Joe Biden regrets having pulled out of this year’s presidential race and believes he would have defeated Donald Trump in last month’s election – despite negative poll indications, White House sources have said.
The US president has reportedly also said he made a mistake in choosing Merrick Garland as attorney general – reflecting that Garland, a former US appeals court judge, was slow to prosecute Donald Trump for his role in the 6 January 2021 insurrection while presiding over a justice department that aggressively prosecuted Biden’s son Hunter.
With just more than three weeks of his single-term presidency remaining, Biden’s reported rueful reflections are revealed in a Washington Post profile that contains the clearest signs yet that he thinks he erred in withdrawing his candidacy in July after a woeful debate performance against his rival for the White House, Trump, the previous month.
I know grandpa I know. Now come drink your date juice
No, he wouldn’t have.
But of course he would think that. 🙄🙄
I mean he might have, a lot of people that voted for Biden in 2020 did not vote for Kamala in 2024 for various reasons. Trump did only very slightly better in 2024 than be did in 2020. Would the people who stayed home and didn’t vote for Kamala have gotten out and voted for Biden? Maybe. If anything though Biden should have dropped out sooner or not ran at all, the DNC should have fielded better candidates, instead they spent 4 years (longer) trying to strangle any progressives before they could become feasible candidates.
The Joe Biden who showed up in 2020 would have beaten Trump. Joe Biden in 2024 is not the same guy.
The only real asset Joe had over Kamala, though, is a penis. For some voters, though, that’s enough to make them pick one and not the other.
A white penis.
Well that’s disturbing image I can’t get out of my head, lost circulation or just old?
For some voters, though, that’s enough to make them pick one and not the other.
Those voters would’ve picked Trump over Biden anyway. The Democrats will never, ever win by falling over themselves to court those types of voters at the expense of progressives and leftists.
But Liz Cheney supported Kamala…
Look at all these Republicans who say, “Don’t vote for Trump.”
Surely that’ll work…
One of the Republican talking points was that Kamala never won a primary and just snuck in. Not that it mattered for her actual policies but more so it was another reason for votor apathy
His own internal polling had trump winning over 400 versus him
I mean he might have
No. “We finally beat Medicaid” Biden would have lost, bigly.
If anything though Biden should have dropped out sooner or not ran at all
Yes, 100% this. He should have been the transitional president he signaled he’d be, before being elected in 2020.
I actually think that Biden won the election because of the primary campaign against Bernie. Bernie shifted the platform left and attracted young voters to the party that subsequently voted for Biden in the general election (even if they had to hold their noses). Nothing like a primary to unite voters behind the candidate.
A lot of people who voted for Joe Biden in 2020 spent the next four years getting poorer.
Kamala lost because she promised to be four more years of the same thing.
I agree.
They would have kept showing that first debate performance over and over as a reason Joe is too old, and it would have worked.
I mean he already had, and if he had capitalized on how a LOSER was going to try and LOSE again because he was a huge loser I think he might have swayed many of the minds
I agree, but it deserves more discussion than just “No.”
Eh, does it? The whole reason he was pushed out was because he was a combination of personally incoherent and organizationally sheltered from reality. His opinion on his own greatness has little value.
Depends how senile he would be or not be. What killed him was the debate, if there was another one and he was fully fine, then yeah a decent chance.
The US president has reportedly also said he made a mistake in choosing Merrick Garlandas attorney general – reflecting that Garland, a former US appeals court judge, was slow to prosecute Donald Trump for his role in the 6 January 2021 insurrection
At least that part is fair
It’s been absolutely appalling how long it has taken to prosecute Trump.
Many cases should have been ready the second he was no-longer president.
All the lame considerations about looks and not getting involved is idiotic. if the politicians in power don’t work to defend democracy, who else should?
The left have been screaming for Democrats to wake up for more than a decade, but they behave like a party with dementia that doesn’t understand what’s going on around them.
As AOC has stated multiple times, people will come to vote for you, if you give them a good enough reason for it. Harris was the better more moderate candidate. But I think most Americans want more, they want real change. Like better healthcare, environment protection, democracy etc.
Preventing a fascist narcissist becoming president apparently wasn’t enough?!But maybe I’m wrong, maybe the majority of Americans prefer to live with the danger of not receiving healthcare, and the danger of being financially ruined by healthcare bills. Rather than living in a “socialist hellhole” where society actually care about the citizens?
The number one cause for bankruptcies in USA is healthcare bills.
Remember how there was already a document produced by a special prosecutor that said there were crimes committed but a sitting president couldn’t be prosecuted? Just fucking memory holed by Garland’s DOJ. He literally could have taken that up the day he was confirmed.
