aside, an open primary would take place.
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“And like I said, maybe Kamala, I think she would have done well in that and would have been stronger in the future. But we don’t know that. That didn’t happen. We live with what happened. And because the president immediately endorsed Kamala Harris, that made it virtually impossible to hold primaries at the time. If it had been much earlier, it would have been different.”
As Democrats engaged in bitter blame games over Harris’ defeat and a second presidency for Trump, whom senior Democrats from Harris on down freely called a “fascist,” Pelosi’s words landed like an explosive shell.
The Times said Pelosi “has gone to great lengths to defend the Biden administration’s legislative achievements, most of which occurred during his first two years when she was speaker of the House of Representatives.”
Republicans took over the House in 2022. Pelosi, now 84, was re-elected this week to a 20th two-year term.
Biden was 78 when he was elected in 2020 and is now just under 82. He has long dismissed doubts about his continued capacity for office, but they became public after a disastrous first debate against the 78-year-old Trump in June.
On July 21, the president made the historic decision to resign as the Democratic candidate. Within minutes he endorsed Harris to replace him.
Pelosi reportedly played a key role in convincing Biden to step aside. But she didn’t try to soothe his feelings. In August, she told the New Yorker that she had “never been more impressed by his political operation.”
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She said, “They won the White House. Bravo. But my concern was: this isn’t happening, and we have to make a decision to make it happen. The president has to make the decision to make that happen.”
Biden is widely said to be furious with the former speaker. This week, reports say the president and his senior staff are furious with Barack Obama, under whom Biden served as vice president but who also helped push Biden out of the reelection race.
According to the Times, Pelosi also dismissed comments from Bernie Sanders in which the independent Vermont senator said Trump won because Democrats “abandoned the working class” — Democratic National Committee Chairman Jaime Harrison notes that was “straight up BS” mentioned. ”.
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“Bernie Sanders did not win,” Pelosi said. “With all due respect, and I have a lot of respect for him, for what he stands for, but I don’t respect him when he says the Democratic party has failed working families.”
According to Pelosi, cultural issues turned American votes for Trump.
“Guns, God and gays – that’s how they say it,” she said. “Guns, that’s a problem. Gays, that’s a problem. And now they’re making the trans issue such an important issue in their priorities, and in certain communities, what they call God, what we call a woman’s right to choose” regarding abortion and other reproductive care.
