Nancy Pelosi admits that she really wanted an ‘open primary’ instead of Kamala Harris

I don’t have a solid plan for how we’ll cover politics from here on out. Obviously, I’m a huge Democrat and the incoming Trump administration is going to drag the country into the pits of hell. I’m sure we’ll have coverage of all of that, but I simply don’t feel the outrage and anger which I felt throughout the first Trump term. I just feel an almost pure nihilism. This is what a plurality of the country wanted, so this is what they’re getting. Over 74 million of the dumbest people you’ve ever met in your life voted for him, voted to end American ideals and the American project entirely. It is what it is. Nothing matters. Take care of yourselves, take care of your loved ones, and beyond that, watch millions of Americans grapple with the biggest FAFO in history.

Now, all that being said, I have some ideas for what should happen next with the Democratic Party. While there are still House races left to be called, I doubt Dems will have even a narrow majority when all is said and done. If Democrats are totally out of power in the federal government, then again, it is what it is. While there’s a lot of soul-searching, analysis and political postmortems already out there, I’d just like to say that I still believe Nancy Pelosi’s summer schemes and public reticence hurt the party longterm. Pelosi publicly shivved President Biden, plotted to sideline Kamala Harris, then went on a book tour trashing both of them before the election. Now, post-election, Pelosi is admitting what was obvious for months: that her plan was always to pass over Kamala Harris and that she was outmaneuvered by President Biden.

Representative Nancy Pelosi, the former House speaker, suggested this week that it would have been better for the Democratic Party if President Biden had abandoned his re-election campaign sooner and the party had then held a competitive primary process to replace him.

In an interview on Thursday with The New York Times, Ms. Pelosi said what was widely reported around the time Mr. Biden dropped out: that she believed it was implicitly understood that his exit would be followed by an internal party competition for a new nominee, instead of an anointment of Vice President Kamala Harris.

“Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Ms. Pelosi said during an interview with Lulu Garcia-Navarro, a host of “The Interview,” a Times podcast. She added during the interview, which will be published in full on Saturday, “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary.”

Ms. Pelosi went on: “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.”

Mr. Biden endorsed Ms. Harris within an hour after he ended his campaign in July, a decision he made only after an intense pressure campaign from Democrats that Ms. Pelosi quietly led. His support for the vice president, along with backing from many other Democrats, choked off any avenue for a challenger to emerge. Over two weeks, Ms. Harris swiftly gathered support from delegates to the Democratic National Convention.

[From The NY Times]

It’s exactly what I said it was back in July. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez rang the alarm for it too – it was never simply a pressure campaign (led by Pelosi, George Clooney and Democratic donors) to push out Joe Biden. It was always a fundamental part of their plan to marginalize and pass over the highest-ranking woman in government, the sitting vice president, a Black and Indian-American woman. This was their big intraparty coup attempt, and they are still pissed that Biden and Harris outmaneuvered them. For what it’s worth, while Biden’s endorsement signaled to Democrats that Harris really was his political heir and people should get in line behind her, Kamala Harris also coalesced the party behind her on her own. She was prepared, she met the moment, and people were thrilled to rally behind her. I don’t get why Pelosi still believes her plot was the correct way to go about any of this.

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