I’d say his first mistake was choosing Garland. Biden then made a second mistake when he didn’t immediately fire Garland as soon as it became obvious that Garland wasn’t going to do his job.
So it’s everybody else’s fault.
said he made a mistake
He literally said it was his.
No, he literally said his mistake was selecting Garland. There were many other mistakes, and opportunities for him to push Garland even after he had been selected.
That’s the taking responsibility equivalent of “I’m sorry you feel that way” apology.
Not a chance in hell.
It does highlight how out of touch those in the gerontocracy are, however.
Mr. I’m only gonna be a one term President seems to have a short memory, yet again.
Him and his staff misled and dragged their feet about his intentions early in then he went full out with ‘no I’m gonna run fuck you all’ and it turned into a disaster.
This is just one of the problems with the current Democratic Party. No one will work with and groom the upcoming young members to take control. The older party members literally do not have a clue what it means to step aside for the good of the party and the good of the country.
I wish this comment was higher. Biden betrayed the party and its chances of defeating Trump the moment he won the 2020 election and chose to not start preparing the nation on Jan 20th 2021 for a younger generation to lead. Merrick fucking Garland was the other, related, and just as large mistake. That one is totally on him.
And Kamala has just never been a great candidate, but he could have taken actions to try to boost her prominence. Instead he saddled her with no-win issues throughout and jealously guarded any successes for himself. And the one big bad issue I remember that he didn’t dump on her (the rail strike), he farmed out to Pete Buttigieg to be the face of the administration (even though it wasn’t a DOT issue). It was almost like the goal was to sabotage any potential locus of political power that wasn’t Biden and his inner circle.
I don’t think a better grooming would have helped Harris when she wasn’t willing to be not-Biden in any way other than being coherent, but it certainly didn’t help and seems indicative of their lack of intention to ever transfer power.
An open primary would have helped.
A massive look back (Whenever we have the ability for free press again after Trump) on the consistent self sabotage of Clinton-Biden-Harris would become a new The Prince for future generations of leaders.
“It’s better to be feared as a leader than to be loved as one.”
“It’s better to not shoot yourself in the foot and then declare you’re good for a 10K, after saying the last 4K was your last.”
The older party members literally do not have a clue what it means to step aside for the good of the party and the good of the country.
“They young care too much about disrupting our economy (making it more fair which means less for my
ownersdonors) we can’t have that.”I have a fun test for you, it will inform you if your information ecosystem is informing you or misinforming you
Mr. I’m only gonna be a one term President seems to have a short memory, yet again.
You clearly remember this as a big promise during Biden’s 2020 campaign - but can you actually find evidence of him saying this, ever?
Can you find anything official - with a name attached to it - of the Biden campaign saying anything about only serving for one term?
Google gives a bunch of examples. Did he actually say it to the press? Perhaps not. Was it discussed and was his age recognized as a liability within his campaign in 2020? Absolutely yes.
They all, all reference the exact same quote each article.
“If Biden is elected,” a prominent adviser to the campaign said, “he’s going to be 82 years old in four years and he won’t be running for reelection.”
The adviser argued that public acknowledgment of that reality could help Biden mollify younger voters, especially on the left, who are unexcited by his candidacy and fear that his nomination would serve as an eight-year roadblock to the next generation of Democrats.
By signaling that he will serve just one term and choosing a running mate and Cabinet that is young and diverse, Biden could offer himself to the Democratic primary electorate as the candidate best suited to defeat Trump as well as the candidate who can usher into power the party’s fresh faces.
None of that was official, it was all just the campaign’s attempt to shore up an issue they had without an actual commitment and you fell for it.
None of that was official, it was all just the campaign’s attempt to shore up an issue they had without an actual commitment and you fell for it.
That’s not a failure of the media, that’s a deception by the campaign. Unless you think the media lied about a prominent advisor saying that, they did their job.
If they were off the reservation, there should have been a firing, but just because they’re putting out statements through unofficial side channels doesn’t make it not a message from the campaign.
off the reservation
that phrase was used to describe native americans who ventured outside of the confines of the reservations they had been forced into. You can imagine what happened to them if caught. That phrase has a dark, dark, history.
Well, then they should’ve repudiated it a lot sooner (i.e. during the 2020 campaign), because to allow the misconception to exist is tantamount to confirming it.
None of that was official, it was all just the campaign’s attempt to shore up an issue they had without an actual commitment and you fell for it.
Vote for us! We lied to you!
Yeah, great look.
