Joe Biden regrets having pulled out of this year’s presidential race and believes he would have defeated Donald Trump in last month’s election – despite negative poll indications, White House sources have said.

The US president has reportedly also said he made a mistake in choosing Merrick Garland as attorney general – reflecting that Garland, a former US appeals court judge, was slow to prosecute Donald Trump for his role in the 6 January 2021 insurrection while presiding over a justice department that aggressively prosecuted Biden’s son Hunter.

With just more than three weeks of his single-term presidency remaining, Biden’s reported rueful reflections are revealed in a Washington Post profile that contains the clearest signs yet that he thinks he erred in withdrawing his candidacy in July after a woeful debate performance against his rival for the White House, Trump, the previous month.

  • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    Sour grapes. There are no guarantees he would have won, and the propaganda machine would have played almost exactly the same tune it did for Harris. Eggs, israel, gas prices, too old…

    People stayed home. That’s why we got trump.

    • Dkarma@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      Not sour grapes.

      Pure fucking delusion and narcissism.

      We all watched the debate. There was no coming back from that.

  • Snapz@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    “Benedict Arnold” developed a clear connotation over time. The same needs to become true for “Merrick Garland”. History will remember him as a coward beyond measure and a key to enabling trump’s final push to end American democracy.

    Fuck Merrick Garland, without exception.

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        Garland made a lot of sense in theory. Obama had picked him first and he had been denied his likely singular life’s goal by obstructionist gop with trump egging it on. He should have sought justice for this country, while feeling the cathartic release of righting his personal wrongs.

        But he didn’t, because he’s feckless and an absolute waste of that historical moment.

        • Zaktor@sopuli.xyz
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          No, no it didn’t, because they were picked for different roles with different political goals. Obama picked him to make it look as ridiculous as possible when Republicans refused to seat him. The argument was that Garland was so inoffensive to Republicans that their opposition was irrational. That’s not an argument Biden needed to make when picking his AG after a criminal president.

          It was a totally braindead “wouldn’t this be poetic” move without any consideration for what type of person was actually needed in the position and how that was different from Obama’s SC pick.

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      He spent so much time trying to make a good legacy that he forgot to actually do the right thing in the moment.

      Garland knew he’d be accused of bias and selective prosecution, so Garland took slow and deliberate steps to make an ironclad case… only to be accused of bias anyway, and doing it so slowly that the charges expired.

      • Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world
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        Garland was hired to slow walk the case so Biden could run as second worst to Trump again.

      • Snapz@lemmy.world
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        What would have made him a good Supreme Court Justice made him a HORRIBLE attorney general.

        His tenure was so horribly handled though, that I can’t help but suspect some actual intent… Otherwise, Im I’m left to conclude that he was just that impotent and cowardly. There’s no way he was that lost on what this moment was - He had an unquestionable historical mandate to act against an insurrection at the US Capitol, with police officers being beaten and stabbed with US flags on sharpened poles, all broadcast live across every channel, in full HD. He is a failure on an unimaginable scale that spans all recorded time and space. He’s a fucking dunce.

  • leadore@lemmy.world
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    Hell, he might be right (I doubt it but you never know). BUT better than either of those options would have been if he’d announced by 2023 that he would not be running for reelection (like he campaigned on!) so the Dems could have had a full field and competitive primaries. That would have given them the best chance to win (but would they have? kinda doubt that too).

    I DO agree with his understatement that his Garland decision was a mistake. Not just a mistake, a disaster!

    • ghen@sh.itjust.works
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      He could have stepped down in 2022, given Kamala his last two years, and she would still be eligible for two more terms after that. She would have had incumbency, experience, and a younger face than the oldest guy who ever ran for president.

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    7 days ago

    So… I take it he’s completely forgotten that disastrous debate by now huh? It was pretty clear to even the most fervent Biden supporters that he wasn’t going to win. When even those folks were telling him to resign, it as done by that point.

    If anything, staying in would’ve driven more people to Trump or caused them to stay home due to disillusionment.

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      It was painful to watch. It’s even more painful that he put us in this position. Now he is rubbing salt in the wound.

    • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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      He certainly seemed like a patient who had escaped the memory care unit. I still remember my wife came in to see how it was going, she saw my face and turned right around. There just wasn’t any recovery to that. I would not have been surprised if Adult Protective Services had showed up on that stage.

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      of course he forgot… he forgets all sorts of things….

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    This ghoul was propped up in 2020 with the full force of the party and then won thanks to covid, but he thinks he’s some hero. Democrats lost in 2024 in large part thanks to him. Fuck you biden, you racist, genocidal, and power-hungry piece of shit.

    • TonyOstrich@lemmy.world
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      Things would have likely gone a lot better if the Ds would have had an actual primary. It’s so frustrating.

