When things go wrong in life, we all want to find someone to blame.  Blame feels better than guilt or fear.  The blame reflex is only natural – it’s human nature.

Things went badly for Democrats, liberals, and progressives in the 2024 presidential election.  They took what Barack Obama calls a “shellacking” and immediately began blaming others for their devastating loss.  Most of this blame fell on Joe Biden.  Biden had promised to be a transitional president.  To pass the torch to the next generation of Democratic leaders after one term in office.  But once he tasted presidential power he couldn’t give it up.  He reneged on his promise and tried to hang on by running for re-election this year.  He put his personal feelings, his ego, his personal interests ahead of the national interest.  The American people had entrusted him with the presidency and welfare of the country, and he betrayed them.  When the Democratic party finally pushed Biden out in July, he crowned Kamala Harris as his successor because he knew, after spending four years with her, that she could not win the general election against Donald Trump and he would for the rest of his life be able to tell himself and others that, had he been allowed to stay in the race against Trump, he would have won when she couldn’t.  So, people now blame Biden for staying in the race until it was too late to hold an open Democratic Party primary process which could have produced a strong Democratic candidate, and for putting forward a weak candidate to take his place.

Believe me, I would love to blame Joe Biden for this fiasco.  I hate Joe Biden.  He’s a coward and I hate cowards.  He’s stupid and I share Zahi Hawass’ view of stupid people.  He’s a liar.  He’s selfish.  He put himself above all other interests throughout his political career – not just at the end.  He put Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court.  He shares responsibility for tens of thousands of deaths – and many more to come — in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, and Ukraine.  I could go on.

But the truth is this:  Biden is not to blame for Kamala Harris’ loss.  No Democrat could have won the 2024 presidential election – even if Biden had acted honorably and even if there had been a robust, open primary process to select the best possible Democratic presidential candidate.  Whomever the Democratic candidate had been, he or she would have lost.

The 2024 presidential election was a wholesale rejection of the status quo in this country.  It was a repudiation of the nation’s institutions, leadership class, and political orthodoxies that tens of millions of Americans see as responsible for the miserable lives they live, for the shame they feel, and for the hopelessness they feel about their future prospects and those of their children and grandchildren.  Any Democratic presidential candidate running in the 2024 election would have been seen as part of that hated status quo and would have lost .  .  . badly.  Like in a shellacking.

So look at it this way:  Someone had to be the Democratic nominee and take the humiliating loss.  It was actually best that that someone was Kamala Harris — the worst Democratic candidate in the 2020 Democratic field of candidates and someone with no political instincts, talent, or future.  That saved the genuinely talented potential presidents – and there are several, both men and women — in the Democratic Party for 2028 when the party – if it can articulate an alternative vision for a new kind of democracy and not fall back on defending the old order which has so clearly failed and been rejected by the voters (I know.  That is one enormous if) – might be able to mount a more credible campaign for the presidency.  But I wouldn’t count on it.

The blame for the Democratic Party’s humiliating loss in 2024 rightly belongs with Bill Clinton and every Democratic Party leader, consultant, and donor who followed him and contributed to the creation of the society and economy in which we live today and which has failed so many of our fellow citizens.