I am amazed of the mental gymnastics.
“Can you find proof of this?”
“Yes, dozens of reputable sources give proof.”
“Well that’s not good enough, what I meant was you’re a moron for never thinking a 78 year old man with dementia would be great for 8 years as the hardest job in America.”
His campaign unofficially put that out in 2020, since he was near the bottom of the primary rankings. Campaigns that desperate start to float ideas as a trial balloon, to see if it would help or not. That’s how this works; a suggestion given by campaign staff that he can formally deny if it hurts his campaign or embrace if it’s helping. Once he started to gain ground in the primaries he backed off of the idea. He did many of these trial ideas.
Okay grampa, back to bed.
Removed by mod
His own staff had data that showed he would have lost even more electoral votes, giving Trump 400 instead of the 312. Biden is not aware of this data though. Kind of makes you think his staff is still heavily censoring what he sees.
No, all the problems left of fascists have with Kamala were even moreso with him. The only way Democrats could have won was to hold a fair primary which they haven’t done in a long time. They needed to get people voting for a candidate and not against the other guy which has been the strategy of both parties for ages, but doesn’t work well when one side has people voting for him and your side actually wanted to vote against you, but were never given an alternate.
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Bernie is one example of not running a fair primary, but not specifically what I was referencing. I was referencing the 2024 Democratic Primary specifically, and then mentioning that very few in the past have been fair to candidates. Not just because of the way the party treats the candidates publicly, but because of the way funding works and the direct control the leaders of the party have over that funding and how blackballing works if any candidate doesn’t follow the party line. Which would be fine if there were allowed to be more than two viable, active parties at once. But the electoral college, among other things, makes that almost impossible, thus why Bernie had to run as a Democrat in the first place when he doesn’t usually belong to the party.
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You’re quoting the last half of a sentence. “The only way Democrats could have won was to hold a fair primary which they haven’t done in a long time.” A prepositional phrase is an addition/side comment to a current statement. Thus, the 2024 primary was the primary focus of my comment.
But, again, to address the prepositional phrase portion, yes, none of the primaries in my lifetime have been truly fair.
As for the two party system, the original comment is referencing the electoral college which is the primary cause of the two party system as I mentioned in the original comment. The reason it’s relevant here is the same reason duopolies are unfair in economic contexts. When hundreds of millions of people have only 2 choices, those 2 rarely will care to appease the majority because they don’t have to in order to keep the customers/constituents. They just have to be the less hated for more people than the other one.
So, funding. Where does most presidential funding come from if they don’t have direct wealthy donors? The SuperPACs are controlled by the same group of people who lead the DNC. And most primary elections are determined by funding because it’s so expensive just to get your name out there, your message heard, and to get on the ballots. So funding is very relevant to the fairness of the primaries.
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I don’t know why you’re so focused on Bernie when I only side discussed decades of primaries, but OK if that’s the only primary that matters in all of history, then let’s discuss it.
Clinton took a bunch of money she promised to give a significant amount of to state and local Democratic parties and then a bunch of what she didn’t take went to the DNC instead and less than half a percent of the $80+ million went to the state and local candidates. And this was fine with the fund raising agreement technically because the DNC wrote it that way, but definitely unethical considering the donations were made with the assumption that it would help the Democratic candidates up and down the ballot, not just Hillary and the DNC. Bernie didn’t take part because of the mismanagement of the DNC and the agreement language that allowed for such things.
Additionally, Warren, Biden, and several other candidates were prevented from running through pressure from the DNC leadership. If they had been allowed to run, it was said, it would have split the vote too much away from Hillary. Again, it’s easier to control the narratives with a two sided competition so they could get who they wanted.
These are just two examples of problems with the way the primary was conducted. Unfortunately, because a lot of the financials and other business of political parties is considered proprietary, much more like a corporation than something representing the people who it purports to represent, there is less evidence of a lot of the other issues. Fortunately, Hillary’s campaign was more forthcoming with financial data than the DNC, so we do have some data at least.
I’m not a Hillary hater and while I think she did some things wrong, and while I admit I’m biased against her from her taking a bunch of money to drop the healthcare reform during her husband’s term that could have saved a lot of lives and perhaps a certain CEO assassin’s severe pain, it’s the responsibility of the party to make the primary elections fair, not the candidates, beyond basic ethical standards at least.
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I’m having problems rationalizing what you’re trying to get to. You admit “the DNC stacked the deck” but you don’t think that effected his outcome? You ran on the campaigns but have completely forgotten about the Nevada scandals involving unions and the caucus or what happened in SC when the DNC pressured high profile representatives to back Biden instead of Bernie (of which historically Biden has been horrible for minority communities). These are just off the top of my head, articles and references if you need them and I’ll make sure to find you some more to help with the analysis.
