With the dust still settling from the 2024 election, allies of Kamala Harris are pointing fingers—and they’re aiming squarely at Joe Biden. According to reports and insider accounts, Harris’s team believes that the former president’s stubborn refusal to step aside earlier in the campaign cycle all but guaranteed a Republican victory and handed Donald Trump a second term.
Biden didn’t exit the race until July 21, giving Harris just 107 days to run a national campaign against a well-organized Trump machine. For many in her inner circle, it was a catastrophic decision that kneecapped her chances before she ever took the stage.
“It was a f—ing nightmare,” admitted David Plouffe, a top adviser to Harris, who didn’t mince words in assessing Biden’s role in the loss. “He totally screwed her. We were fighting with one hand tied behind our backs.”
The revelations, detailed in the upcoming book Original Sin by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson, describe growing alarm within the Democratic Party over Biden’s mental and physical fitness as early as 2022. Despite mounting pressure from party leaders—including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer—Biden refused to step aside until the eleventh hour, leaving Harris with an impossible task: replace an unpopular incumbent midstream and defeat a reinvigorated Trump in under four months.
Harris, according to sources close to her, has privately fumed over the situation. She reportedly believes she could have won if she’d had a full runway to campaign, build momentum, and reintroduce herself to voters on her own terms. Instead, she inherited Biden’s failures, fatigue, and dismal polling—without the time or political capital to turn things around.
Now, Democrats are facing a brutal reckoning. What was once brushed off as Republican talking points about Biden’s decline is now openly acknowledged within the party. The decision to delay Biden’s exit, insiders say, was driven more by pride and delusion than political strategy. The result? A fractured party, an unprepared candidate, and a second Trump presidency.
The postmortem has begun, and it’s not pretty. Harris’s team isn’t hiding their frustration—and for once, they’re not blaming Republicans. They’re blaming Joe Biden.