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Nancy Pelosi says Biden’s delay in exiting race blew Democrats’ chances
- Had Biden left sooner, she noted, the party could have an open primary. Now they must ‘live with what happened’
Joe Biden’s slowness in exiting the 2024 presidential election cost the Democrats dearly, the former House speaker Nancy Pelosi said, days after Kamala Harris was beaten by Donald Trump.
“We live with what happened,” Pelosi said.
Pelosi was speaking to The Interview, a New York Times podcast, in a conversation the newspaper said would be published Saturday in full.
“Had the president gotten out sooner,” Pelosi remarked, “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.
“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.”
Pelosi reportedly played a key role in persuading Biden to stand aside. But she has not sought to soothe his feelings. In August, she told the New Yorkershe had “never been that impressed with his political operation”.
According to Pelosi, cultural issues pushed American votes to Trump.
“Guns, God and gays – that’s the way they say it,” she said. “Guns, that’s an issue. Gays, that’s an issue. 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.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/08/nancy-pelosi-biden-democrats-election-loss
