- Dunn said Kamala Harris was the “natural person” to succeed Biden
- He recalled two weeks of “horrible” attacks against Biden by Democrats
Longtime Biden adviser Anita Dunn is calling on the president to step back and throw his full support behind Vice President Kamala Harris, the biggest part of his legacy, as he settles scores with Democratic leaders who pressured him to end his reelection campaign.
She gave her first detailed public comments on her surprise decision to withdraw from her 2024 bid amid mounting pressure from party leaders and growing public discontent with her ability to serve another four years.
“You know, it was tough. And there’s nothing that reflects on the vice president because I think one of the most important things about Joe Biden’s legacy will be that he made sure that there was a channel where Kamala Harris was the natural person that everyone would turn to if something happened to him,” she said. Political In an interview.
The comment is in line with what many elected Democrats have said in trying to sway him, saying it would be an act of supreme statesmanship to withdraw from his campaign.
“He ran because he believed he was the best person to defeat Donald Trump and because he also believed he was the best person to lead the country. Now, if he’s not running, he made it very clear that the second best person was his vice president. And that’s where we are now,” he said.
Longtime Biden adviser Anita Dunn said one of the most important parts of Joe Biden’s legacy is putting Kamala Harris in the ‘waiting line’
Biden’s decision on July 24 to announce his decision and immediately throw his support behind Harris kicked off a process in which a number of leaders threw their support behind her, despite earlier predictions that it could cause a nasty fight at the party’s upcoming convention in Chicago.
Dunn, who is leaving the White House to join a pro-Harris super PAC, also disputed characterizations of her debate disaster as catastrophic, even though it precipitated the end of her campaign.
“Voters didn’t particularly like Biden’s performance in the first half hour. He wasn’t getting good results at all. But it’s not like they’ve gone away,” he said. “They really liked much of the second half of the debate because of Joe Biden. They hated Donald Trump.”
He recalled “24 days of relentless negative and horrible attacks against Joe Biden.”
Among her sharpest comments was a counterattack on former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has been relentless in her comments about Biden while showering him with praise. Harris’s numbers have soared, injecting what her running mate Tim Walz calls “joy” into the campaign and convincing Democrats she has a fighting chance.
President Joe Biden to spend weekend in Delaware while Harris campaigns out west
“It is clear that there were party leaders who decided to make it public and that gave permission to other people to make it public,” he said.
During the brutal post-debate cooling-off period, some Democrats criticized Biden’s team for agreeing to an earlier-than-usual contest with Donald Trump and for failing to share the weaknesses that resulted in what the White House at the time called a “bad night.”
“So (former President) Trump didn’t gain any ground in the debate, and we actually got some votes in the caucus. So it was a bad debate, but it didn’t seem catastrophic at all, certainly in terms of voters,” Dunn said.
“I think other people who have done independent research have seen pretty much the same thing. If you look at the polls, what you’ll see is that we didn’t see a lot of movement in the debate because the structure of this campaign had been pretty static for a long time and the debate didn’t change it.”
Pelosi has also described Biden’s decision as a key part of her legacy in a recent media tour. But he also told the New Yorker that after the debate he knew he wouldn’t win.
“But my concern was: This is not going to happen and we have to make a decision to make this happen,” she told the magazine. “The president has to make the decision to make that happen. People were calling me. I never called anybody. I kept my word. Any conversation I had, it was going to be with him alone. I never made a call. They said I was using up the lines, I was talking to (Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer). I didn’t talk to Chuck at all.”