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Joe Biden called on Americans to “bring down the temperature” in US politics, as Democrats began turning their ire on the president just a day after Donald Trump scored a decisive election victory over Kamala Harris.
In a conciliatory speech from the White House on Thursday, Biden said US citizens needed to see each other “not as adversaries, but as fellow Americans”.
Biden, who in recent months repeatedly said that Trump posed a threat to US democracy, also assured the Republican leader that he would help ensure a smooth and peaceful transfer of power.
“We accept the choice our country made. I’ve said it many times: you can’t love your country only when you win. You can’t love your neighbour only when you agree,” Biden said.
Biden’s comments from the Rose Garden outside the White House came as fellow Democrats began a blame game over Harris’s heavy defeat against Trump, who won a majority of the popular vote and all of the crucial swing states where races had been declared by Thursday afternoon.
David Plouffe, a senior adviser to Harris’s campaign, appeared to blame Biden on Wednesday without naming him in a post on X that he later deleted.
“We dug out of a deep hole but not enough. A devastating loss,” Plouffe wrote.
A senior Democratic donor went further, telling the Financial Times on Thursday that, by “hanging in for too long”, Biden had deprived Democrats of the opportunity to select a strong candidate to fight off Trump.
“His legacy of blocking Trump for the second term is now completely blighted by this,” said the donor, who added that his view was broadly shared by other Democratic donors on Wall Street.
He said Harris lacked the legitimacy she would have won if she had prevailed in “a real primary race”.
Several leading Democrats also said the party had mistaken the mood of the electorate.
Bernie Sanders, the leftwing Vermont senator, blamed the defeat on Democratic leaders who “defend[ed] the status quo” during a time when the American people were “angry and want change”.
“It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them,” he said.
Andrew Yang, a businessman who was a Democratic party member and previously ran for New York mayor, wrote on X that Biden had “left us all out to dry” by staying in the race, “and the Democratic party protected him and enabled him until it was too late”.
Many Democrats have seethed privately since the result, saying Biden’s earlier decision to run for a second term had compromised their chances in the election, given widespread concerns about his age.
A former campaigner told the FT that a debate was now raging in the party, although the state of the economy was a big factor.
“Feels like people have not done the full autopsy yet,” the campaigner said. “I’ve heard it both ways, blame on Biden and Harris as a candidate.” They added that the “inflationary dagger” of accumulated prices rises was something no Democrat could have withstood.
In her concession speech on Wednesday, Harris made only a passing mention of Biden. But her inability to distance herself from her unpopular boss appears to have damaged her election chances.
In an appearance on The View, a popular daytime talk show, last month, the vice-president struggled to answer a straightforward question about how her administration would differ from Biden’s.
“There is not a thing that comes to mind . . . and I have been a part of most of the decisions that have had impact,” she said when pressed about which policies would differ from Biden’s.
Biden’s speech on Thursday came a day after he called Trump to congratulate him on his victory and invite him to a meeting at the White House. Steven Cheung, a spokesperson for Trump, said the incoming president looked “forward” to the meeting with Biden, adding it would “take place shortly”.
The president sought to strike a positive message on Thursday, despite the gloom in his party following its huge defeat.
“The American experiment endures. We’re going to be OK. But we need to stay engaged,” Biden added. “We need to keep going. But above all, we need to keep the faith.”
Harris, who did not appear alongside Biden at the White House on Thursday, conceded the election in a phone call to Trump on Wednesday.