DNC Chair Admits Replacing Biden With Harris Was A Mistake: ‘The Primary Was Done’

As Jaime Harrison prepares to exit his position as chairman of the Democratic National Committee, he has a few parting thoughts to share.

During a recent Associated Press interview, he offered some candid opinions about the party’s decision to push Joe Biden out of the 2024 race in favor of Kamala Harris.

There has been ample debate on the left regarding whether the move was appropriate, and Harrison came down firmly on the side of those who think Biden should have remained in the race.

According to Breitbart:

Should Democrats have stuck with Biden?

HARRISON: “That’s my normal default, is that you stick by your people, right, particularly people who have worked hard on behalf of the party.”

“I went into this thinking, OK, you’ve got probably the most successful of my lifetime legislative president who has poured tons of money into making sure that not just Joe Biden and Kamala Harris get elected, but Democrats get elected — not just in the battleground states, but all states who support a lot of resources and his own time fundraising in order to strengthen the state parties.”

“And then when he hits a roadblock, when he hits a bump in the road, do we stick with him, or do we jettison him? That’s the mentality that I had going into this. And my nature is, ‘I’m on the team with you, you’re my quarterback. You got sacked a few times. But you know what? I’m going to block the hell out of the next person that’s coming at you.’ And that is not always the mentality of everybody in my party. And so sometimes, people look on the sidelines, ready to call in the backup.”

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Was the party prepped for a possible candidate switch?

HARRISON: “I had a very small group to whom I basically said, just game out for me what happens … if I have to do something, because people were asking for a big primary and this and that — and again, we have a short time frame, and so basically it was going back to the rules.”

“I didn’t even talk to all of the people in my inner circle. There were two staffers … just in case anything happened, I wanted to make sure that I knew what we could do. And so we had some structure for what something would look like.”

The Democratic Party’s controversial move has sparked plenty of mixed reactions from across the political spectrum:

Should Democrats have stuck with Biden? 👴🏻 #Election2024

— Georgia Log Cabin (@GeorgiaLogCabin) November 6, 2024

Here’s a question. Kamala was obviously a bad candidate, generationally wretched. Why don’t Democrats blame her more? It feels like it would serve a lot of purposes to do that yet the fingers are going elsewhere.

— Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) December 28, 2024

I tried to told yall

Democrats should have stuck with Joe Biden. They came at the king and missed, keeping Biden in position to harm Harris

Sloppy work, and it will result in blacks being pushed out of the Democrat coalitionhttps://t.co/sxvPhkHwMm pic.twitter.com/CLVb11c3YO

— James David Dickson (@downi75) October 22, 2024

For his part, Biden has repeatedly claimed to believe that he would have been able to defeat Trump.

As USA Today reported about its exit interview with the then-president last month:

After he reluctantly pulled out in July, Vice President Kamala Harris became the Democratic nominee, then lost in November.

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Could he have won?

“It’s presumptuous to say that, but I think yes,” Biden said, adding he based that view on polling he had reviewed. He expressed no such confidence when asked whether he had the vigor to serve another four years in office, though. “I don’t know,” he replied.

To be sure, many analysts doubt Biden could have won another term from voters who were gloomy about inflation and eager for change. What’s more, his shuffling gait and verbal miscues had raised questions about his fitness for office.

Through an interview that stretched for nearly an hour, Biden was engaged and loquacious, though at times he spoke so softly that it was difficult to hear him. On his desk were index cards that seemed to have talking points and statistics, but he glanced at them only once, at the end, as if to make sure he had mentioned the items most important to him.

Here’s some additional coverage of Biden’s post-election analysis: