'No daylight’: Biden refused to let Harris break with him on policy issues during campaign, new book alleges
Former president and aides were more concerned with protecting his legacy than allowing nominee to define her own narrative, authors argue
Oh? Pulling a “Republican”? My wife made me do it? Wasn’t my fault? Attempting to distance herself so she can make a run for office again.
Yeah, seriously. She's an adult. She could have just said "Thanks Joe, now go away." What could he have done? Fired her?
If anyone wants some good rage material, watch the Pod Save America interview with Harris staffers
She was elected, not appointed. She could say and do what she wanted and theres not much Biden could have done about it.
She is her own person and has to live with the consequences of her choices like everybody else. It's all in the past now and just a footnote in history.
Honestly this behavior is going to keep getting highlighted from Biden because he was an absolute stubborn idiot. He had polling showing him losing to Trump with over 400 electoral votes for MONTHS before dropping out. He blamed his family for staying in as long as he did, obviously it was him or what was left of him.
History will not look kindly on Biden for fucking over his one job of stopping Trump. Didn't arrest him, didn't defeat him, didn't stop most of the Jan 6 protestors, didn't go after the enablers of his actions, didn't really stop anything Trump did to avoid debt and jail and we ended up with him for Round 2, Even Worse This Time.
100% agreement. He should have arrested Agent Krasnov and his henchmen on the first day of his presidency, and detained them in isolation without bail or access to the media, until their trials were resolved. If he had done that, Krasnov and his Gang would be in prison right now, instead of the White House.
Instead Biden appointed a weakass Republican as his AG who gave him a 2 year head start to run out the clock.
The Dems had the perfect chance to defend our country from the MAGA scourge, but they totally abdicated their responsibility. It will be 100 times harder to take it back now, and I don't see it happening without violence.
Look at democrats now. Still doing absolutely nothing. Even if they won they still wouldn’t have stopped Trump or Musk. They’d probably just stand aside if there was another Jan 6.
He blamed his family for staying in as long as he did
Real ted cruz moment, that.
I am wondering if the mods of news@lemmy.world and politics@lemmy.world regret censoring the people who rightfully said these things and it would cost us the election. Like there's mods in here who go "yeah that sucks, I knew it." but also just defended Biden/Harris and removed good faith users who posted citations that even their beloved Media Bias Bot said was a good source.
They did it, banned the people who said it, and then people went "where are all those critics now? i guess putin turned them off! hurr hurr haw haw!"
Genuinely wonder if they question their choices of just doing this for free with literally zero benefit to their website and the country as a whole.
Genuinely wonder if they question their choices of just doing this for free with literally zero benefit to their website and the country as a whole.
No, they dig their head in the sand and continue to play stupid. If they ever actually acknowledged reality they'd feel bad, so that's not gonna happen
Sounds like an excuse. She could've had a different stance but didn't. Because she's the same thing. She was asked point blank how she's any different than Biden and she couldn't answer.
Harris couldn't answer basic policy questions when she was running for president in 2020 either.
Nonsense. In 2020, she was one of the few that was supporting universal health care, for one thing. Unfortunately, she somehow decided, or was pressured, to stick with Biden's platform in 2024 instead of her own, more progressive, platform.
she's setting up for 2028. assuming we have elections
After an L like this, I don't think Harris makes it to the 2nd primary debate
WDYM "let"? What was he gonna do? Sniff her?
He probably said something vague about decorum.
If you run into Biden can you let him know I decorumed his mom last night?
His legacy is in the toilet so congratulations advisors.
I feel like blaming her loss on others takes away her agency. Seems sexist to me. We dont reassign blame like this with male failed candidates, but with Hillary and Harris everyone wants to paint them as purely victims.
I blame her loss on her being a bad candidate who wouldn't push popular positions. Harris was a week candidate from the start. She dropped out of the primary in 2020 with only 3% support and then got the VP nom.
They were both extremely bad candidates who should not have been in a position to run. If the party had been allowed to speak they would not have been allowed to run.
They weren't really candidates that failed on their own merits, they were set up to fail by being put into a position they should never have been in.
Neither Hillary nor Kamala could have won a primary that wasn't rigged in their favor. Since they didn't get to their position as candidate based on their own merits, it's reasonable to describe their failure in similar terms.
