Nancy Pelosi, former US House of Representatives Speaker, has said Democrats might have fared better in Tuesday’s election if President Joe Biden had exited the race sooner.
Pelosi said: “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race”.
Her remarks are the latest finger pointing from Democrats after the party lost hold of the White House. They might also lost both chambers of Congress.
Pelosi is widely reported to have led the Democrats’ push to oust Biden. And he ended up leaving the race at the end of July after weeks of pressure following a poor debate performance against Donald Trump.
As Biden ended his campaign, he quickly endorsed Vice-President Kamala Harris to take his place.
However, she suffered a bruising defeat to President-elect Trump on Tuesday.
Reacting, Pelosi told the New York Times: “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary.”
An open primary would have involved a number of Democratic candidates competing to be elected by party members to succeed Biden as their White House nominee.
Pelosi argued that Harris would have done well in such a primary process and it would have made her “stronger going forward”.
“But we don’t know that. That didn’t happen. We live with what happened,” she said.
Meanwhile, Pelosi, the California congresswoman, was re-elected to her 20th term in the House on Tuesday.
“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.”
Harris aides also laid the blame at Biden’s feet. They said he should have bowed out sooner.
An aide said: “We ran the best campaign we could, considering Joe Biden was president.
“Joe Biden is the singular reason Kamala Harris and Democrats lost tonight.”
