He is being blamed for seeking a second term as the oldest president ever, after strongly suggesting he would not do so in 2020, thereby short-circuiting a wide-open Democratic primary. Blame for defiantly resisting pressure for more than three weeks to drop out after her disastrous debate performance in June, leaving Harris with only about 100 days to sell her candidacy. And he is blamed for dragging her and the party down with his brutal job approval ratings stemming from Americans’ frustration with high prices.

“Joe Biden left us all out to dry and the Democratic Party protected and enabled him until it was too late. » 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang wrote on. Alex Shephard, editor-in-chief of The New Republic, wrote that “Harris obviously deserves some of the blame here, but it’s Biden who deserves most of the blame.” And Harris campaign advisor » suggested David Plouffe in an X post, before deleting it with the rest of his story, that Biden was a problem, writing: “We dug a deep hole, but not deep enough. »

We are far from the outpouring of gratitude from Democrats in July for Biden’s decision to step down in favor of Harrisembodied by the thunderous chants of “Thank you, Joe” at party convention.

“Every time a major party candidate loses the popular vote and the Electoral College vote, there will be a blame game, and President Biden finds himself in the hot seat because this has been a year of trial and error. his part,” said Douglas Brinkley. presidential historian at Rice University. “He has become an albatross around Harris’ neck, not an asset.”

Brinkley described himself as a longtime admirer of Biden, but said his decision to seek a second term and his assertion that he was the only Democrat capable of defeating Trump contributed to Trump’s return to power.

“His legacy is in tatters,” Brinkley said.

Rep. Seth Moulton, a Salem Democrat, said Trump’s victory was largely to blame. And part of it goes to Biden.

“There is no doubt that Vice President Harris was handicapped by the brevity of her campaign and we would have been better off with a real primary even if we ended up with Vice President Harris presiding at the end of the day.” , said Moulton, who was one of the first congressional Democrats to publicly call on Biden to withdraw from the race after the June debate.

He said Harris also deserved criticism so as not to distance ourselves further from Biden.

“The bigger issue is that this was clearly a change election because Americans were frustrated with Biden, so the first thing Harris had to do when she was selected to take his place. . . separates from the president,” said Moulton, who ran a short-lived campaign for the 2020 Democratic presidential nominationn. “The most important thing she had to do was immediately say she would do things differently than Joe Biden, and she did the exact opposite.”

And while Democrats believe Biden has been unfairly blamed for rising inflation as the economy reopened after the pandemic, they criticize him for not doing a better job boasting about the positive things. he did it.

This meant that voters did not recognize Achievements such as historic job growth and landmark legislation aimed at rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure, as well as boosting computer chip production and fighting climate change, Democrats lamented.

“One of the problems with my Democratic colleagues is that they believe that accomplishments speak for themselves. That’s not the case,” said Brad Bannon, the party’s longtime pollster. “And I think Biden and his team failed to sell voters on the important accomplishments he has made to revitalize the economy.”

Biden himself hinted as much in his speech on Thursday by congratulating Harris on her campaign and thanking all members of his administration for what he called “a historic presidency.”

“Much of the work we have done is already being felt by the American people. The vast majority will. . . this will be felt over the next ten years,” he said. “It’s just now, it’s really starting.”

The Biden administration failed to adapt to the changing political and media landscape introduced by Trump starting in 2015, Moulton said.

“They passed excellent legislation and, unlike Donald Trump, they did not hesitate to promote themselves. This should be enough, but the harsh reality is that this is clearly not the case in the current environment,” he said. The rules have changed and Democrats “clearly don’t win just by being polite.”

“I don’t think we should start going around America lying like Trump and many of his supporters are doing. But we can’t continue to bring knives to a shooting and debate whether or not the blades comply with regulations,” Moulton said.

But Democratic pollster Anna Greenberg said Harris was swimming against an anti-incumbency tide across the world after the economic disruption caused by the pandemic, and that “it’s too easy to say this is the Biden’s fault.”

“Whoever was running — Biden or anyone else, against Trump or anyone else — would probably face that headwind,” she said.

Greenberg also doesn’t believe an open Democratic primary would have changed the results, saying a competition between multiple candidates could have torn the party apart. And she doubts that a few extra weeks for Harris to campaign if Biden had dropped out sooner would have made a significant difference.

“Obviously, if Biden had had great jobs approval numbers and everyone thought the economy was great, she probably would have won,” Greenberg said. But other than that, it’s hard to put too much of the loss on Biden alone as Democrats analyze the reasons for the loss, she said.

Biden did not address the issue in his Rose Garden speech. He ignored a reporter’s shouted question: “Mr. President, what went wrong?” as he returned to the Oval Office which Trump will occupy again on January 20. When asked during a press briefing later Thursday if Biden had any regrets, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said she would leave the political analysis to the experts.

“Are we disappointed? » she said. “Of course.”

Jim Puzzanghera can be contacted at [email protected]. Follow him @JimPuzzanghera.