During an appearance on “The View,” ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith expressed that he was not taken aback by the results of the 2024 election.
“I was surprised at how lopsided it was. I was not surprised by the outcome. I saw the outcome coming from a mile away. You have to take into account, listen, we respect our President Joe Biden, but here’s the reality. He got into office. He promised to be a transitional president, to be a stopgap, to pave the way for somebody else to come on board,” Smith said, shedding light on the Democrats’ success in the 2022 midterms.
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Smith explained the challenges the Democratic Party faced after the president chose to stay in office. This decision led to Kamala Harris taking his place on the ticket, but she ended up losing to Trump.
“When he decided to stay, the Democrats were in a quandary because they were expecting him to leave,” he continued. “They’re around him, they’re seeing the fastball has dissipated to some degree, they’re seeing that he’s not what he used to be. And what do you do about it? You grease the skids. There’s no primary for him to experience. You let him go on stage June 27, and clearly he was exposed … And then Kamala Harris is inserted. I don’t blame her one bit, I thought she did a phenomenal job.”
Smith said that while Harris tried her best, independent voters weren’t convinced by her. He pointed out that being the current vice president and not having any primary challengers hurt her chances.
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“You have folks that are independent – I’m not talking about those on the right or the left, just independents who say, wait a minute, she didn’t experience a primary either. The last time we saw her in a primary was four years ago, and she didn’t even make it to Iowa. They used that as an excuse to point to her level of inexperience. You’ve got the war in Russia, Ukraine, you’ve got the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Hamas and Hezbollah and all of that stuff,” he said, before pointing to Trump’s criticisms of Harris.
