Veteran political journalist Mark Halperin shed new light Friday on the internal Democratic Party chaos that led to Vice President Kamala Harris becoming the de facto 2024 presidential nominee after President Joe Biden was pushed out of the race.
Appearing on Special Report with Bret Baier on Fox News, Halperin explained that a combination of widespread concern about Harris’ electability and a lack of willing challengers left the Democratic Party with no viable alternative following Biden’s withdrawal from the race last July.
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“You didn’t need investigative reporting or these books to know that Joe Biden had substantial mental decline,” Halperin said. “You just needed a C-SPAN subscription. So that’s not the revelation. To me, the thing that’s in these books, which is true, is that Joe Biden, despite his mental decline, agreed with Barack Obama that she couldn’t win.”
Halperin’s remarks echo revelations from the recent book Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House, which outlines how leading Democrats — including former Presidents Biden and Obama, as well as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer — doubted Harris’ ability to win a general election against Donald Trump. Yet, with Biden under pressure after a widely criticized debate performance and a collapse in fundraising, party leaders were left in a political bind.
“Part of why [Biden] hung on and part of why Barack Obama was not eager for her to be the nominee was that they wanted to beat Donald Trump,” Halperin said. “They didn’t think that Biden could do it… but they didn’t think she could either.”
Biden ultimately exited the race on July 21, 2024, citing financial troubles and pressure from top Democrats, but by then, Halperin said, it was too late for a fresh face to enter the fray.
“No one else wanted to run. It was this horrible dilemma,” he explained. “Every day he waited to get out, she got a stronger grip on the nomination because no one was going to challenge her at the last minute.”
That dynamic left Harris the presumptive nominee, not by party-wide enthusiasm but by attrition.
The book also recounts how donors were warned by top Biden aides against replacing the president with Harris, arguing it would be a “huge mistake.” The Biden campaign had privately cited what they described as Harris’ limited appeal beyond the party base, as well as her historically low polling.
After leaving office, Obama largely disengaged from day-to-day Democratic politics, the book notes, leaving a leadership vacuum within the party. Efforts by Democratic establishment figures — including Hillary Clinton, former DNC Chair Donna Brazile, and Biden allies — to counterbalance the growing influence of the party’s progressive wing further fragmented the party’s post-Obama infrastructure.
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Despite early signs of continued electoral vulnerability, Harris became the standard-bearer for the Democrats heading into the November 2024 election — a race that ultimately returned Trump to the White House.
With the 2028 primary season on the horizon, Halperin suggested Democrats may soon be forced to confront the same leadership questions that haunted them in 2024 — this time, hopefully, with more time to act.
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