The Moment Blame Became Inevitable: Harris, Biden, and the 2024 Democratic Fallout

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The Architecture of Blame

In politics, blame is rarely spontaneous. It is not merely the eruption of frustration, but the construction of a judgment. In The Blame Game (2011), Christopher Hood offers a systematic approach to understanding how blame operates in public life. According to Hood, a complete act of blame requires three essential components:

1. Perceived Avoidable Harm (PAH): The belief that something bad happened — and that it could have been prevented.

2. Perceived Responsibility (PR): The belief that someone could have acted to prevent it — and did not.

3. Temporal Convergence (t₁): The moment when both the harm and the attribution of agency are perceived simultaneously.

This framework allows us to distinguish blame from mere dissatisfaction or disappointment. It shows how accountability is not just claimed, but narrated — structured through language and timing.

This article applies Hood’s PAH–PR–t₁ model to a CNN report on the 2024 Harris campaign, zeroing in on one revealing passage where blame is explicitly assigned to President Biden. The analysis shows how this moment doesn’t just reflect political loss — it constructs political responsibility.