Politics
Biden Throws Kamala Under The Bus, Says He Wasn’t Surprised She Lost
It wasn’t the most reassuring moment for a party still reeling from a tough loss—and certainly not for Kamala Harris. Former President Joe Biden, during a Thursday appearance on ABC’s The View, offered a candid assessment of the 2024 election outcome and didn’t shy away from signaling that he saw it coming.
“I wasn’t surprised, not because I didn’t think the vice president was the most qualified person to be president. She is. She’s qualified to be president of the United States of America,” Biden claimed. “I was surprised, I was surprised because they went the route of, the sexist route, the whole route.”
“I mean, this is a woman, she’s this, she’s that. I mean, it really, I’ve never seen quite as successful and a consistent campaign undercutting the notion that a woman couldn’t lead the country, and a woman of mixed race.”
Though Biden reiterated his belief in Harris’s qualifications, his comments struck some as a quiet distancing from the failed campaign. The 2024 race marked an extraordinary political turn when Biden, under heavy pressure from within his own party, withdrew from the race in July following a disastrous debate performance and rising concerns about his age and stamina. The move came less than four months before Election Day, forcing Harris into a high-stakes sprint to build national momentum.
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Ultimately, that effort fell short. Despite early bursts of fundraising and high-profile endorsements, Harris lost to President Donald Trump, who reclaimed the White House with an Electoral College tally of 312-226 and a narrow edge in the popular vote. Harris’s defeat in key battleground states—Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania—was especially devastating to Democrats. Those “blue wall” states had been critical to Biden’s 2020 victory but flipped back red in 2024, along with swing states like Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, and North Carolina.
Biden, speaking reflectively, cited broader social and emotional impacts in the country.
“Anyway, make a long story short, all kidding aside, think about it. Liberal democracies lost last time out, all across America,” Biden said Thursday. “I think we underestimate the phenomenal negative impact that COVID had, and the pandemic had on people, on attitudes, on optimism, on a whole range of things, so I was very disappointed and – but I wasn’t surprised. The only thing that surprised me was the excess to which they’ve gone in some of the attacks they’ve made.”
While Biden did not directly criticize Harris’s campaign decisions, his remarks have fueled speculation about internal tensions in the Democratic Party. Several top Democratic strategists have expressed their frustration that Harris was handed the reins too late to mount a comprehensive campaign, pointing to Biden’s late exit as a key reason for the party’s disorganization.
Others, however, argue that the vice president failed to win over voters in key demographics and struggled to connect with working-class Americans on issues like inflation, immigration, and crime.
The Democratic Party now faces an uncertain future. With two straight disappointing election cycles, calls for new leadership are growing louder. Some Democrats want to move beyond the Biden-Harris era entirely and focus on rebuilding trust with swing voters, especially in Rust Belt and Sun Belt states.
With Republicans now holding both the White House and a slim Senate majority, Democrats will spend the next several months rethinking their strategy for 2026 and beyond. Whether Biden’s latest comments help or hurt that process remains to be seen—but they’ve certainly reignited debate over how the party got here.
