Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign advisers admitted they were caught off guard by public polling that showed her leading Donald Trump in September and October of the election cycle, as their private data painted a very different picture.
“We were behind. I mean, I think it surprised people because there were these public polls that came out in late September, early October, showing us with leads that we never saw,” explained David Plouffe, Harris’ senior campaign adviser, during an appearance on “Pod Save America.”
The Harris campaign team joined the podcast for an in-depth discussion released Tuesday, analyzing what led to her defeat in all the swing states. They acknowledged struggling to craft a unified message after Harris entered the race with just over 100 days to go before Election Day. Additionally, they had to deal with the challenge of overcoming President Biden’s low polling numbers.
One significant issue the campaign faced was determining how to differentiate Harris from President Biden, who at 82 years old, remained an unpopular figure with many voters. The fact that Harris had served as his vice president made this separation even more complicated.
“She felt like she was part of the administration. So why should she look back and pick out — cherry-pick some things that she would have done differently when she was part of it? And she also had tremendous loyalty to President Biden,” shared Stefanie Cutter, one of Harris’ advisers.
Harris was unwilling to completely distance herself from Biden’s policies on contentious issues like the economy and immigration. In a notable interview on ABC’s “The View,” she was asked how her administration would differ from Biden’s, and she responded that “nothing comes to mind.”
Cutter elaborated on the difficulties this presented: “Imagine if we said, ‘Well, we would have taken this approach on the border.’ Imagine the round of stories coming out after that of people saying, ‘Well, she never said that in a meeting,’ or ‘What meeting when she said this,’ or ‘I remember when she did that.’ And it was just, it wasn’t going to give us what we needed because it wouldn’t be a clean break.”
The advisers agreed that Harris’ failed campaign highlighted a broader issue for the Democratic Party, which they believe must rethink its approach if it hopes to secure a victory in 2028.
Plouffe emphasized that winning key battleground states remains “really hard for Democrats,” while Quentin Fulks, the deputy campaign manager, suggested that Democrats are struggling to address cultural challenges.
Fulks argued that Democrats are “losing the culture war” and undermining themselves through internal divisions fueled by “woke” culture, while Republicans maintain unity and resist apologizing. “Democrats are ‘eating’ their ‘own’ through the ‘woke’ culture,” he said. “Until that stops, we’re not going to be able to address a lot of the things that just need to be said.”
Another factor the team identified was Trump’s effective use of digital outreach and early voter turnout efforts. His campaign embraced platforms like TikTok and podcasts to connect with voters and amplify its messaging.
“The Republicans have a well-tuned, well-oiled, well-invested echo chamber that exists beyond where they’re campaigning. And it’s online. It reverberates through TikTok. It reverberates through the culture,” Fulks observed.
“There is a cultural dynamic that’s at play in politics today where it is converging like we’ve never seen,” he added.
Despite the setbacks, campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon reflected on how competitive the race had been, even though Harris ultimately lost all seven critical swing states.
“So, we lost and that really sucks … obviously we believed that we could pull this off,” O’Malley Dillon admitted. “And that is something we all have to live with and we’ll have to live with for the next four years.”
{Matzav.com}