I was right, but I was also wrong. Let me explain.
A little more than a year ago, I argued that, in the event of a Trump victory, the post-election blame game among Democrats would make for some fantastic political entertainment.
The part about the recriminations was correct — they are delicious. But the part about who would be made to suffer was wrong.
I had mistakenly believed that former Vice President Kamala Harris, who replaced her dotard patron at the top of the ticket a mere three-and-a-half months before Election Day, would pay the biggest price of anyone. And why wouldn’t she? Sure, Trump’s second term is unquestionably Joe Biden’s fault, but Harris was the candidate, and she lost decisively.
I expected that Biden would figure out how to scapegoat his vice president for handing Trump another four years in the White House. Surely, the man who has been in Washington, D.C., since the year of the Munich massacre, and who undoubtedly has Rolodexes brimming with the names of “political tricksters” and comms goblins, would manage to rehabilitate his image following his botched re-election bid.
Surely, I reasoned, Biden, who entered national politics before the Supreme Court had even ruled on Roe v. Wade, would lean on decades of goodwill, influence-peddling, and gossip-mining to convince the party to place the blame squarely on a woman who has not spent enough time in the nation’s capital to build any kind of relational, quid-pro-quo network of allies and donors.
I was wrong.
Former President Barack Obama really had Biden dead to rights when he said of his second in command, “Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to f— things up.”
I don’t know how Biden did it, but he has managed somehow to take all the blame for what happened last year. Meanwhile, the candidate whose name was ultimately on the ballot has somehow been granted absolution. That Harris is being given a pass says as much about the party as it does about Biden’s abilities as a world-class screw up.
Harris, who had barely served half a term in the U.S. Senate before being nominated as vice president, is no institution or fixture of U.S. politics. It should have been the easiest thing in the world for Biden to serve Harris up as a sacrificial lamb for the 2024 fiasco. No one has anything to lose if they throw Kamala from the train — no dedicated army of party loyalists, no entrenched donor network, nothing. She would skitter back to California to become a somewhat interesting footnote in the broader story of Trump’s transformation of American politics.
But that is not what’s happened — not so far, at least. Nearly all fire has been directed squarely at the old man, with fewer and fewer in the Democratic Party willing to say a nice thing about him, much less defend him.
I hadn’t considered last October that Democrats would see Biden’s behavior as putting himself ahead of the party, and that they’d hold him responsible for the consequences. Say what you will about Harris as a candidate, but she is unquestionably a loyal foot soldier. Leadership and the base alike appreciate this.
Biden, on the other hand, put himself above party with his decision to seek a second term. He put himself first when he refused to drop out even after it was clear he was struggling to perform basic tasks. Then he doomed Democrats with his inexplicable decision to humiliate himself on the national stage during a presidential debate, making the party and his supporters look like major league idiots and even liars.
Biden went a step even further, acting solely out of his own self-interest and with no regard for the party, when he pardoned his son Hunter despite repeatedly promising not to do so. This last-minute move not only undermined the Democratic Party’s “nobody is above the law” message, but it also made the Biden administration’s supporters and defenders look like chumps yet again.
Put plainly, Biden repeatedly placed himself before the company, and the company does not tolerate such disloyalty. Harris may have lost, but she wasn’t selfish or unfaithful. She was a poor candidate, but the company understands she was dealt a bad hand.
What Democrats will not tolerate, however, is selfishness and disregard.
Thus, we have a steady stream of damning news tidbits about how, for example, Biden is struggling to secure the plum speaking gigs and lucrative opportunities typically awarded to former presidents. Part of it is his age, sure, but a large part of it is that he is flat-out unpopular in the kinds of circles that would want him to come in the first place. One group that considered hosting him even attempted to negotiate a lower speaking fee.
Perhaps most damning of all is the fact that Harris is now enjoying herself on the speaking circuit, hawking, among other things, her new book, “107 Days,” in which she openly criticizes Biden.
This suggests a great deal about the former president’s standing in his own party. A half-term senator and catastrophic vice president, who just lost a high-stakes presidential election to Donald Trump, of all people, is publicly denouncing her predecessor, and she has nothing to fear from party leadership.
The recriminations aren’t for Kalama. They’re for Biden. It couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.
Becket Adams is a media critic and contributing columnist at The Hill.
