Nancy Pelosi Sharpens Attack On Joe Biden Over Election Loss

During an interview with The New York Times, Nancy Pelosi claimed other candidates could have taken part in a more competitive Democratic Party presidential primary had President Joe Biden “gotten out sooner.”.
The former House speaker said Biden’s swift endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris, after dropping out of the race in July, “made it almost impossible to have a primary at that time.”
On Tuesday, Republican candidate Donald Trump convincingly won the 2024 presidential election with at least 301 Electoral College votes, according to The Associated Press (AP), 31 more than required for victory.
AP also has Trump ahead in Arizona, the only state it has yet to call, and on track to win the popular vote for the first time.
During an appearance on The Interview, a New York Times podcast, Pelosi said: “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race.
“The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary.”
The former speaker continued: “And as I say, Kamala may have, I think she would have done well in that and been stronger going forward. But we don’t know that. That didn’t happen. We live with what happened.
“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.”
Biden announced he was dropping out of the 2024 presidential race on July 21 and almost immediately endorsed Harris to be the Democratic candidate. This came after intense pressure from within his own party following his much-criticized performance in a debate with Trump on June 27 which renewed concerns about the 81-year-old’s age and cognitive state.
A spokesperson for Pelosi told Newsweek the former speaker had also complimented Harris during her New York Times interview.
“I don’t think that any review of the election should be predicated on weaknesses, but [on the] strengths of Kamala Harris,” Pelosi said. “She gave people hope. She caused a great deal of excitement in all this.”
Pelosi also said Harris “did a great job with the time constraint that she had.”
Newsweek contacted the White House for comment via email on Saturday outside of regular office hours.
On Wednesday, Pelosi reacted to Trump’s victory in a post on X, formerly Twitter, in which she said: “We all pray for America’s success under the next administration. The peaceful transfer of power is the cornerstone of our democracy. After every election, we all have a responsibility to come together and find common ground.”
Pelosi also attended Harris’s concession speech at Howard University in Washington, D.C. that day, where Fox News described her appearance as “somber and teary-eyed.”
On Friday, Representative Pat Ryan, a New York Democrat, suggested Biden should have pulled out of the contest earlier during an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper.
He said: “I think there was a real unique opportunity for President Biden to have this Washingtonian moment and show he wasn’t in it for himself, he was in it to put, really, country and party over self.
“And if he had done what he said during the campaign and talked about being a bridge to this new generation (…) I think if the president had given space of that, we might have had a different outcome
Political scientist and analyst Steven Schier previously told Newsweek that Biden could have outperformed Harris in Pennsylvania, one of the key swing states she lost.
He said: “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.”
Update 11/9/24, 10:56 a.m. ET: This story has been updated after Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s office responded to a request for comment.