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.
Hell, he might be right (I doubt it but you never know). BUT better than either of those options would have been if he’d announced by 2023 that he would not be running for reelection (like he campaigned on!) so the Dems could have had a full field and competitive primaries. That would have given them the best chance to win (but would they have? kinda doubt that too).
I DO agree with his understatement that his Garland decision was a mistake. Not just a mistake, a disaster!
He could have stepped down in 2022, given Kamala his last two years, and she would still be eligible for two more terms after that. She would have had incumbency, experience, and a younger face than the oldest guy who ever ran for president.
Sour grapes. There are no guarantees he would have won, and the propaganda machine would have played almost exactly the same tune it did for Harris. Eggs, israel, gas prices, too old…
People stayed home. That’s why we got trump.
Not sour grapes.
Pure fucking delusion and narcissism.
We all watched the debate. There was no coming back from that.
Hey as long as we are talking about regrets Joe, how about regretting going for a second term when you said you wouldn’t?
That dementia would probably won over him.
Biden: “I’m a one term president, stability in crisis.”
Biden: “I don’t care, fuck it, you only live once, I’m running again!”
People: “You said you were a one term canidate, you’re old, you didn’t do COVID well, you broke up strikes, you aren’t protecting women’s rights, trans people are under attack, Mexicans are still in cages at the border, Ukraine could use more help, you’re doing a bad job at stopping weapons to Israel, rent is gone up, inflation is stopped bu not down, groceries are still expensive…”
Biden: “Shut up Jack, check this out!”
[“Primaries” give him the win, flops at debate, hands things to Harris]
Biden: “Well I did what I could do. …I would have won anyways, why be consistant with what I say and do? Now lemme pardon my son after I said I wouldn’t.”
Of all things the pardon of his son is reasonable that guy had a whole culture of assholes trying to find anything to get him in jail just to hurt Biden.
Then we find out the basis of the entire hunter controversy was a lie and the guy admitted it was a lie after the election.
So they ended up getting for like tax evasion I would be willing to bet 90% of congress would be guilty of similar things if brought under the same scrutiny.
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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
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 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.
His own internal polling had trump winning over 400 versus him
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.
For an ancient venal egotist like Joe, the fact that Kamala lost is close to a best case scenario. He would’ve gotten completely waxed if he had stayed in… but now he gets to say he was forced aside by the party leaders (Pelosi, the Obamas etc.) and that is completely verifiably true, but he also gets to claim he totally would’ve won, which is very likely not true, but now we will never know.
Copium: The Final Frontier
He likely would not have won. It surprises me how discrepancies in this election haven’t been questioned, but at this point it may not matter. As for his choice of Merrick Garland. Yeah, that and not really doing much about unseating DeJoy was a mistake.
I just don’t understand why Biden’s family and those closest to him wouldn’t have taken the time to be like “Joe, just shut your mouth. Cement your legacy as one of the best Presidents the USA has ever had, make some shit for Donald harder on the way out, and enjoy retirement.”
Instead he’s showing his whole ass. And for what? Once real history gets memory-holed by the fascists none of his whining matters anyway. He could have done a lot of good on his way out.
Yeah, why try too hard when everybody is gonna remember sloppy Joe anyways.
I like genocide joe better.
Spineless Joe, anyone?
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….
His regret should be that he left so late.
Not a chance in hell.
It does highlight how out of touch those in the gerontocracy are, however.
Citizen United says President Biden would not have won.
I’m reading the WaPo article it’s based on and guys this is some pure grade bullshit. They start with 5d Chess; then they say people were unable to hear about his victories because of the media, they were unable to appreciate the best Covid recovery in the world; and yes, he claims he could have beaten Trump.
It’s an incredibly flattering article for a man who was so far out of touch he called outrage over inflation the best recovery in the world. Yeah they managed a soft landing, but that shit didn’t trickle down. We’re on our second year of record breaking increases in homeless people. We don’t give a goddamn shit about the stock market when we’re shopping for used Recreational Vehicles to use as our primary housing. If families are choosing between utilities, rent, and food, then your Bidenomics message is going to do worse than fall flat, it’s going to blow up in your face.
And the whole style over substance thing. Just holy shit batman, he broke the strike of workers who were (and are still) massively abused. He did that on prime time television. And then he negotiated for the office worker parts of the unions to get improvements and it’s a complete submarine. Not only did he do the bad, he did no PR damage control, not even to show what little he gave the workers after he shut down their strike. At one point in the WaPo article someone mentions that Biden tried to run the country like it was 1972, and I agree with that statement.
Which brings us to the crux of his sins as a leader. He was unwilling to listen to the people he was supposed to be leading. At every turn he decided that he and his high paid advisors from the corporate world knew better then the people actually struggling. He might have thought he was playing 5d chess but he was losing at checkers… badly.
best Covid recovery
It is very appropriate if they’re framing COVID as a purely economic issue.
On the top line numbers but it’s increasingly clear that it’s a split recovery.
