Pelosi Blames Biden (and Harris Too?)

The former Speaker asks: why wasn't there a primary?

Nancy Pelosi today blamed Trump’s sweeping victory on President Biden’s refusal to drop out of the race sooner and allow there to be an open primary. For a former Speaker to air criticism of her own party leadership publicly is of course extremely rare, and gives you a sense of how dire the situation is. Not only are Pelosi’s comments throwing Biden under the bus, they also imply that there may have been a better candidate than Harris.

That said, I think having this debate in public — as opposed to the usual smoke-filled rooms — is healthy. I’ve never understood the Democratic Party’s allergic reaction to intramural conflict. After reading her remarks, it occurred to me that this aversion extends to primary elections — and not just this year.

In 2016, recall that the DNC cleared the field for a Hillary Clinton coronation before she lost to Trump. In 2020, when there was a robust primary, Biden won and went on to defeat Trump. Now in 2024, the party nominated Harris despite her having won no primary election, resulting in another Trump victory.

The lesson is simple: primaries produce better candidates. And that isn’t just good for Democrats. It’s good for America. Politicians should be subject to the same competitive pressures that the rest of us are.

Here’s what Pelosi said, per the NYT:

“Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race. The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary. And 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. 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.”

When I made essentially the same point on X (Twitter) , I got a lot of flack for it from liberals. If any of them are reading this, I refer you to your slay kween, Pelosi. She’s got a point here.