That said, there is such a thing as more than 100% blame, and this is a situation where A lot of people have a lot of blame. Those two women are 100% responsible for the stupid decisions they made. No one can take that failure away from them, but because of the nature of the mistake, there were a lot more people who should also be blamed and similarly excommunicated from politics.
There are elements of sexism here, but that's just endemic to politics. They didn't fail because of sexism, they got to where they were because of it and were set up to fail by it, but there are a lot of problems here beyond and before sexism.
It's ridiculous to think that Harris couldn't have done what she wanted. Once you're named the nominee, that's it. They're not going to back out.
The problem was her campaign was largely run by Biden's people. He clearly was interfering with her campaign and she kept trying to make the most of it.
Did she ever say that publicly? No. So she did not make the most of it.
I mean, that was the line from centrists anytime someone wanted any hope from harris that she might be less of a lapdog for netanyahu than biden was.
Let's blame Joe so Kamala can run again.
Not fooling me, DNC. I smell what you're cooking.
I want to tell myself that there's no way in hell they would let this happen, let alone make it happen.
Then I remember it's the DNC.
She's free to run again, but this time she has to win the primary. And that's unlikely. It's rare in modern times for someone to lose a Presidential election and get another shot at it, Nixon and Trump are the only two in over a hundred years.
You seem to forget what they did to sanders. If they want a specific candidate they will make sure they win.
Also Adlai Stevenson in the 50s although he lost both times.
The way democrats talk: "We're turning the page and letting the daylight in!"
The way democrats act with a majority: "We couldn't get any daylight this time, but we did pass these bipartisan flashlights which are known to explode occasionally due to republicans demanding amendments be added to the batteries."
"We've also means tested the flashlights, so those who recall the time before the great darkness get less of the flashlights, and anyone who has flashlights that explode will be required to have a daily check of their pupils to ensure they've been good at not looking at the daylight."
To be honest, this is just a signal that she probably wouldn't have been a good leader. Better than Trump, sure, but that bar is so low it's a tripping hazard.
She should have told Biden to pound sand after locking up the nomination.
But we should verify the claim before passing judgement.
Honestly, her campaign already signaled that. This, if true, just reinforces it. It also reinforces that Biden was a bad leader, which he was.
Obligatory: I voted for Harris and Biden and dems down ticket every election since I've been old enough to vote.
If I was kamala I would have slammed joe. For the good of the country, of course.
I think the best move would have been a substantial but firm and respectful break was the way to go forward.
If Kamala pushes back too hard against Joe, the establishment will question whether she grateful for his support and the opportunity he provided.
As far as I'm aware, Biden controlled most of the campaign money at least initially. either way it's still a pretty weak excuse for Harris.
Biden really fucked us in so many ways though, I'm happy to blame him for losing the election as well. I mean he was the one who thought gaslighting us about the economy was a winning move, he put Harris in a terrible position to begin with. Not to mention deciding to run again in the first place, appointing a Trump collaborator as AF, refusing to exercise his power, etc etc
Suddenly her campaign choices make a lot more sense...
Honestly, I kinda don't buy the idea Biden controlled Harris. Biden could have in 2008, but not in 2024. We all saw his term. He could be great, but when he slowed and floundered, it hampered his goals.
I'm torn between:
"I don't think an adult woman would instantly bind herself to an old man, she can have bad ideas on her own."
"I don't think she had everything planned out, she took advice from those around her, and the advice was shit but it's hard to get anything from outside this POV without getting even worse feedback."
But either way, I'm kind of glad that parts of the DNC is admitting fault after royally fucking up a second time and giving us Trump again. But I was also told they learned mistakes from 2016, and clearly they didn't, and must have fired everyone who did.
I wish Harris won merely as a stop-gap who is younger and more coherent, maybe could have gotten someone better next primary. Would have been messy and I would prefer anyone else, but not as bad. But it wouldn't have stopped the fascist uprising we're having, just keeping the cyst growing until it popped. If Biden didn't get Trump arrested, I doubt Harris would have, despite her history.
we're never going to see an end to the risk of fascism until we end capitalism, and it's as simple as that.
money is power, and if corporations and individuals can hoard wealth infinitely, it's only a matter of time until enough of that wealth is accumulated in few enough hands for those few to use their wealth to take control of the state
I wish she had won too. Didn't really like her but she was miles ahead of trump. I don't think you should be torn between the two, I think it was both. She listened to some very bad advice and believed the information she had at hand.
