Pelosi blames Biden for Democrats’ election loss: ‘It would have been different’

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Friday laid the blame for Vice President Kamala Harris’ election defeat at the feet of President Biden, saying he should have dropped out of the race earlier.

Appearing on The New York Times podcast, Mrs. Pelosi said that Mr. Biden’s late exit made it impossible for Democrats to have a primary. 

“Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Mrs. Pelosi said in an interview with Lulu Garcia-Navarro on The Times’ “The Interview” podcast.

“The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, there would have been an open primary,” she continued.

Mrs. Pelosi, who was instrumental in pressuring Mr. Biden to ultimately bow out of the race, said that had been an open primary, Ms. Harris would have been a stronger candidate because she would have had more time to test messages and introduce herself to the American public.

“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 impossible to have a primary at that time. If it had been much earlier, it would have been different,” she said.

Within an hour of dropping out of the presidential race on July 21, Mr. Biden endorsed Ms. Harris to replace him on the ticket. Less than 36 hours later, she had locked up the nomination winning a majority of delegates. 

Mrs. Pelosi insisted earlier this year after Ms. Harris secured the nomination that there had been an open process, but nobody stepped up to challenge the vice president.

“Many of us who were concerned about the election wanted to have an open process. It was an open process, anyone could have gotten in,” she said during an interview with The Wall Street Journal in August.

“[Harris] had the endorsement of the president, and she, politically astutely, took advantage of it and shut it down — not shut down, but won the nomination. But anybody else could have gotten in,” Mrs. Pelosi continued. 

During the interview with The Times, Mrs. Pelosi also rebuked Sen. Bernard Sanders, Vermont independent, who said the election loss was because the Democratic Party “has abandoned working-class people.”

“Bernie Sanders has not won,” she said. “With all due respect, and I have a great deal of respect for him, for what he stands for, but I don’t respect him saying the Democratic Party has abandoned the working-class families.”

Instead, Mrs. Pelosi blamed the election loss on cultural issues, saying that hurt them with working-class voters.

“Guns, Gods 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.”