Former President Joe Biden and former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton
In a new interview this week, Hillary Clinton identified the key decision that resulted in President Donald Trump's election in 2024. It all boiled down, in her view, to a "terrible miscalculation" -- former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.'s decision to run for re-election. Mr. Biden made a "terrible mistake for himself, his legacy and for the country" in deciding to seek re-election at the age of 81. Had he decided to "pass the torch" and the Democratic Party had held a competitive nomination process, "whoever emerged from that contest — whether it was the vice president, or a governor, or a senator or anybody else — would have beaten Donald Trump."
Or, I would add, they would have had a better chance than Biden did.
Joe and Jill Biden clearly live in a state of denial with respect to Joe's unpopularity. In some respects, it's understandable: He wasn't a bad president and he left the country in better shape than it is now. So why shouldn't Jill think that even though she was afraid her husband was having a stroke during the debate with Trump, he should stay in the race and if he had, they both seem to believe, he would have beaten Trump. It's delusional thinking that must have been reinforced by the deep-seated loyalty of those who had been around him for so long. Sadly, the cost of that delusional thinking is being borne around the world.
Democratic Party is still struggling to figure out what went wrong. The unofficial official autopsy report, which the Party commissioned and then disowned, studiously avoided any criticism of Biden's decision to seek re-election, which cast doubt on the rest of the report.
Of course, the question remains: Was Kamala Harris the right candidate? That's the one that even Hillary avoided, pointing out that Kamala would have been a stronger candidate if she'd emerged from a competitive process. But would she have? Emerged from a competitive process, that is. Kamala Harris was the Vice President for an unpopular President. She was caught between defending the indefensible and attacking her own Administration. She never figured out how to walk that line in the general election and there's no reason to think it would have been easier in the primaries.
The Democratic Party is still struggling to figure out what went wrong. The unofficial official autopsy report, which the party commissioned and then disowned, studiously avoided any criticism of Biden's decision to seek re-election, which cast doubt on the rest of the report.
Of course, the question remains: Was Kamala Harris the right candidate? That's the one that even Hillary avoided, pointing out that Kamala would have been a stronger candidate if she'd emerged from a competitive process. But would she have? Emerged from a competitive process, that is. Kamala Harris was the Vice President for an unpopular President. She was caught between defending the indefensible and attacking her own Administration. She never figured out how to walk that line in the general election and there's no reason to think it would have been easier in the primaries.
The simple fact that Democrats need to accept is that Americans preferred the convicted felon to the vice president. They got to see them both, up close. Harris ran a better campaign than she gets credit for. She did put her best foot forward. She was well-financed. Experienced strategists surrounded her. She did not use a private email server, as Hillary did. She did not have investigators nipping at her heels, the way Hillary did. It was, considering everything, a smooth run. She just didn't win.
I have yet to hear any explanation for why she's a stronger candidate today than she was in 2024, and she would need to be a stronger candidate to defeat a Marco Rubio, for instance. Kamala is leading in most, although not all, of the early polls, but that is a matter of name recognition; perhaps more significant is the fact that a majority of Democrats, at this stage, favor candidates other than Harris. And Harris has done almost nothing since the election to distinguish herself as the party's leader.
Soon enough, we will be hearing more, not only from Gavin Newsom, who is already out there (and being investigated for it), but from J.B. Pritzker and Josh Shapiro and Pete Buttigieg, not to mention Jon Ossoff, Ro Khanna and AOC. The nomination process is flawed in many ways, but at least it's a test, one that Kamala will be forced to pass this time.
Susan Estrich is a celebrated feminist legal scholar, the first female president of the Harvard Law Review, and the first woman to run a U.S. presidential campaign. She has written eight books.
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