Former US President Joe Biden. Photo / Getty Images
Joe Biden’s former aides have attacked Kamala Harris saying she “knows nothing” and was “out of her depth” after she laid into the former United States President.
The row was triggered by the publication of an excerpt from Harris’ memoir 107 Days, in which she branded Biden’s second presidential run “recklessness”.
In the book, Harris said she made a “colossal mistake” in not telling the then 81-year-old to abandon his re-election campaign, and that it was a choice that should not have been left to an “individual’s ego”.
The former Vice-President also criticised Biden’s inner circle for failing to defend her against right-wing criticism and suggested they grew jealous of her when she outperformed Biden in the polls.
Now, his aides have hit back, telling Axios: “Vice-President Harris was simply not good at the job”.
“She had basically zero substantive role in any of the Administration’s key work streams, and instead would just dive bomb in for stilted photo ops that exposed how out of depth she was.”
Biden is “not the reason she struggled in office or tanked her 2019 campaign, or lost the 2024 campaign, for that matter. The independent variable there is the vice-president, not Biden or his aides,” another anonymous aide added.
In 2024, Harris was the first Democrat to lose the popular vote since John Kerry in 2004.
Axios spoke to a dozen aides who accused Harris of trying to blame Biden for her defeat, with some saying she was using party resources to promote her new book.
In the book Harris accused Biden aides of briefing against her while she was in the White House, with stories appearing about the high turnover of staff in her office and her handling of the immigration crisis at the southern border.
In May, while stopping short of criticising Harris, Biden said he was convinced he would have won last year’s election.
The feuding was inevitable, Christopher Galdieri, professor of politics at Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire, told the Telegraph.
“With 20/20 hindsight, it’s clear that Democrats would have been better off if Biden had decided not to run for another term much earlier than he actually did.
“And it’s in Harris’ interest to distance herself from Biden and his decision to run for a second term for as long as he did.
“And it’s no secret that Harris had a difficult time settling into her role as VP, largely because, as the junior member of the ticket, there wasn’t that much the White House needed her for, in contrast to the elder statesman role we’ve seen from prior VPs like Dick Cheney and Biden himself under Obama.”
Jeff Weaver, a leading Democratic strategist, told the Telegraph that the blame for the defeat should be laid at the door of the party hierarchy.
“I wish people who were speaking out now had spoken out, but it could have been a different something to have had a regular nominating process and nominated a candidate who could have beaten Trump,” he told the Telegraph.
“Whenever party insiders substitute their judgment for the judgment of voters, we lose.
“This happened in 2016 when party insiders rigged the primary against Bernie Sanders, and we lost,” added Weaver, who worked on the Sanders campaigns in 2016 and 2020, as well as Dean Phillips’ bid for the White House in 2024.
“It happened in 2024 when party insiders rigged the system to protect Joe Biden, and we lost there, too.
“So if you want to pick a candidate who’s going to be popular with voters, you let the voters pick the candidate, and we’ll have much more success.”
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