'It would have been different': Nancy Pelosi blames Joe Biden for US election loss

Former US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said the Democrats would have done better in Tuesday's election if President Joe Biden had stepped down from the race earlier.

Pelosi, 84, told The New York Times on Thursday: "Had the President gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race."

She added that if Biden had stepped down sooner, it could have allowed for an open primary - which would have let multiple Democrat candidates compete for the chance to succeed Biden.

"The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary," she said.

Pelosi speculated that Kamala Harris might have had a "stronger chance" of beating Donald Trump if there had been such a selection process.

"And as I say, Kamala may have, I think she would have done well in that and been stronger going forward. But we don’t know that. That didn’t happen. We live with what happened.," she explained.

"And because the president endorsed Kamala Harris immediately, that really made it almost impossible to have a primary at that time. If it had been much earlier, it would have been different."

The California congresswoman, re-elected on Tuesday for her 20th term in the House, said Harris "gave people hope".

"I don’t think that any review of the election should be predicated on weaknesses, but strengths of Kamala Harris. She gave people hope. She caused a great deal of excitement in all this."

Pelosi is the latest Democrat to criticise the President after the party lost the White House and potentially both the Senate and House of Representatives to the Republicans.

Andrew Yang, who ran against Biden for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, said: "The biggest onus of this loss is on President Biden."

Biden, 81, ended his re-election bid in July, endorsing Harris immediately afterwards. His decision followed a controversial debate performance against Trump, 78, which raised concerns about his ability to defeat the former president or complete a second term.

Pelosi, along with Barack Obama, was reportedly involved in behind-the-scenes efforts to make Biden exit the race.

Harris suffered a heavy defeat to Trump on Tuesday. While not yet finalised, she appears to have lost all key swing states and the popular vote, marking the first time a Democrat has lost the popular vote in 20 years.

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