One of the earliest House Democrats to publicly urge President Biden to throw in the towel believes that if he had remained on the ticket, his party would’ve incurred heavy losses in Congress.
While Democrats lost control of the White House and Senate last month, Rep. Angie Craig (D-Minn.) fretted that if Biden, 82, had been atop the ticket, Republicans would’ve snatched dozens of House seats.
“[President-elect Donald Trump] would have taken, I believe, if Biden had stayed on the top of the ticket, 30 to 40 House seats with him,” Craig reflected to NBC News, musing that her own seat would’ve been lost as well.
Craig, who represents Minnesota’s 2nd Congressional District, recounted how she “couldn’t sleep” after Biden’s “awful, terrible” debate against Trump in late June.
“[I] very quickly came to the conclusion that Joe Biden could not campaign and win,” she recalled. “I needed to tell the country that we were sleepwalking into a situation where Donald Trump was about to be president again.”
Craig became the fifth House Democrat overall and first from a battleground district to implore Biden to step aside as the presumptive party standard bearer.
After Vice President Kamala Harris took the reins and began scrambling to sort through the veepstakes, Craig pushed for her home state Gov. Tim Walz to get the No. 2 nod.
But she had consulted with him beforehand.
“I walked onto the House floor,” she recapped to the outlet, “and thought, ‘Oh, s—, I actually haven’t talked to Tim Walz about whether he wants to be VP or not.’ And actually ran into the cloakroom, called Tim.”
Walz ultimately became the Democrats’ vice presidential nominee.
Despite the late-stage switcheroo at the top of the ticket, Democrats went on to lose the trifecta to Republicans.
They did net one seat in the lower chamber — the smallest such change in the House’s history.
During recent election cycles amid aggressive gerrymandering, the House of Representatives has seemingly been insulated from major swings of 30 to 40 seats the likes of which Craig feared.
The most recent swing of that nature took place in the 2018 blue wave cycle when Democrats netted 41 seats. In 2020, Republicans netted 14 House seats and then nine in 2022.
With the slim GOP House majority, Democrats are hopeful that Republicans will be limited in what they can achieve during the second Trump administration. The first major test will take place Friday when the House convenes its speakership election.
After Harris’ defeat, Biden and some of his top aides have privately vented that they believe he could’ve defeated Trump if he had stayed in, the Washington Post reported.
Additionally, the rapport between Biden and Harris has grown “frosty,” sources told the Wall Street Journal.
Harris had vexed prominent Democratic strategists by refusing to criticize and distance herself from Biden during the 2024 election contest.
Democrats are now deep in the midst of soul-searching following the sweeping election defeat and the party is battling over who will lead the Democratic National Committee.
