Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi thinks Joe Biden could have stopped Vice President Kamala Harris’ electoral loss had he dropped out of the race even earlier.
The 84-year-old winner of a 20th House term on Tuesday was reportedly a central figure in Biden’s ouster from the top of the ticket, pressuring him in private meetings before he ultimately called it quits in July. Had Pelosi gotten her way, Harris would have had to duke it out with Democrats in an open primary.
“Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi shared with the New York Times. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary.”
Biden billed himself as a “bridge” candidate who would serve just one term in 2020. Still, he ran for re-election with his path cleared, as is typical of incumbents. When he dropped out, the president endorsed Harris in part to avoid a costly and potentially messy primary.
Harris, to her credit, took the ball and ran with it. Her presidential campaign pulled in over $1 billion in contributions despite getting out of the gate just three months and change before Election Day.
The way Pelosi sees it, that time-consuming primary would have been worth the hassle, as the process could have diminished the perception that Harris was an extension of the Biden administration.
“As I say, Kamala may have, I think she would have done well in that and been stronger going forward. But we don’t know that. That didn’t happen. We live with what happened,” Pelosi said. “And because the president endorsed Kamala Harris immediately, that really made it almost impossible to have a primary at that time. If it had been much earlier, it would have been different.”
