Joe Biden still regrets pulling out of the 2024 presidential race and believes he could have beaten Donald Trump for the White House, according to a report.
The outgoing president backed out of the race over the summer following a disastrous first debate against his Republican rival, low approval numbers, and dwindling donations.
But Biden recently told people that despite the issues his campaign faced he is confident he could have defeated Trump in November, sources familiar with the conversations told The Washington Post.
Calls for Biden to leave the race grew increasingly loud among Democrats after his poor debate performance on June 27, and he finally called it quits on July 21.
His belated decision to endorse Kamala Harris saw the vice-president given only three months to mount a campaign against Trump, eventually being swept in all the battleground states and losing the popular vote by 2.2 million.
Biden has refused to blame Harris for his departure from the race but has told aides he would have won, reported the newspaper.
Harris supporters have criticized Biden for waiting too long before withdrawing and for seeking a second term in the first place.
“Biden ran on the promise that he was going to be a transitional president, and in effect, have one term before handing it off to another generation,” Richard Blumenthal, a Democratic senator for Connecticut told the Post.
“I think his running again broke that concept – the conceptual underpinning of the theory that he would end the Trump appeal, he would defeat Trumpism and enable a new era.”
Biden also admitted to aides that he had made other mistakes, including the selection of Merrick Garland as attorney general, according to the Post.
The president has said privately that Garland was too slow to prosecute Trump over January 6, while his Justice Department aggressively prosecuted and convicted his son Hunter. Biden earlier this month pardoned Hunter, despite saying he would not use his executive authority to do so.
