President Biden privately regrets dropping out of this year’s presidential election and reportedly insists he could’ve beaten President-elect Trump if he wasn’t pushed out of the race by his own party.
Biden and some of his aides have boasted to confidantes “in recent days” that the president should’ve stayed in the race and could’ve won a second term, the Washington Post reported Saturday citing multiple anonymous sources briefed on the conversations.
Instead, the 82-year-old buckled to pressure by Democratic Party elites to drop out of the race in July because of poor poll numbers and his rocky June 27 debate performance, in which he gave incoherent answers and appeared to stumble over his words.
Vice President Kamala Harris replaced Biden on the top of the Democratic ticket and was handily defeated by Trump, who’ll be sworn in for a second White House stint on Jan. 20.
“Aides say the president has been careful not to place blame on Harris or her campaign,” the outlet reported.
However, the president all but admitted during a CBS News Sunday Morning interview in August that former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi led the charge because Dems in the House and Senate were worried that he’d drag down their chances of being reelected.
And in September he told “The View” that he was confident he would have defeated Trump in November.
Many Democrats blame Harris’ loss on Biden’s insistence not to drop out sooner.
“Biden ran on the promise that he was going to be a transitional president, and in effect, have one term before handing it off to another generation,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut) told The Washington Post.
“I think his running again broke that concept — the conceptual underpinning of the theory that he would end the Trump appeal; he would defeat Trumpism and enable a new era.”
Some of his closest advisers, without faulting Biden, concede his old-school governing style did not always mesh with modern politics.
“The president has been operating on a time horizon measured in decades, while the political cycle is measured in four years,” Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, told the outlet.
Biden in recent weeks has admitted to some of the myriad of gaffes he’s made in office, including that he “screwed up” during the debate and was “stupid” for not getting credit by putting his name on the pandemic relief checks his administration sent out in 2021 – as Trump did as president in 2020.
And Biden and his aides have also conceded the administration could’ve done a better job lifting Americans’ spirits during the pandemic.
Repeating claims made in the Bob Woodward book “War,” The Washington Post reported Biden has also been telling confidantes he shouldn’t have picked Merrick Garland as attorney general, whining the former US appeals court judge was too aggressive in prosecuting his son Hunter.
And Garland was apparently too slow for Biden in prosecuting Trump over the Jan. 6 riots – charges that were ultimately dismissed.