      • Eugene V. Debs' Ghost@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        Actual primaries are against what the DNC wants. 2016, 2020, and 2024 all had sham ones and argued in court “We don’t have to have fair ones, it’s mainly for show. We’re a private organization, we don’t need to abide by fair election practices.”

    • pachrist@lemmy.world
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      Hey, hey. Rude of you to call the guy who was supposed to save us from another 4 years of Trump but then delivered it anyways a failure. All he did was tread water for 4 years and then hang on to power way too long, simultaneously tanking his own campaign, and making it much more difficult for someone to follow him.

      • Eugene V. Debs' Ghost@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        Rude of you to call the guy who was supposed to save us from another 4 years of Trump but then delivered it anyways a failure.

        Biden literally kept a lot of Trump’s policies in place, kept his tax cuts in place, and did things Trump was considering despite public outcry, like limiting COVID protections and telling the CDC to stop covering it.

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    I would say “wow, the dementia is even farther along than we realized” but it’s likely the entire neoliberal faction that will be determined to come to this erroneous conclusion. They will grasp at any straw, even racist/sexist ones, in order to avoid admitting that the electorate is crying out for anti-corporate change.

      • grue@lemmy.world
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        Yes, I know what neoliberalism is and yes, I really do mean that.

        The dominant faction of the Democratic Party is, in fact, neoliberal. As a result, the party’s platform as a whole supports free-market capitalism, free trade, low regulations, weak worker protections, etc.

        That’s why (for example) Hillary Clinton championed the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and why politicians like Elizabeth Warren and AOC who care about things like workers’ rights and Wall Street reform are among the minority within the party.

        Neoliberals are guys like Elon Musk.

        No, Neoliberals are guys like Elon Musk pretended to be before he came out as full-blown fascist.

        • andxz@lemmy.world
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          Thank you for literally being the first person I’ve ever seen online that actually seems to know what Warren stands for. Not exaggerating even the slightest, either.

          She could’ve been president, back when it would’ve mattered.

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          No you don’t. You just want a word for super evil. The TPP is not in any way, shape, or form Neoliberal. And the Democrats just finished four years of fighting tooth and nail to get more regulation of industry into place. I’m not a fan of them but this is just ridiculous.

          • grue@lemmy.world
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            The TPP is not in any way, shape, or form Neoliberal.

            This just proves you have no clue whatsoever what neoliberalism is.

      • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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        Oh dude lemmy has decided that there are no normal liberals left. It’s progressives and neoliberals. And no amount of reasoning, showing them academic materials, or engaging with the tenets of the ideologies will shift it. Neoliberals is the new “rich people I don’t like” label.

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    He could have defeated medicare too.

    Seems like this is his way of arrogantly throwing Harris under the bus for his own historically low ratings, starting back in 2022 after Roe was lost. Theres no way he could have done better than Harris. With him running it would have been an even bigger blowout. He seems to think he could run a genocide against his parties wishes and then go on to win an election. Its idiotic.

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    I’m reading the WaPo article it’s based on and guys this is some pure grade bullshit. They start with 5d Chess; then they say people were unable to hear about his victories because of the media, they were unable to appreciate the best Covid recovery in the world; and yes, he claims he could have beaten Trump.

    It’s an incredibly flattering article for a man who was so far out of touch he called outrage over inflation the best recovery in the world. Yeah they managed a soft landing, but that shit didn’t trickle down. We’re on our second year of record breaking increases in homeless people. We don’t give a goddamn shit about the stock market when we’re shopping for used Recreational Vehicles to use as our primary housing. If families are choosing between utilities, rent, and food, then your Bidenomics message is going to do worse than fall flat, it’s going to blow up in your face.

    And the whole style over substance thing. Just holy shit batman, he broke the strike of workers who were (and are still) massively abused. He did that on prime time television. And then he negotiated for the office worker parts of the unions to get improvements and it’s a complete submarine. Not only did he do the bad, he did no PR damage control, not even to show what little he gave the workers after he shut down their strike. At one point in the WaPo article someone mentions that Biden tried to run the country like it was 1972, and I agree with that statement.

    Which brings us to the crux of his sins as a leader. He was unwilling to listen to the people he was supposed to be leading. At every turn he decided that he and his high paid advisors from the corporate world knew better then the people actually struggling. He might have thought he was playing 5d chess but he was losing at checkers… badly.

    • Zaktor@sopuli.xyz
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      best Covid recovery

      It is very appropriate if they’re framing COVID as a purely economic issue.

  • mctoasterson@reddthat.com
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    For an ancient venal egotist like Joe, the fact that Kamala lost is close to a best case scenario. He would’ve gotten completely waxed if he had stayed in… but now he gets to say he was forced aside by the party leaders (Pelosi, the Obamas etc.) and that is completely verifiably true, but he also gets to claim he totally would’ve won, which is very likely not true, but now we will never know.

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    7 days ago

    That’s okay Joe, there is a lot of regret about your entire administration, and career, on all sides.