Seems like you’re splitting hairs trying to form some type of narrative. Democratic primaries have nothing to do with the two-party system? You’d have to completely wretch out decades of political knowledge from my head to even consider that nothing is connected. If there’s a real, viable point you’re trying to make besides “nuh uh”, would love to be exposed to it.
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This is all sounding a little delusional and honestly blind. Several factors have been pointed out to you, you’re aware of some of it and supposedly followed along. The very statement of “they have a favorite and message in their favor” is a direct conflict to having a “fair primary”.
The implication was the vote was not fair. This conversation was days ago. Move on.
“Benedict Arnold” developed a clear connotation over time. The same needs to become true for “Merrick Garland”. History will remember him as a coward beyond measure and a key to enabling trump’s final push to end American democracy.
Fuck Merrick Garland, without exception.
He spent so much time trying to make a good legacy that he forgot to actually do the right thing in the moment.
Garland knew he’d be accused of bias and selective prosecution, so Garland took slow and deliberate steps to make an ironclad case… only to be accused of bias anyway, and doing it so slowly that the charges expired.
Garland was hired to slow walk the case so Biden could run as second worst to Trump again.
What would have made him a good Supreme Court Justice made him a HORRIBLE attorney general.
His tenure was so horribly handled though, that I can’t help but suspect some actual intent… Otherwise, Im I’m left to conclude that he was just that impotent and cowardly. There’s no way he was that lost on what this moment was - He had an unquestionable historical mandate to act against an insurrection at the US Capitol, with police officers being beaten and stabbed with US flags on sharpened poles, all broadcast live across every channel, in full HD. He is a failure on an unimaginable scale that spans all recorded time and space. He’s a fucking dunce.
And fuck Biden for picking a Republican as AG.
Garland made a lot of sense in theory. Obama had picked him first and he had been denied his likely singular life’s goal by obstructionist gop with trump egging it on. He should have sought justice for this country, while feeling the cathartic release of righting his personal wrongs.
But he didn’t, because he’s feckless and an absolute waste of that historical moment.
No, no it didn’t, because they were picked for different roles with different political goals. Obama picked him to make it look as ridiculous as possible when Republicans refused to seat him. The argument was that Garland was so inoffensive to Republicans that their opposition was irrational. That’s not an argument Biden needed to make when picking his AG after a criminal president.
It was a totally braindead “wouldn’t this be poetic” move without any consideration for what type of person was actually needed in the position and how that was different from Obama’s SC pick.
I would say “wow, the dementia is even farther along than we realized” but it’s likely the entire neoliberal faction that will be determined to come to this erroneous conclusion. They will grasp at any straw, even racist/sexist ones, in order to avoid admitting that the electorate is crying out for anti-corporate change.
What do you mean neoliberal faction?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism
Neoliberals are guys like Elon Musk.
Yes, I know what neoliberalism is and yes, I really do mean that.
The dominant faction of the Democratic Party is, in fact, neoliberal. As a result, the party’s platform as a whole supports free-market capitalism, free trade, low regulations, weak worker protections, etc.
That’s why (for example) Hillary Clinton championed the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and why politicians like Elizabeth Warren and AOC who care about things like workers’ rights and Wall Street reform are among the minority within the party.
Neoliberals are guys like Elon Musk.
No, Neoliberals are guys like Elon Musk pretended to be before he came out as full-blown fascist.
Thank you for literally being the first person I’ve ever seen online that actually seems to know what Warren stands for. Not exaggerating even the slightest, either.
She could’ve been president, back when it would’ve mattered.
I worry that neoliberalism may need fascism in order to be fully realized.
No you don’t. You just want a word for super evil. The TPP is not in any way, shape, or form Neoliberal. And the Democrats just finished four years of fighting tooth and nail to get more regulation of industry into place. I’m not a fan of them but this is just ridiculous.
The TPP is not in any way, shape, or form Neoliberal.
This just proves you have no clue whatsoever what neoliberalism is.
Oh dude lemmy has decided that there are no normal liberals left. It’s progressives and neoliberals. And no amount of reasoning, showing them academic materials, or engaging with the tenets of the ideologies will shift it. Neoliberals is the new “rich people I don’t like” label.
This ghoul was propped up in 2020 with the full force of the party and then won thanks to covid, but he thinks he’s some hero. Democrats lost in 2024 in large part thanks to him. Fuck you biden, you racist, genocidal, and power-hungry piece of shit.
