Obama blamed for election loss after ‘pushing Biden out’ of White House

Biden staffer claims the former president’s advisers also did not want Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee

Barack Obama has been blamed for the Democrats’ election loss after “pushing” Joe Biden out of the white house.
The outgoing president believes he was forced to step down from the race to challenge Donald Trump by Mr Obama, sources say.
“There is no singular reason why we lost, but a big reason is because the Obama advisers publicly encouraged Democratic infighting to push Joe Biden out, didn’t even want Kamala Harris as the nominee, and then signed up as the saviours of the campaign only to run outdated Obama-era playbooks for a candidate that wasn’t Obama,” a former Biden staffer told the Politico news website.
There is a sense that Mr Obama, who once brokered a deal to install Hillary Clinton as the Democratic candidate to face Mr Trump in 2016, has contributed to their party’s last two defeats, Mr Biden’s aides also told CNN.
Mr Obama started quietly manoeuvring to pressure Mr Biden to drop his bid for a second term in office earlier this year amid questions over the president’s mental fitness.
Sources said Mr Biden’s aides feel this was the wrong decision, just as when Mr Obama pushed for Mrs Clinton to be given the Democratic nomination.
At the time, Mr Biden said he wasn’t running because of his son Beau’s battle with brain cancer and death in 2015.
Inside the Biden camp, there is now a feeling the president would have had a better chance of winning over white, working class voters, who ultimately opted for Mr Trump over Ms Harris.
The latest front in a mounting row comes after aides of Ms Harris attempted to pin the blame on Mr Biden for her defeat.
Allies of the vice-president said her boss’s late decision to not drop out of the presidential race sooner had damaged her chances of winning.
David Plouffe, the senior Harris campaign advisor, who also worked as an advisor to Mr Obama, deleted his account on X, formerly Twitter, after an apparent dig at Mr Biden.
He wrote: “We dug out of a deep hole but not enough,” adding: “A devastating loss. Thanks for being in the arena, all of you.”
Ms Harris had only had 107 days between being handed the nomination and election day because of Mr Biden dropping out late in the campaign.
“It was a mistake for Joe Biden to run for re-election,” Tommy Vietor, a former Obama spokesman, said on the Pod Save America podcast.
Jon Lovett, a speech writer for both Mr Obama and Mrs Clinton, added: “What she was being asked to do was virtually impossible.”
The former staffers pointed to Mr Biden’s low approval ratings towards the end of his tenure, which currently sit below 40 per cent on average.
“They didn’t listen to obvious voter concerns about Joe Biden’s age and anger at the economy,” Mr added.