The dust has not yet settled on the second election of Donald Trump, but some members of the Kamala Harris team have already found a reason for the vice president's stunning loss: Joe Biden.
“We ran the best campaign we could, considering Joe Biden was president,” a Harris aide told Politico. “Joe Biden is the singular reason Kamala Harris and Democrats lost tonight.”
If the current math holds, Harris will have lost in every single swing state she needed to carry to the election. That Harris aide was far from alone in thinking Biden was a weight around the Democratic candidate's neck.
Throughout election night, anchors and analysts were clear that Harris was fighting an uphill battle. Their exit polls showed that the typical voter was dissatisfied with the Biden administration.
“I got to say, I think that with the present conditions in the country – I mean, in conventional terms, it would be a miracle that Kamala Harris could win with that kind of headwind,” CNN host Chris Wallace said. “If she is able to overcome those numbers and still win this election, then she has done a remarkable job of somehow separating herself."
Harris did little to distinguish her platform from the work of the Biden administration. The lack of distance between her vision of America and Biden's was thrown into disastrously stark relief with a gaffe during a visit to "The View." Harris was directly asked by the hosts what she would do differently from Biden, and she said that "not a thing...comes to mind."
That message of stagnation played horribly, with the Trump campaign turning Harris' words into a campaign ad.
