“I was disappointed but not surprised,” said former President Joe Biden of the 2024 presidential election in a recent interview with “The View”.
During the campaign season, Biden dropped out after a much-criticized performance at his first debate with now-President Donald Trump and concerns about the octogenarian’s age and mental faculties. Biden’s running mate, former Vice President Kamala Harris, was selected to replace him. She went on to run the shortest campaign in modern history.
Biden told “The View” hosts that he believes sexism and racism played a role in the outcome of the election. Trump ended up beating Harris in both the popular vote and in the Electoral College. In the 2016 election, Trump beat former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the Electoral College but not the popular vote.
“I’ve never seen quite as successful and consistent campaign undercutting the notion that a woman couldn’t lead the country, and a woman of mixed race,” Biden said of the 2024 race.
This March, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace conducted a survey of 1,100 Black voters focused on voter perceptions of Harris’ race. The former VP has Black ancestry on her father’s side and South Asian ancestry on her mother’s side.
“As Donald Trump, now president, adjusted to his new opponent, he publicly attacked Harris racial identity, repeatedly claiming that she “happened to turn Black”—a reference to her mixed-race heritage as a half Black (Jamaican) and half South Asian (Indian) person,” the endowment noted. “These attacks, along with others, came at a time when Black voter enthusiasm for Harris candidacy was lower than the overwhelming support for former President Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012.”
However, the survey found that Trump’s comments only made voters more likely to support Harris. At the same time, perception of Harris’ race was markedly different than that of Obama, who has half Black and half white ancestry. While 60% perceived Obama as being exclusively Black, just 47% perceived Harris as exclusively Black.
“The difference in how respondents perceived Harris compared to Obama is particularly striking, as Obama – while the poll was being conducted – sounded the alarm about Black voters’ lower enthusiasm for Harris campaign than for his own in 2008 and 2012,” said the endowment. “The fact that fewer Black respondents viewed her as sharing their race than Obama speaks to the complex ways racial identity is understood by the American public and Black Americans and is worthy of more research.”
It also noted that a potential factor contributing to this discrepancy in perception could be gender. Carnegie did note that Black men were twice as likely to vote for Trump as Black women were.
“It is possible that, due to gendered double standards, Harris’s racial and ethnic identity may be scrutinized more critically than that of her male counterparts, including Obama,” the endowment explained.
Shortly after the election, the National Organization for Women group said in a statement that: “Kamala Harris’ campaign didn’t fail; voters failed Harris. This result was not a reflection of her ability to lead but of voters’ ability to trust women. For the second time, the most qualified and experienced candidate for President has been defeated because she is a woman.”
Research published in the Virtual Issues journal last December also said that “gender-based dynamics seem particularly essential for explaining Donald Trump’s victory over Kamala Harris in 2024, given the consistent intersectional pattern of support seen for Donald Trump by men across key demographic groups.”
Data from the Center for Research of Civic Learning & Engagement indicates that while the majority of voters age 18-29 voted for Harris in 2024, there were wide discrepancies by gender. An estimated 58% of women in that age range voted for Harris, while 56% of men voted for Trump.
Biden summed it up like this: “They went the sexist route.”
He also attributed the Democratic Party's losses in 2024 as part of a wider trend across the world. Furthermore, he associated that trend with the COVID-19 pandemic: “I think we underestimate the phenomenal negative impact that COVID had and the pandemic had on people, on attitudes, on optimism, on a whole range of things.”
“The View” co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin asked Biden if he still believed he would have beaten Trump, and Biden indicated that he did. He noted that there was a lower turnout in this election then when he beat Trump in 2020, though Biden admitted that the debate was a “terrible night” for him.
Biden appeared on the program with his wife, former First Lady Jill Biden, and ABC said their appearance “comes as Democrats are in the midst of rebuilding their coalition and retooling some parts of their message; and grappling with what role – if any – the former president should play in the future of the party.”
As for the former president, he said that he is “trying to figure out what the most significant and consequential role I can play, consistent with what I’ve done in the past.” Biden also said that Harris has a “difficult decision to make about what she’s going to do.”
While at least one poll has shown that Democrats would like to see Harris run again in 2028, there are also rumors that she’s planning to run to be governor of her home state, California. In turn, there are rumors that current California Gov. Gavin Newsom is planning to run for president.
“I think she’s first-rate,” said Biden of Harris. “But we’ve had a lot of really good candidates as well, so I’m optimistic. I’m not pessimistic about the future.”
Poll results released last month from the Institute of Politics at Harvard Kennedy School showed that 41% of Americans age 18 to 29 say the country is better off under Trump than it was under Biden, compared to 25% who said it is better under Trump.