Pelosi: I Expected a Primary

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she thought the Democratic Party was going to hold a primary competition to pick a nominee after President Biden dropped his reelection bid in July. Instead, the nomination went uncontested to Vice President Kamala Harris. "Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race," Pelosi said Thursday in an interview with the New York Times. "The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary."

A competition might have made Harris, if she won it, a stronger nominee, Pelosi said. "But we don't know that. That didn't happen," she said. "We live with what happened." Biden's instant endorsement of Harris headed off any talk of a primary, she said. "If it had been much earlier, it would have been different." In the next two weeks, Harris locked up the nomination by winning the support of delegates to the upcoming Democratic National Convention. Other Democrats brought up the idea of an open competition, but it went nowhere. Pelosi, too, quickly endorsed the vice president.

With Democrats assessing blame for Harris' loss, Pelosi defended Biden's record and the party in general from certain post-election criticisms. For one, she pushed back on independent Sen. Bernie Sanders' contention that the Democratic Party has abandoned working people and should have emphasized economic issues more and identity politics less during the campaign. "Bernie Sanders has not won," Pelosi said, adding that she thinks cultural issues hurt Democrats most among working people. (More Nancy Pelosi stories.)