Biden has insisted he could have defeated Donald Trump in the US presidential election if he had defied his party by continuing to run, reports suggest.
According to the Washington Post, Mr Biden, the outgoing president, and some of his aides, have said in recent days that he regrets dropping out of the race.
The incumbent president made way for Kamala Harris in July after leading figures in the Democratic Party urged him to step aside following a disastrous debate performance which caused his polling numbers to plummet.
Aides told the outlet that Mr Biden has been careful not to blame Ms Harris, who replaced him at the top of the ticket and was roundly beaten by Mr Trump on Nov 5, losing the popular vote and all seven swing states to the president-elect.
Many Democrats have blamed Ms Harris’s defeat on Mr Biden’s insistence on staying in the race for so long, which left his vice-president little more than three months to mount her election campaign.
Richard Blumenthal, a Democratic senator, told the Washington Post: “Biden ran on the promise that he was going to be a transitional president, and in effect, have one term before handing it off to another generation.
“I think his running again broke that concept — the conceptual underpinning of the theory that he would end the Trump appeal; he would defeat Trumpism and enable a new era.”
Some of the president’s closest advisers also conceded that his traditional style of governing and campaigning was not necessarily well-suited to modern politics.
Jake Sullivan, Mr Biden’s national security adviser, told the outlet: “The president has been operating on a time horizon measured in decades, while the political cycle is measured in four years.
“How to govern at this moment to set the US up for long-term success has one answer, and how to govern to deal with midterm and presidential elections in the very short term might have a different answer.”
In recent weeks, the president has voiced regret for missteps he made in office, admitting he was “stupid” for not gaining personal credit by putting his name on pandemic relief cheques – as Mr Trump had in 2020.
He has also acknowledged that he “screwed up” in his June 27 debate against Mr Trump, in which he gave incoherent answers and appeared to stumble over his words, leading many viewers to draw the conclusion he was too old to be president.
Mr Biden is also said to regret his choice for attorney general, complaining that Merrick Garland moved too slowly in prosecuting Mr Trump over the Jan 6 riots – charges that were ultimately dismissed – and too aggressively in prosecuting the president’s son, Hunter.
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