Biden states intent for calm transition | The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

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President Joe Biden vowed to carry out a peaceful transition of power to the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump on Thursday even as he urged Americans to continue to fight for Democratic values.

In his first public appearance since Election Day, Biden called on the nation to not give up on his fight for the "soul of America," despite Vice President Kamala Harris' sweeping loss to Trump.

"A defeat does not mean we are defeated," Biden said in a White House speech. "The America of our dreams is calling for you to get back up," he added. "We need to stay engaged, we need to keep going -- we need to keep the faith."

Biden said he accepts the verdict of the American people and restated his oft-repeated vow to respect the will of the electorate, even though most observers consider it to be a repudiation of his one-term presidency.

"We accept the choice the country made," Biden said. "You can't love your country only when you win. You can't love your neighbor only when you agree."

Biden, 81, praised Harris after her loss to Trump, saying she has "great character, true character."

He briefly sought to burnish his legacy by pointing to his achievements like the historic $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill.

The president told staff and reporters gathered on a balmy day in the Rose Garden that the impact of the measure would be felt for years to come.

"Don't forget all that we accomplished," Biden said in a brief address attended by Cabinet members and top aides but not by Harris. "It's been a historic presidency -- not because I am president but because of what we've done. What you've done." The president urged staff to run through the tape during his remaining 2½ months in the White House.

Biden will leave office after leading the United States out of the covid pandemic, galvanizing international support for Ukraine after Russia's invasion and passing a broad infrastructure package.

But millions of Americans blamed Biden for rampant inflation and concerns about immigration.

"Maybe in 20 or 30 years, history will remember Biden for some of these achievements," said Thom Reilly, co-director of the Center for an Independent and Sustainable Democracy at Arizona State University. "But in the shorter term, I don't know (if) he escapes the legacy of being the president who beat Donald Trump only to usher in another Donald Trump administration four years later."

Having beaten Trump four years ago on a pledge to "restore the soul of the country," Biden will need to step aside for the man who never accepted that victory and mounted the biggest effort in history to cling to power.

Trump has pledged to radically reshape the federal government to reflect his right-wing priorities as well as roll back many of Biden's policies, vows that apparently resonated with voters.

Some high-ranking Democrats, including advisers to the Harris campaign, have anonymously expressed deep frustration with Biden for failing to recognize earlier in the election cycle that he was not physically or politically up for the challenge of running for a second term.

Biden loyalists, on the other hand, have whispered that the sitting president might have done a better job of holding onto key demographic portions of the Democratic base, especially working class men.

During his 2020 win, Biden framed himself as a president who would be a bridge away from Trump and toward a new generation of leaders.

With the backing of Harris and other top Democrats, Biden decided to run for four more years and steamrolled nominal opposition to sweep to victory in the Democratic primaries.

Even though voters said they were unhappy with a repeat of the Biden-Trump race, Biden forged ahead, hoping the rebounding economy and calmer inflation would convince voters to give him four more years.

That all changed in June when Biden stumbled through a poor debate against Trump that sent alarm bells ringing for Democrats.

As support ebbed away, Biden ended his reelection campaign on July 21 and endorsed Harris to pick up the Democratic baton, setting the stage for her to quickly unite the party and win the nomination by virtual acclamation.

DELAY BLAMED

As Democrats pick up the pieces after Trump's decisive victory, some of the vice president's backers are expressing frustration that Biden's decision to seek reelection until this summer -- despite long-standing voter concerns about his age and unease about post-pandemic inflation as well as the U.S.-Mexico border -- all but sealed his party's surrender of the White House.

"The biggest onus of this loss is on President Biden," said Andrew Yang, who ran against Biden in 2020 for the Democratic nomination and endorsed Harris' unsuccessful run. "If he had stepped down in January instead of July, we may be in a very different place."

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Democrats got caught up in a wave of anti-incumbency in the wake of the covid-19 pandemic that upturned governments in democracies around the globe irrespective of ideology. She did not directly respond to questions about criticism that Biden waited too long to bow out.

"He believed he made the right decision," Jean-Pierre said at her daily briefing.

Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton, one of several Democratic lawmakers who publicly pressed Biden to step aside this summer, said Thursday on CNN that the Democratic Party "would have been much better off" if Biden had left the race earlier.

Yang argued that Democratic Party leaders also deserve blame for taking too long to push out Biden. With few exceptions, most notably Minnesota Rep. Dean Phillips, Democrats shied away from talking publicly about Biden's age.

"Why was this not coming from any Democratic leaders?" Yang said. "It's a lack of courage and independence and an excess of careerism -- 'if I just keep my mouth shut, we'll just keep on trucking along.'"

The campaign was also saddled by anger among some Arab American and young voters over its approach to Israel's conflicts in Gaza and Lebanon. Sen. Bernie Sanders, an ally of Biden and Harris, said in a statement that Democrats lost the thread on working-class Americans' concerns.

"Will the big money interests and well-paid consultants who control the Democratic Party learn any real lessons from this disastrous campaign?" the Vermont independent said. "Will they understand the pain and political alienation that tens of millions of Americans are experiencing?"

Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison took to social media Thursday to push back on Sanders' critique, saying that Biden was "the most-pro worker President of my lifetime."

Harris managed to spur far greater enthusiasm than Biden was generating from the party's base, but she struggled to distinguish how her administration would differ from Biden's.

Appearing on ABC's "The View" in September, Harris was not able to identify a decision where she would have separated herself from Biden. "There is not a thing that comes to mind," Harris said, giving the Trump campaign a sound bite it replayed through Election Day.

The strategists advising the Harris campaign said the compressed campaign timetable made it even more difficult for Harris to differentiate herself from the president.

Had Biden stepped aside early in the year, they said, it would have given Democrats enough time to hold a primary. Going through the paces of an intraparty contest would have forced Harris or another eventual nominee to more aggressively stake out differences with Biden.

The strategists acknowledged that overcoming broad dissatisfaction about rising costs in the aftermath of the pandemic and broad concerns about the U.S. immigration system weighed heavy on the minds of voters in key states.

Still, they said that Biden had left Democrats in an untenable place.

Harris senior adviser David Plouffe, in a posting on the social media platform X, called it a "devastating loss." Plouffe did not assign blame and said the Harris campaign "dug out of a deep hole but not 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 had more time to make her pitch to American voters.

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

Matt Bennett, executive vice president at the Democratic-aligned group Third Way, said this moment was the most devastating the party has faced in his lifetime.

"Harris was dealt a really bad hand. Some of it was Biden's making, and some maybe not," said Bennett, who served as an aide to Vice President Al Gore during the Clinton administration. "Would Democrats fare better if Biden had stepped back earlier? I don't know if we can say for certain -- but it's a question we'll be asking ourselves for some time."

Information for this article was contributed by Dave Goldiner of The New York Daily News (TNS) and by Aamer Madhani, Matt Brown, Chris Megerian, Zeke Miller and Linley Sanders of The Associated Press.

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