US President Joe Biden has vowed to ensure a “peaceful and orderly transition” to his Republican predecessor and now successor, Donald Trump.
“We accept the choice the country made,” the Democrat said, repeating that he believes “you can’t love your country only when you win”.
Biden also saluted Vice-President Kamala Harris as “a partner and a public servant” who ran an “inspiring” campaign after he dropped out.
His first public remarks after Tuesday’s election, in the White House’s Rose Garden, came as Democrats in Washington began seeking someone to blame for Harris’s large loss to Trump.
Much of the blame is being laid on Biden, with some saying that he should have dropped out of the race sooner and others that the 81-year-old should never have run for a second term at all.
The incumbent sought to balance a conciliatory tone with a message of reassurance, after a bleak campaign season where Harris frequently said that a Trump victory would threaten democracy and Trump often described the US as a “nation in decline” and a “failed nation”.
American democracy is “the greatest experiment in self-government in the world” and “the will of the people always prevails”, Biden said.
“We lost this battle,” he said. “The America of your dreams is calling for you to get back.”
In the comments before a crowd of White House staff and top members of his administration, Biden took on an issue that may have cost Harris the White House: the economy.
Voters in the swing states that decided the election listed the economy as a top issue driving them to the polls, and Trump in his rallies cast Biden as directly responsible for inflation spiking to a 40-year high in June 2022.
While Harris pointed to the steep recession when Trump was in office and significant improvements in inflation, she could not win over Trump voters who said they felt better about the economy during his first term.
But Biden said supporters should be proud of his “historic” term that had left behind “the strongest economy in the world” and “over $1tn worth of infrastructure work done”.
“I know people are still hurting, but things are changing rapidly,” he said.
Promising to work with Trump’s transition team without delay, Biden said it was time to “bring down the temperature” in the country.
“I also hope we can lay to rest the question about the integrity of the American electoral system,” he said, a a nod to the president-elect’s unproven allegations of fraud after his defeat in 2020, which led many to riot on 6 January 2021.
“It is honest, it is fair, it is transparent and it can be trusted, win or lose.”
Biden was the first incumbent to not compete for re-election since Lyndon Johnson in 1968.
His approval rating as president has been in negative territory for more than three years – since his administration’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021. On top of that, a majority of voters, including most Democrats, have expressed concerns over his advanced age in a steady stream of polls.
But the Democrat launched his re-election bid in April 2023 with a promise to “finish the job”.
Typically, political parties do not follow a strenuous primary process when they control the White House and Biden did not have to face campaigns from serious rivals or debates to become the 2024 Democratic nominee. More than 14 million Americans voted for him during the Democratic primaries.
Then, in June 2024, Biden frequently lost his train of thought and meandered through several responses in a debate with Trump watched by millions on live television.
A month later, after a public push from Democratic heavyweights, he withdrew his candidacy and endorsed his vice-president. The election was a little more than three months away.
Democrats are trying to make sense of how they could win in 2020 and then lose four years later to the same opponent. Biden is not the only person being put at fault.
Some are saying Harris was a weak candidate who struggled with media appearances. Others say her campaign was heavy on celebrity involvement but light on policy substance.
One-time Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and others have suggested Harris erred in picking Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, an older progressive, as her running mate instead of Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, a more youthful, Jewish-American moderate.
Independent Senator Bernie Sanders, who ran for president as a Democrat in 2016 and 2020, blasted the party itself, putting out a lengthy statement that accused it of abandoning working people.
“While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change,” he wrote. “And they’re right.”
But Ritchie Torres, a moderate New York congressman, blamed “the far left, which has managed to alienate historic numbers of Latinos, Blacks, Asians, and Jews from the Democratic Party with absurdities like ‘Defund the Police’ or ‘From the River to the Sea’ or ‘Latinx’”.
