Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden said he has “mixed emotions” about his former opponent, Sen. Kamala Harris, dropping out of the race Tuesday.
"She is a first-rate intellect, a first rate candidate and a real competitor. I have mixed emotions about it because she is really a solid, solid person and loaded with talent," Biden said, reports ABC News.
.@JoeBiden reacts to @SenKamalaHarris dropping out of the 2020 race:
— Molly Nagle (@MollyNagle3) December 3, 2019
“She is a first rate intellect, a first rate candidate and a real competitor. I have mixed emotions about it because she is really a solid solid person and loaded with talent.”
His response came moments after Harris announced she did not have the funds to continue.
"My campaign for president simply doesn’t have the financial resources we need to continue," Harris wrote to her supporters in an email. "I’m not a billionaire. I can’t fund my own campaign. And as the campaign has gone on, it’s become harder and harder to raise the money we need to compete."
Biden and Harris clashed at several points on the debate stage, with the California senator hammering the former vice president over his stance on busing and past work with segregationist senators.
“I do not believe you are a racist,” Harris told Biden in June. “And I agree with you when you commit yourself to the importance of finding common ground, but I also believe — and it is personal, and it was actually very hurtful to hear you talk about the reputations of two United States senators who built their reputation and career on the segregation of race in this country. And it was not only that, but you also worked with them to oppose busing.”
She made the issue personal after recounting how she was bused to school as a little girl.
There was a little girl in California who was bussed to school. That little girl was me. #DemDebate pic.twitter.com/XKm2xP1MDH
— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) June 28, 2019
Biden, for his part, said she was mischaracterizing his positions and that he only opposed “busing ordered by the Department of Education.”