“Didn’t allow her” what does that even mean, in the context of the campaign? What the actual fuck was she doing listening to ANYTHING from Biden at that point? He was a clear looser. He stepped back from the campaign (after he was forced to, but he did nonetheless). That was an incredibly obvious opportunity for Harris to openly and cleanly split from policies she thought were wrongheaded - but nope, can’t have that. Jesus tapdancing christ.
Biden’s hubris put us here, I guess. What an unmitigated fucking tool. He sold us down the river and expects to be remembered fondly by history? Fuck that. The title of his subsection in history books will be “The President who Couldn’t Keep the Republic” (a pointed reference to Ben Franklin’s quip at the original constitutional convention).
The pressure the DNC seems to exert over it's canidates is insane. There was probably a lot of pressure on her to toe the line. I heard they reigned in Walz quite a bit too.
Maybe one day the DNC will learn
The last time that happened was 2000 with Bush v Gore. The longstanding notion was that the VP of the current administration should not really "break ranks" with the current administration. It was seen as undermining their boss essentially.
This was in less fucked up times, mind you. But that at one time was how it was "supposed" to work. Personally I'm a firm believer that "that's how it's always been done" is fucking stupid.
It's good to understand why things have been done that way. Sometimes there's wisdom in the way things have been done, and lessons learned by people who paid real costs to learn them. Sometimes the reasoning is so bad that doing things differently for its own sake is a reasonable decision. You don't know unless you dig deeper, and not digging deeper on things that matter seems pretty dumb
I can believe this. She seemed frustrated when she spoke about the Palestine situation, and I picked up a strong subject that she wanted to say more about her objections over Israel's actions than she did.
Yeah, but that didnt bode well for her as a president...
She was the candidate, crowned with zero primary weeks before the election, with zero threat of being replaced.
But she stuck line by line to what Bidens team said
Buden's team that was Hillary's team, and before that Bill's team.
Kamala would have been an empty suit for the same neoliberal machine and she would have appointed the DNC chair back to that faction so they could influence the primary in four years.
If Kamala literally had to say exactly what her advisors said when she was literally irreplaceable, she would have been a president in name only.
Don't get me wrong, I held my nose and voted D like always, but I knew she was fucking it up, and long term that might have been for the best.
“She was the candidate, crowned with zero primary weeks before the election, with zero threat of being replaced.”
No primary? There was a primary. Biden/Harris won that primary election as Phillips dropped out fairly early. What do you mean by “no primary”
Had Biden died on the campaign trail Harris would have been instantly the candidate. The situation with him stepping aside isn’t really any different. There was a primary and Biden/Harris won that primary.
Kamala was somewhat of a Zionist, but not enough to justify Israel's bombings. Because she wants a two-state solution, and if she had been president, she would probably criticize Netanyahu for his actions damaging Israel.
A strategy to avoid AIPAC considering you a threat.
I don't know if I can buy that when the DNC refused to let anyone with even a hint of background from the middle east get a platform, and when a protest at a speech happened, she said "I am speaking." Not listening, speaking.
This is hilarious, because of Biden's "I'd have won if I was the candidate" bullshit. More like "Harris might have won if I wasn't hamstringing her", but okay, sure, Joe. Let's get you to bed, now.
I'm calling bullshit on this.
There's no possible way that Biden or any of his people could let or not let Harris do anything. They had no actual control over her campaign.
The only outsiders who had any control over her campaign were the DNC and the party establishment - the same pieces of shit who torpedoed Sanders in 2016 and 2020,.
I'm 100% certain that this narrative is coming from them, trying to dodge the blame they so richly deserve by pinning it on the senile guy.
Bruh ...
You realize at the time the Venn diagram of people you're complaining about was basically a solar eclipse, right?
And that after that we got a new DNC chair which completely changes the organization?
