Posted on 03/28/2025 9:11:01 PM PDT by Red Badger
Top aides to former President Joe Biden warned donors that replacing him atop the ticket with his handpicked vice president would be a big “mistake,” according to excerpts of a forthcoming book previewed Thursday by The Guardian.
Excerpts published from the book, “Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House,” show Biden aides and allies “aggressively” advised top Democrat donors to not jettison the then-president in favor of then-Vice President Kamala Harris as Biden fought for his political survival in the summer of 2024. The book, written by NBC News’ Jonathan Allen and The Hill’s Amie Parnes, catalogues behind-the-scenes maneuvers from Team Biden to highlight Harris’ flaws as a candidate in a last-ditch effort to hold on to the nomination after Biden’s disastrous debate performance in late June 2024.
As pressure mounted on Biden to step aside following the debate, Biden aides “frantically push[ed] back in phone calls and in text messages, accusing donors of promoting their own agendas at the expense of Biden, the party, and the country,” Allen and Parnes write in their book.
“It all sounded like a serial killer’s conspiracy theory,” the authors write, before switching to italics to denote the thoughts and descriptions of sources who spoke to them about their own internal thoughts and private discussions. “‘Donors want to scrap Biden so they can get his wannabe replacements – the governors, with power over state decisions – to beg them for cash,’ Biden aides argued. ‘This isn’t fucking Wall Street financiers versus Ivy League presidents. Our guy isn’t scared of your money. We have grassroots donors. We have the support of the voters. We have the nomination in hand. All you’re doing is fucking yourself and the president. We will remember this. Capisce?’“
“The last threat, the ace in the hole, was Kamala Harris,” the authors wrote. “Even if Biden did drop out and you got your dreamed-up open convention, you would only succeed in nominating the vice-president. Is that what you want? You want her? Look at her polling. No one wants her. Forget it. It’s never gonna happen.”
Biden aides and allies insisted weeks after his historically weak debate performance that he could still win the general election, arguing that the former president was the only Democrat to have defeated President Donald Trump and that he could do so again. Biden ultimately quit the race July 21 amid a freeze in campaign funding and a public pressure campaign from Democrat politicians and powerbrokers to get Biden off the ticket.
Shortly after announcing that he would step aside, Biden released a statement giving Harris his “full support and endorsement.” When Biden first picked Harris to run with him in the 2020 race, he stated that he considered her to be “the best person to help me take this fight to Trump and Mike Pence and then to lead this nation.”
Upon becoming the nominee, Harris campaigned as a change agent with good vibes who would lead the country into a new era of politics, but refused to identify any particular area where she would break from Biden’s unpopular agenda when questioned on her views. Her selection of Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate — presumably to enhance the ticket’s appeal to men — also appears to have backfired spectacularly, as Walz made numerous gaffes on the campaign trail and young male voters flocked to Trump on Election Day.
The book further details how some of the most powerful figures in Democrat politics — including former President Barack Obama and California Rep. Nancy Pelosi — had reservations about anointing Harris right away. One person who spoke to Pelosi on the night of the fateful debate between Biden and Trump told the book’s authors that Pelosi “actually was worried … saying, ‘Oh my God, it’s going to be her’” as Biden fell apart on the stage.
Democratic South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn, among others, ultimately beat back their concerns, according to the new book. Clyburn was also instrumental in convincing Biden to pick Harris as his running mate in the 2020 cycle.
Harris also felt spurned by Obama as she tried to nail down his endorsement and support to take over as the party’s nominee, according to excerpts reviewed by The Guardian. The vice president had never established particularly strong connections with Barack and Michelle Obama after she was not allowed to enter a VIP area at a 2009 party celebrating Obama’s 2008 election win.
While Obama did not think that Harris would beat Trump, he ultimately endorsed her and campaigned on her behalf because he was concerned that his own standing with Democrat elites could be at risk for taking too much action against Biden and Harris, the book claims.
Ultimately, Harris lost to Trump in the Electoral College and popular vote, with Trump taking all seven swing states on his way back to the White House. Young people, Hispanic Americans, black voters and the politically disengaged broke from the Democrats and toward Trump in the 2024 election, shattering previous Democrat assumptions about the electorate and the appeal of the Trump agenda to ordinary American voters.
They did this to themselves by appointing Biden in 2020 and then picking Cackles as his VP. How smart did you have to be to see how that would end up? They could have picked someone like Mayor Pete or even Pocohauntas as Joe’s VP - they’d have been terrible but at least they can put coherent sentences together.
Exactly.
Now the rat party has only themselves to blame for their big loss last November.
The Democrat Party has pooped its pants and forgotten its own name.
Hallelujah! :)
Bidog would have been worse
It is always about what is best for me, never the country.
> They did this to themselves by appointing Biden in 2020 and then picking Cackles as his VP. <
A mistake compounded by allowing Biden to debate Trump in 2024.
Better (for them) had Biden refused to debate Trump. The excuse could have been that Trump is a hater. Or a racist. Whatever. The mainstream media would have lapped it up.
Then Biden stays in his basement - only appearing for brief times when he’s pumped up with enough drugs.
That might have worked.
I’’ve always wondered why there wasn’t a third, fourth and fifth possible candidate who might have done better than either of them.
Actually, my cat was better.. DaisyJane for President.
The fact that the Dems pushed for the first debate so early suggests that they may well have decided to throw SloJoe overboard - hiding him in a basement for months on end again wasn’t likely to work this time. The real problem was they didn’t have a sensible plan B.
Liz Warren is even less likable than Hillary, but had she been nominated, I think she could have won.
Warren, at very least, knows how to act like a professional and an adult. Kamala, at age 50, still has some growing up to do, as an individual.
So VP Harris played an important role as impeachment insurance in addition to satisfying DEI.
It would have worked if they could replace Biden with Obama.
I watched parts of most of the network news shows around that time. All of the panels’ black members——all of them——tightened up their facial muscles and stared down any panelist who said maybe Kamala wasn’t the best choice (long before the actual anointing of her). It meant—if you think you can set aside the only black woman for the next top spot on the ticket, you have another think coming. She is the black candidate and the others are not. Case over.
It came true. Kamala was anointed.
What? Some of us have our limits. Any male mildly repulsed by Kamala’s insulting of us would be energized and outraged by Liz Warren’s sexist Karen routines day after day. Exactly like Hillary.
The Dems had a small bench of possible choices to choose from, but they did have choices, at least in the start of the “After Joe” campaign . The problem as you articulated in a prior post, was any alternate to Kamala was immediately attacked as evidence of racism, sexism, and so on.
That Woman from Michigan was interested for a while, but she didn’t want to battle the movers and shakers of her own party to move forward.
The Demonrats knew Kamala was a drunken, idiotic clown and tried to foist her onto America while telling us she was “Joy.”
I hate communists soooo much.
Never cross the black girl boss...
Thank goodness they didn’t pick Josh Shapiro.
He would likely have given them PA and probably a couple other swing states.
His home state coattails would have also kept Bob Casey’s lame ass in the Senate as well.
Exactly right. Kamala was the poster child for Stupid and picking Tim Walz was an epic mistake and his wife, Gwen, was another Hillary.They couldn’t do anything right. That is a feature of group think.
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