The team of Democratic political consultants that ran Kamala Harris’ losing campaign against Donald Trump have spoken out for the first time since the election about why things went so horribly wrong for them.
Harris campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon, senior political advisor David Plouffe, and campaign advisors Quentin Fulks and Stephanie Cutter appeared on the ‘Pod Save America’ podcast with host and former Barack Obama political advisor Dan Pfeiffer to pore over their resounding electoral defeat.
But the quartet of campaign veterans spent the better part of 90 minutes blaming everyone but themselves – or their failed candidate – for losing to Trump.
And the Harris aides even suggested the hurricanes that devastated portions of the U.S. during the campaign and what they labeled a ‘sexist’ media were responsible for the crushing defeat – and not their operation.
‘This political environment sucked, okay? We were dealing with ferocious headwinds,’ whined Plouffe, who ran Obama’s 2008 campaign and then served as a White House advisor.
Plouffe, who rage-quit X after Democrats criticized him online about the failed campaign, also insisted that Biden was so unpopular when he dropped out of the race and endorsed Harris that it was a difficult task to improve her ratings.
He noted that Harris began the race with approval ratings only in the 33-35 percent range and although they improved her numbers by 15 points, they did not have enough time to sell her to voters.
And Plouffe oddly complained about how difficult it was for Democrats to win support from independents in battleground states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania – despite that being the job at hand, and one the team assured Democrats across the country they were capable of doing.
‘It’s really hard for Democrats to win battleground states,’ Plouffe maintained, noting that those states were more conservative than the average blue state and that even the moderates there tended to lean right.
Top Harris staffers break their silence on how the campaign went off the rails
Kamala Harris advisor David Plouffe joined the panel via Zoom and griped: ‘This political environment sucked, okay?’
But he admitted they also fell short in big cities like Philadelphia and Detroit.
And he also defended the decision for Harris to campaign with Republicans like former Rep. Liz Cheney as a way to appeal to more moderates – which appeared to backfire.
Liberal supporters of Harris were incensed by the party’s embrace of Cheney and her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney.
Plouffe emphasized it was folly for strategists to focus only on pleasing Democratic and left-leaning people in the states.
‘The math just doesn’t f***ing work,’ he said. ‘Okay?’
Meanwhile, campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon repeatedly complained about the lack of time they had to make Harris a winner in the 107-day campaign that began in July when Biden finally dropped out of the race and endorsed Harris.
She defended their approach of highlighting how Harris was ‘different’ than both Biden and Trump and a candidate for the ‘future’ instead of trying to differentiate herself from Biden, whose approval rating were epically low.
Campaign advisor Stephanie Cutter confirmed that Harris was ‘unwilling’ to separate herself from Biden.
‘She had a huge deficit in favorability, because either people didn’t know about her or what they did know about her was because of negative media,’ she said.
Campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon talks about the failed Kamala Harris campaign
Kamala Harris advisors Quentin Fulks and Stephanie Cutter
But the campaign veterans didn’t say what efforts they made to try and get Harris to separate herself from the president, effectively saddling her with blame for the two biggest voter issues – the rising prices of everyday goods and the burden of mass illegal immigration.
The group agreed on one thing their opponents did that really hurt Harris: Trump’s ‘they/them’ ad highlighting Harris’ support for taxpayer-funded transgender surgeries for prisoners.
‘She was on tape. Surgery for people who wanted to transition in prison was part of the Biden-Harris platform in 2020, it was part of what the administration did,’ Plouffe admitted.
Quentin Fulks said the ad was used to suppress the vote from black voters, and that it was effective at sending the message that the Harris campaign did not care about voters.
‘The way in which they targeted this ad, they were trying to make our job harder with black voters, I’m just going to say it point blank… specifically black men,’ he said.
US Vice President Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris waves at supporters at the end of her concession speech at Howard University in Washington, DC, on November 6, 2024
Cutter agreed.
‘Their strategy isn’t to pull in new voters to them, they’re trying to mess with us,’ Cutter said.
Cutter and O’Malley Dillon also complained about corporate media for creating a narrative that Harris was unwilling or unable to do interviews.
She hinted at Harris suffering from a ‘double standard’ because the vice president was not doing interviews after becoming the nominee.
‘The questions were small and process-y,’ Dillon said.
‘Dumb,’ Cutter interjected. ‘Just Dumb.’
‘Being up against a narrative that we weren’t doing anything or that we were afraid to have interviews is completely bullshit…’ Dillon said bitterly.
Despite their frustrations with the establishment media, they admitted that they were unable to make an impact on popular podcasts like Trump did.
The group defended the campaign decision not to go on the Joe Rogan podcast, repeating that it was only a difficulty over scheduling and time.
‘It’s pretty simple. We wanted to do it, but it was a very short race with a limited number of days, but for a candidate to leave and go to Houston, getting that timing right is really important,’ Cutter said, repeating that Rogan, ‘wanted us to come on.’
They admitted that Harris did take a day off to go to Houston to campaign on abortion rights with Beyonce, but they were unable to visit Rogan’s studio in Austin while they were already in Texas.
Vice President Kamala Harris delivers a concession speech for the 2024 presidential election
Jen O’Malley Dillon, campaign manager for Democratic presidential candidate US Vice President Kamala Harris
They said they tried to get Harris on other popular internet shows like ‘Hot Ones’ but that they were turned down because of the show’s disinterest in engaging with politics.
Trump was reaching young voters on TikTok, Cutter admitted, in ways that Harris was not breaking through.
Cutter also said that Trump resonated on social media because he portrayed a ‘very masculine strong figure’ that appeared at UFC fights and continued picking fights with Democrats.
Democrats, she said, were perceived as ‘squishy’ and were forced to having conversations about transgenders in bathrooms.
‘I’m not saying we mimic that, we don’t want to mimic that but we have to pay attention to why people find that appealing,’ she concluded.