You're literally doing what the neoliberals want and letting them off the hook and blaming our new chair who is more progressive than any other DNC chair in the past 30 years since neoliberalism took over.
Like, the fight over the party is over, we won...
Now we have to back the new progressive version of the party or neoliberals will claw it back when no one's paying attention.
It's like hating the Patriots because Bellicheck was an asshole, you're right, but he's fucking gone and there's a new coach.
And that after that we got a new DNC chair which completely changes the organization?
I'm calling bullshit on that too.
The time for leadership is right now, when the US is facing the greatest threat in modern history and the Democratic party is at the forefront of organizations that can and should step up.
And they very much have NOT. That, all by itself, amply proves that while the names may have changed, the organization hasn't. Even in this extreme hour of need, they've painfully obviously chosen to do fuck-all.
I'm entirely comfortable presuming that the neoliberals have never let go, and they're already astroturfing their counter to the inevitable criticisms that are going to come when they yet again run on a platform of being not the Republicans, and of being just barely to their left. Just as they've done in the past, they're going to blame their inevitable failure on us. Just as in the past, it's not going to be that they're corrupt sacks of shit wholly owned by moneyed interests and willing to lose an election rather than risk reducing the flow of soft money - it's going to be that we didn't go ahead and support them anyway.
I have zero reason to believe that this whole song and dance about a supposedly new and progressive DNC is anything other than just a new spin on the same old con job.
Just another example of how the Democratic party is only slightly less fucked than the Republicans.
Harris was the candidate, not Biden. Being his VP should have been a boon to her, but instead she turned it into her own biggest obstacle. It was ultimately her decision to follow Biden’s directions on this.
It’s not like the sitting president can order a party’s candidate to take certain policy positions, even if that candidate is the sitting VP. Biden deserves a ton of the blame for our current situation, but Harris was the candidate and she decided to follow Biden’s terrible advice. He’s just the stubborn geriatric who cared more about his legacy than the peoples’ future.
horseshit
she had multiple chances like at the DNC convention
"they puppeted me poorly"
Her position regarding Palestine and Israel cost her the election. Many Dems could not vote for her, so they didn't vote.
I'd really love for that to be the case (enough people caring about genocide to decide an election), but it just isn't. The data shows that people on the left still came out to vote and she lost a bunch of centrist votes or people who are seen as "low information"/unmotivated voters. Those people don't care about Palestine. They thought she was weird, or a DEI candidate, or just weren't inspired to get up and vote for her. I'm not saying she needs to go more centrist, but people like populism and she just didn't do it.
There have been multiple reports on this issue indicating that you're wrong and the previous claim was correct. But nobody knows for sure. If she had flipped positions, perhaps some people would have been turned off and they would have called her a flip-flopper.
And obviously there were many other reasons that she lost. We don't get to blame it on just one.
I can't remember the source, but the number 1 issue in every swing state other than Michigan (which had Palestine as its #1) among democrat nonvoters and centrists who voted republican was grocery prices. Most of those states had inflation as their number 2 issue and Palestine as the third. Palestine alone wouldn't have been enough to swing any state other than Michigan.
I think its pretty clear that the primary reason Kamala lost because she didn't present a vision for the economy. She literally just said that the economy is fine. Inflation and grocery prices? Ignore those!
Inflation maybe shouldn't have been as big of an issue since it was below 3% and on its way down but it was still a concern for a large number of voters.
The woman who refused to against what a Man said would have made a STRONG Leader!
As usual the democratic party fails because it's trying to be both progressive AND cater to wealthy donors. Those two things just don't go together. Either abandon the upper class, or resign yourself to diametrically opposed rhetoric that will NEVER win an election for the Dems.
It's not remotely trying to be progressive. It's cosplaying as caring while raking in them donor dollars.
I don’t buy that. Harris has made her choice.
Could’ve, should’ve, would’ve
Huh? He couldn't have stopped her. This is nonsense.
Smells like bullshit to me
Yikes! This is a shit argument IMO. Biden wouldn't have broken from her if she stood strong on her own stances. This is a terrible look for her. More feckless establishment Dems acting like the controlled opposition they are.
