Biden promotes a ‘close’ relationship with Harris, but ‘not surprised’ by his electoral loss

Former President Joe Biden, in an extensive interview about “The View” by ABC on Thursday, said he was not surprised by the loss of vice president Kamala Harris in the presidential elections of 2024, but not for his qualifications as a candidate, on the other hand, pointing out sexism and racism that said he had been level against her.

“I was not surprised, not because I did not think that the vice president was the most qualified person to be president … I was not surprised because they followed the route of the sexist route, the entire route,” Biden said.

He continued: “I have never seen such a successful and consistent campaign, undermining the notion that a woman could not lead the country and a mixed woman.”

But Biden, separately, said he still believes he would have defeated Trump if he had stayed in the race.

“Yes, he still got seven million less votes,” Biden said about Trump, pointing out how much he beat Trump in the 2020 Popular Electoral Voting.

His comments arrive after several months outside the center of attention for the former president while he and the Democrats seek to resolve his role after the presidency. Last month, Biden left private life to pronounce a speech on Trump’s potential impact on Social Security and appeared at Harvard University.

The questions persist in the priorities of the party and who can be the best to send messages and communicate in the name of the Democrats, questions that extend both to Biden and Harris.

Biden, on the other hand, told “the opinion” that it is in the midst of the self -reflection, and, for that purpose, writing a book.

“Things are coming and we are square trying to discover what is the most significant and consistent role that I can play, according to what I have done in the past,” he said.

The former president also approached his relationship with his former candidate in progress, saying that he and Harris had spoken as recently as Wednesday. However, it was quickly prevented from addressing the details of its “frequent” conversations, including secondary talk about the possible presidential ambitions of Harris governor or potential.

The sources told ABC News that Harris can be considering a career for governor of California, his native state; Others have speculated that a presidency could set up in 2028, a controversial notion within the Democratic Party.

Many of Harris’ national supporters told ABC News in March that they are warm for their potentially postulated for president in 2028; Others have asked for a complete rest of the Biden-Harris administration and that the party considers the new standard carriers.

But in the broader political future of Harris, Biden said she had the hope that she would remain involved in some significant way, but she was not short to share what route she expects to take.

“He has a difficult decision to make about what he is going to do. I hope he stays completely compromised. I think it is first class, but we also have many really good candidates. So, I am optimistic. I am not pessimistic,” Biden said.

Biden’s comments do not seem to have repressed the progressives who felt that he the possibilities of Democrats in 2024. The co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee They would go better to his party.

“Joe Biden denies the fact that neither Kamala Harris should have been the 2024 Democratic candidate if we wanted to defeat Donald Trump. At this time, voters demand authentic anti-establishment figures that will shake a broken political system and an economic state quo for billion lengths against working people, and that is not biden or Harris.”

When asked about “the opinion” to respond to the statements that he should have abandoned the race and support Harris before, Biden said that Harris still had a long period to campaign and worked together “in every decision I made.”

Biden also denied having reported that he said he had advised Harris to suggest that there was no day light between the two, saying they were partners and worked together.

The co-presenter of “The View”, Sunny Hostin, mentioned Harris’s comments about “The View” in October, towards the end of his presidential campaign, when he was asked if he would have done “something differently” from what Biden had done in the last four years. She replied: “There is nothing that comes to mind”, a moment widely seen as one that hurt her among the voters who felt that she needed to make a cleaner break from the White House Biden.

“I didn’t advise him to say that,” Biden said, adding that he thought Harris meant that he would not change any of the successes that Biden-Harris’s White House had achieved.

“She was part of all the success we had. We would argue how hell, by the way,” added Biden, emphasizing that disagreements were signs of a positive working relationship.

Although he did not indicate tension between him and Harris, Biden did not respond directly when asked about the tension between him and other life supporters, including former President Barack Obama, whose administration served as vice president.

When asked how his relationship with Obama is now, and how he addresses Obama’s concerns and others, according to reports, about his ability to fulfill a second mandate as president, Biden turned why he left the race, and did not mention Obama.

“The only reason I left the race was because I didn’t want to have a divided Democratic party … I thought it was better to put the country ahead of my interest, my personal interest,” said Biden.

Biden said, in his response that the concerns about his age, 81 during the campaign, were valid, but pointed out what he still achieved at the end of his presidency as evidence against the statements that had decreased cognitively.

Alexandra Hutzler and Zohreen Shah of ABC News contributed to this report.