The 2024 recriminations are here, but not as expected

He did it. He actually did it.

I was right, but I was also wrong.

Let me explain.

A little more than a year ago, I argued that, in the event of a Trump victory, the post-election blame game among Democrats would make for some fantastic political entertainment.

The part about the recriminations was correct — they are fantastic. But the part about who would be made to suffer was wrong.

I had mistakenly believed that former Vice President Kamala Harris, who replaced her dotard patron at the top of the ticket a mere three-and-a-half months before Election Day, would pay the biggest price of anyone. And why wouldn’t she? Sure, Trump’s second term is unquestionably Joe Biden’s fault, but Harris was the candidate, and she lost decisively.

I assumed Biden would find a way to scapegoat his vice president for handing Trump another four years in the White House. Surely, the man who has been in Washington, D.C., since the year of the Munich massacre, and who undoubtedly has Rolodexes brimming with the names of seasoned “political tricksters” and other comms goblins, would find a way to shield himself from the fallout of his botched re-election bid.

Surely, I reasoned, Biden, who entered national politics before the Supreme Court had even ruled on Roe v. Wade, would lean on decades of goodwill, influence-peddling, and gossip-mining to convince party leaders to place the blame squarely on the shoulders of a woman who had not spent enough time in the nation’s capital to build any kind of relational, quid-pro-quo network of allies and donors.

I was wrong.

Former President Barack Obama really had Biden dead to rights when he said of his second in command, “Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to fuck things up.”

I don’t know how Biden did it, but he has managed somehow to take all the heat for what happened last year. Meanwhile, the candidate whose name was ultimately on the ballot has been granted absolution. That Harris is being given a pass says as much about the party as it does about Biden’s abilities as a world-class screw up.

Harris, who had barely served half a term in the U.S. Senate before being nominated as vice president, is no institution or fixture of U.S. politics. It should have been the easiest thing in the world for Biden to serve Harris up as a sacrificial lamb for the 2024 fiasco. No one has anything to lose if they throw Kamala from the train — no dedicated army of party loyalists, no entrenched donor network, nothing. She would skitter back to California and become a somewhat interesting footnote in the larger story of Donald Trump’s transformation of American politics.

But that’s not what has happened, at least not so far. Almost all the criticism has been aimed directly at the old man, with fewer and fewer in the Democratic Party willing to say anything positive about him, let alone defend him.

I hadn’t considered last October that Democrats would view Biden’s actions in the 2024 election as putting himself above the party or that they’d hold him accountable. Say what you will about Harris as a candidate, but she is clearly a loyal foot soldier. Leadership and the base alike appreciate this.

Biden, on the other hand, put himself before the party when he decided to seek a second term. He put himself first by refusing to drop out, even after his obvious physical and mental struggles became an electoral liability. Then, he doomed Democrats with his inexplicable decision to participate in a nationally televised presidential debate, humiliating himself and making the party and his supporters look like major league idiots and even liars.

Biden went even further, acting solely out of his own self-interest and with no regard for the party, when he pardoned his son Hunter despite repeatedly promising not to do so. This last-minute move not only undermined the Democratic Party’s “nobody is above the law” message, but it also made the Biden administration’s supporters and defenders look like chumps once again.

Put simply, Biden repeatedly put himself first, and the company does not tolerate such behavior. Harris may have lost, but she wasn’t selfish or disloyal. She was a poor candidate, but the company understands she was dealt a bad hand.

What Democrats will not tolerate, however, is callous disregard for the party’s interests.

Thus, we have a steady stream of damning news tidbits about, for example, how Biden is struggling to land the prestigious speaking gigs and lucrative opportunities typically awarded to former presidents. Part of it is his age, of course, but a bigger reason is that he is simply unpopular in the circles that would want him to come in the first place. One group that considered hosting him even attempted to negotiate a lower speaking fee.

Perhaps most damning of all is that Harris is now enjoying herself on the speaking circuit, promoting, among other things, her new book, “107 Days,” in which she openly criticizes Biden.

This reveals a great deal about the former president’s standing in his own party. A half-term senator and catastrophic vice president, who just lost a high-stakes presidential election to Donald Trump, of all people, is openly criticizing her predecessor, and she has nothing to fear from party leadership.

The recriminations aren’t for Kamala. They’re for Biden.

It couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.