Things would have likely gone a lot better if the Ds would have had an actual primary. It’s so frustrating.
Actual primaries are against what the DNC wants. 2016, 2020, and 2024 all had sham ones and argued in court “We don’t have to have fair ones, it’s mainly for show. We’re a private organization, we don’t need to abide by fair election practices.”
So… I take it he’s completely forgotten that disastrous debate by now huh? It was pretty clear to even the most fervent Biden supporters that he wasn’t going to win. When even those folks were telling him to resign, it as done by that point.
If anything, staying in would’ve driven more people to Trump or caused them to stay home due to disillusionment.
of course he’s forgotten
It was painful to watch. It’s even more painful that he put us in this position. Now he is rubbing salt in the wound.
He is hopelessly arrogant and not the brightest.
He certainly seemed like a patient who had escaped the memory care unit. I still remember my wife came in to see how it was going, she saw my face and turned right around. There just wasn’t any recovery to that. I would not have been surprised if Adult Protective Services had showed up on that stage.
of course he forgot… he forgets all sorts of things….
He’s a colossal fucking failure.
Hey, hey. Rude of you to call the guy who was supposed to save us from another 4 years of Trump but then delivered it anyways a failure. All he did was tread water for 4 years and then hang on to power way too long, simultaneously tanking his own campaign, and making it much more difficult for someone to follow him.
Rude of you to call the guy who was supposed to save us from another 4 years of Trump but then delivered it anyways a failure.
Biden literally kept a lot of Trump’s policies in place, kept his tax cuts in place, and did things Trump was considering despite public outcry, like limiting COVID protections and telling the CDC to stop covering it.
What a prick. No ownership of his candidacy-destroying debate performance. And thanks for taking so long to withdraw after you fucked that to the moon. Let him be the basis for age ceilings on presidential candidates.
He’s a prick because he doesn’t want Trump to be president? He’s a prick because he wishes he did things differently?
I guess I’m a prick too then. I also don’t want Trump to be president and have regrets in my life.
He’s a prick because he thinks he should have been the one to defeat Trump. Even though he was not remotely suited to the task.
The only reason he ran at all is that he originally thought he had the best chance of winning. The debate and pressure after that changed his mind, but absolutely may have been wrong. After all, there were people on election day googling “did biden drop out?” One can certainly question how much the debate would have mattered.
But in the end, I generally agree with the below comment, that the election was always going to come down to the economy. It wasn’t good enough for people that we handled inflation better than other Western countries. It didn’t matter that Trump caused a lot of the inflation with the PPP (Paycheck Protection Program) and the GOP’s refusal to have oversight. The only thing that mattered was that people were mad and wanted change. They couldn’t figure out who to be mad at, and just chose the current people in charge. As a populace, we’re not smart enough to understand deeper than that, and we just keep flipping the switch back and forth hoping it works, in spite of the fact that the biggest reason we don’t go anywhere is that we keep flipping the switch back and forth.
The only reason he ran at all is that he originally thought he had the best chance of winning
I think the whole premise is wrong. It’s becoming clearer that the reason he insisted on running (despite much internal push-back) was to hold onto power for himself. It had less to do with the stakes than it did with his self-serving desires. You’d have to be completely senile to think you could beat Trump after that debate performance and all of the context surrounding it. He’s STILL insisting that he could have won. On what planet? Let’s assume he knows what’s at stake.
Is that easier for you than “he’s a good person who tried his best and failed”?
Tried his best to… what? Drop out and let someone else more likely to win try for it? Doesn’t seem like he wanted that. And nobody here thinks Biden would be worse than Trump. But that’s not how American politics work. This is a reality show.
I’m very much not willing to say “he’s a good person”, whether or not he could have won again. Supports genocide, breaks strikes, and throws trans people under the bus after promising to protect them. He’s an evil shitty person, whose interests sometimes aligned with helping the general public.
It sure is easier to sit on the sidelines than it is to actually lead. He absolutely wasn’t perfect, but I absolutely believe he tried to represent the American people to the best of his ability.
Also he literally stepped down and let someone else try based on feedback.
He was willing enough to listen to other people despite his doubts.
And now he’s calling backsies on that.
Exactly. He made a choice and should stand by it.
He’s whining about what ‘could’ have been instead of looking at what should have been (had he chosen to back out earlier or, even better, allowed someone else to run in the first fucking place).
I promise you that you don’t have shortfalls like he does in magnitude. And at least you own up to them.
His regret should be that he left so late.
