Democratic National Committee Chairman Jaime Harrison took to social media Thursday to push back against Sanders’ criticism, saying Biden was “the most pro-worker president in my lifetime.”

Harris managed to generate far greater enthusiasm than Biden generated from the party base. But she struggled to distinguish how her administration would differ from Biden’s.

Appearing on ABC’s “The View” in September, Harris could not identify a decision where she would have separated from Biden. “Nothing comes to mind,” Harris said, giving the Trump campaign a sound bite that it replayed throughout Election Day.

Strategists who advised Harris’ campaign said the campaign’s tight schedule made it even more difficult for Harris to differentiate herself from the president.

If Biden had withdrawn early in the year, they said, it would have given Democrats enough time to hold a primary. Going through the paces of an intra-party competition would have forced Harris or another prospective candidate to more aggressively express their differences with Biden.

Strategists acknowledged that overcoming broad discontent over rising costs in the wake of the pandemic and broad concerns about the U.S. immigration system weighed heavily on the minds of voters in key states.

Still, they said Biden left Democrats in an untenable situation.

David Plouffe, senior advisor to Harris, a publication on called it a “devastating loss.” Plouffe did not assign blame and said Harris’ campaign “dug a deep hole, but not deep enough.” The post was later deleted.

At the vice president’s concession speech On Wednesday, some Harris supporters said they wished the vice president had more time to deliver her speech to American voters.

“I think it would have made a huge difference,” said Jerushatalla Pallay, a Howard University student who attended the speech at her campus center.

Republicans are poised to control the White House and the Senate. Control of the House has not yet been determined.

Matt Bennett, executive vice president of the Democratic group Third Way, said this moment was the most devastating the party has faced in its lifetime.

“Harris had a very bad hand. Some of that was Biden’s doing and some of it maybe not,” said Bennett, who served as an aide to Vice President Al Gore during the Clinton administration. “Would Democrats be better off if Biden had backed down sooner? I don’t know if we can say for sure, but it’s a question we’ll be asking ourselves for a while.

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Associated Press writers Matt Brown, Chris Megerian, Zeke Miller and Linley Sanders contributed to this report.