Lloyd Doggett wishes he had asked President Biden to step down much sooner.
Texans were at the forefront of helping bring about a dramatic change in this year's presidential election when they urged Mr. Biden to end his re-election bid in July, becoming the first Democrat in Congress to do so. break in public With the commander-in-chief after his disastrous summer debate performance against Donald Trump.
Even more so in the weeks that followed 30 democrats There were calls for the president to drop out of the contest, but Mr. Biden's ultimate decision to leave the race and endorse Vice President Kamala Harris failed to prevent Trump from winning back the White House, with many in the party fearing that if Mr. If someone does this then the result will be visible. Biden remained at the top of the ticket.
'Tis the season of second guessing on the left, a time of what-ifs and maybes. Doggett, 78, believes nearly everyone in elected office in his party “bears some responsibility for the catastrophic defeat” he says he was handed. In addition to losing the presidency and the Senate, the Democrats also failed to retake control of the House from the Republicans.
“As far as legacy is concerned, President Biden has many successes to point to,” Doggett said. “But the most important success would have been if he had stepped down a year earlier and given us a better chance to prevent Trump from coming back and doing all the damage he would do to our country.”
Mr Biden ran for the White House four years ago in an effort to end Trumpism, drawing on his wisdom as a seasoned political hand who had spent decades in the US Senate and eight as Barack Obama's vice president. Had served for a year. He will soon leave office at the age of 82, his White House tenure torn between Trump's first and second terms as president and a Republican-led Congress angry at Mr Biden's tenure leading the country.
Florida GOP Representative Carlos Gimenez cheered, “Jimmy Carter will be very happy now because he wasn't the worst president in my lifetime.” ,[Biden’s] “The policies were defeated badly in this last election.”
As Democrats deal with the consequences of what went wrong, among those in Congress Those who helped push him out of the 2024 race remain respectful of what Biden accomplished.
Illinois Representative Mike Quigley said, “Where America was going at that time, he saved our democracy for at least four years.”
But foresight has also given rise to the belief that taking early action might have made a difference.
,[Harris] “They ran a very good campaign, a really good campaign, and they suffered the loss of not having time to distance themselves from Biden,” said California Rep. Scott Peters. “In every campaign you make mistakes. And because he had such a limited time frame, he didn't really have time to recover from mistakes. But I thought it was definitely better than the alternative. I think if the president had been on the ticket, it would have just been a massacre.”
In 2019, Biden said he believed history would look back on President Trump's four years “and acknowledge all that as an unusual moment in time.” His campaign raised an underlying hope for Democrats that even if Trump changed politics for a while, defeating him would bring some measure of civility back to a country that has long longed for such civility. Has passed.
Now, Trump has found a way back to the White House after trying to overturn his defeat in 2020 and spreading the lie that the election was stolen, a claim that led a mob of his supporters to violently storm the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. had attacked and undermined the generally peaceful transfer of power. He overcame impeachments and a group of young Republican primary challengers. He Survived two assassination attempts And won a clear victory this fall, becoming the first person in more than a century to be elected to a non-consecutive term as president.
This past election, many voters favored a far different vision for America than that adopted by Mr Biden. Trump's approach is far more combative, his agenda centered around undocumented immigration and a pledge to conduct mass deportation As well as moves to woo the far right, including a possible amnesty for the January 6 rioters. he also promised Tariff and tax changes Targeted at Americans' economic concerns.
Before July, Democratic leaders publicly shrugged off concerns about Mr. Biden's age and ability to win again, instead opting to make changes to the party's primary process at his insistence that would make it easier for him to seek reelection. He faced little resistance regarding his decision to run for the presidency. After his fateful debate performance.
In his lone White House tenure, Biden led the country out of the coronavirus pandemic and worked with the Democrats' narrow congressional majority at the time. $1.9 trillion relief The proposal during his first 100 days in office, more than a year after he relied on the same power to enact a landmark plan to fight climate change, are both party-line initiatives praised by Democrats and criticized by Republicans. It was strongly opposed.
He signed major bipartisan bills on infrastructure, gun safety and domestic manufacturing semiconductor computer chipsHe helped increase support for Ukraine Russia's brutal attackWork that may soon become less notable than it is The Trump administration chooses one of Has not supported providing continued aid to Ukraine or advocated a negotiated end to the war.
But inflation problems at the border, immigration and other aspects of Mr Biden's economic record sink Chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan These were the key issues Biden faced in his presidency as he asked Democrats to support him for another term.
“Look, there will be a lot of pundits, there will be a lot of pollsters who will offer their opinions, who will offer their views, but the president is very, very proud,” White House press secretary Karin Jean said. Pierre told reporters after the election. “He is very proud of what he has been able to accomplish and is incredibly impressed with what the vice president was able to do.”
A source familiar with the president's position at the time said that internal campaign polling “showed little impact” from the June 27 debate and argued that “it wasn't until the circular firing squad took action and the Democrats There was regular coverage. Turns out we actually suffered more.”
Yet among the Democrats who called on Mr Biden to leave the race before he dropped out on July 21, there is a sense that they were right, that he did what needed to be done, even if it didn't get them what they wanted. they wanted. Happen.
The California Democratic representative said, “Looking back, I felt certain that Biden was facing certain defeat and we were certainly going to see a loss of the House and the Senate, and I thought the House would be worse than now.” “It will be very bad.” Mark Takano, who still considers Biden to have had a “wonderful tenure as president.”
Others did not share the same introspection.
Even after going public with calls for Biden to end his campaign, Democratic Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown lost his own contest, a defeat that helped give Republicans unified control of the Senate and Washington. “I don't have any thoughts about Biden's legacy,” Brown said as he recovered from his defeat and faced reporters hurriedly to the Capitol a few days after the election.
“I'm just focused on what we need to do here the last few weeks,” Brown said. “I am not a pundit.”
And the man who defeated Brown did not hesitate to credit Mr Biden for helping return Mr Trump to power.
Bernie Moreno, the Republican who ousted Brown from his Senate seat, said, “Biden was the greatest thing that ever happened to President Trump because he showed the country how crazy the left has gone.”
There is no special opinion of Mr Biden in Washington – although the spotlight that was on him for most of the past four years has shifted towards Trump and his right-wing allies' vision for the president-elect's return to power. Power.
In these waning days of his presidency, Mr Biden is not alone in quietly ending his term. Political life in the nation's capital rarely ends on a high, with most leaving the halls of power due to retirement or defeat rather than a final victory before calling it a career.
Like Mr. Biden, Republican Utah Sen. Mitt Romney is a former party standard bearer. And like the president, his political career is coming to an end as the man he both opposed prepares to retake the White House, an “unusual moment” Mr Biden once again described. Had to do.
“President Biden is a good, good man,” Romney said. “But I think he misjudged the American public.”
melissa quinn And
Contributed to this report.