I won't be voting for people like this in the future. I know many others that think like me too. That's going to be a huge problem for the Dem establishment. They're pushing progressive folks out and replacing them with no one.
So if Biden had allowed Kamala Harris to have her own narrative, would she have won the presidency?
When do I get to collect my payment for being right the entire time?
Your payment was the year of abuse from centrists you've already received, plus the next 4 years of blame for the loss they earned.
Same as anyone else who wasn't 100% on board with the genocide centrists preferred to keeping democracy.
The day they admit they've been wrong the entire time. I hope you get interest on that bet because it'll be a while.
I doubt this. Harris had some controversial policy issues such as taxing uncapitalized gains which were breaks with the Biden administration.
A vice president isn't going to publicly break with the sitting president
Been saying this before the election. These comments are wild.
A vice president isn’t going to publicly break with the sitting president
The pro-genocide centrists who made this excuse were silent when she moved to his right.
Why not?
I mean, I know she wouldn't. But seriously, think about it, why not? People wanted her to, so why not? People don't want milquetoast policy changes that improve such and such by 2%, they want a hero, so why not? People don't want palestinians to die, so why not?
She was either: an awful candidate because she wouldn't promise anything, or, an awful candidate because she couldn't promise anything.
And yeah, I wanted her to win, but the problems that fucked the last election up still plague the party. If they don't learn, we're all going straight to Trump's gulag.
Every answer they have for "Why not?" will be "the status quo that is completely made up by the politcal establishment and lobbyists say so."
Biden was unpopular, him dropping out and apointing Harris was a massive spike in the polls. I was personally excited for the shake up. Mad at the fact it was after the primaries so we didn't have time to democratically pick someone for the democrat party when democracy is at stake, but she was a new face, with probably new ideas.
It took her a while to get a policy on her website. Weeks, even. While Project 2025 had been workshopped for god knows how long and then made part of Trump's promises since day one of his run. And she just said "I stand with him on everything. Every issue, I agree with." And some small changes like "I will give $100K to new homeowners" like that meant something for the majority of people who can never ever own a home in America.
And then Tim Waltz was picked. Progressive, had a good run as governor. Not perfect from his treatment of BLM protestors, but overall a solid pick. Waltz got the Republicans bothered with the weird comments. It worked. And then they just... stopped using the one trick that worked.
And then instead of going for their usual base of working class folks, the minorities who have voted for him because the other side is "We Will Deport and Kill All Of You", they went "Let's try to win the unicorn voters of disenfranchised Republicans who will vote for a Democrat!" The fucking Chaneys, the family who organized the largest, longest, deadliest, costliest wars America has had in the 21st century were chosen as sane and reasonable people.
Harris said "We'll have the most powerful military if I'm elected! I will not underfund it! I will have strong border polices on the Mexican border! I will follow the law of red states on the polices of trans students!" Just copying republican talking points like it was a shoe-in.
All it did was alienate the voter base of the people who vote Democrat because they aren't Republican, and the brainwashed Trump supporters would never vote for a Democrat simply because of nearly 30 years of brainwashing by Fox News, Glen Beck, and Rush Limbaugh, followed by Tim Pool, Charlie Kirk, Joe Rogan, and whatever conservative of the year has a podcast/youtube show.
And we were called crazy and insane for noticing any of this. Comments removed on Reddit and Lemmy. Called Russian bots on Twitter and Mastodon. Called single issue voters who hate the idea of compromise. And we were right! And they still laugh at us for being right, thinking that because Trump sucks, it means we were wrong for pointing out the flaws of a bad canidate.
Joe Biden publicly broke with Obama when Obama drew a line in the sand on Israel using American weapons in a genocide
Biden publicly and repeatedly told anyone who would listen that Obama was wrong and the only way to work with Israel is giving them everything they ask for...
Are you saying that hurt his chances later when he was handed the presidential nomination after a literal 40 years of losing primaries?
It seems like it's not about going against the president, it's about going against neoli eral policy...
It's because of the frustration surrounding the elections, and it will take a while for everything to calm down, although Kamala could run for president again if she doesn't opt for the California governorship.
although Kamala could run for president again if she doesn’t opt for the California governorship.
I wouldn't put it past leadership to consider this a good idea and forego primaries again.