Pelosi Says Harris Would've Won Open Primary, Beaten Trump If Biden 'Stepped Down Sooner'

The former House Speaker also seemed to reject any analysis blaming Democrats for their election loss on a failure to win over working families.

In her first interview since Vice President Kamala Harris lost to GOP President-elect Donald Trump, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) rejected any analysis that blames the Democratic Party for turning away from the working class and shared her unvarnished thoughts.

While she disagreed that her party ran a bad campaign, the former House Speaker also suggested Harris would’ve established herself more thoroughly in an open primary that could have happened if President Joe Biden had dropped out sooner.

“The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” Pelosi told the New York Times in an interview Saturday, adding that Harris “would have done well in that and been stronger going forward.”

“But we don’t know that,” she continued. “That didn’t happen. We live with what happened. And because the president endorsed Kamala Harris immediately, that really made it almost impossible to have a primary at that time. If it had been much earlier, it would have been different.”

Pelosi urged Biden in 2022 to run for reelection. But amid burgeoning concerns about his cognitive abilities earlier this year, she said in July that “it’s up to the president” whether he does. Biden dropped out mere days later, giving Harris around 100 days to campaign.