The mistakes that led to the defeat of Kamala Harris

Kamala Harris’ advisers could hardly believe their good fortune.

Election day was approaching, and Donald Trump continued to make controversial comments that advisers believed would play into their strategy and show voters that he was unfit for another term. They were optimistic that the vice president was on the verge of winning the race, which seemed to them to be very close. Her last appearance in the campaign, on the iconic steps from Sylvester Stallone’s movie “Rocky” in Philadelphia, will mark the story of her rise as an underdog.

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But their optimism was a sign of the magnitude of the mistake at the core of Harris’s campaign. The campaign misread an electorate that was more concerned about inflation and immigration than Trump’s character. Trump clawed his way back to the White House with a stunning electoral swing, fending off Harris’ attacks and attracting voters who believed the country was on the wrong track. Voters blamed it on President Biden, Harris’ very unpopular boss. Harris’ inability to detach herself from him and offer her own specific solutions to Americans’ problems, despite a generous campaign fund, was a major reason for her loss.

More broadly, the party erred by failing to plan a smooth transition from Biden’s presidency to the next generation of young leaders, despite his commitment to do so. The manner in which Harris was pushed into this position in July left her campaign unprepared to compete against an opponent with a strong hold on the electorate.

Harris did not distance herself from Biden

In a 15-week campaign, Harris’ advisers knew from the start that the race was fundamentally against her, but in the end they believed that focusing on Trump’s character was the only way to neutralize the headwinds working against her.

Voters’ dissatisfaction with the direction of the country—including their frustrations with inflation and a record number of illegal border crossers—have caused them to seek change. Harris didn’t feel comfortable being seen as critical of Biden, despite a push from some allies to do so, and her advisers didn’t think it would work either, given her role in the administration.

There were also some cracks in Harris’ campaign management. The appeal to black, Latino and working-class voters in swing states came too late, and her message to those voters was not clear enough, some Democrats said.

Adam Smith, Washington’s Democratic representative in the House of Representatives, said Harris and the Democrats were seen as too close to the progressive wing of the party.

“The far left is bringing us down,” Smith said, citing movements calling for defunding the police and easing border policies. “The second problem, of course, is that Harris chose not to distance herself from Biden.”

The political base that Harris lost was extensive. Both women and men moved toward the Republican Party, compared to their preferences in 2020. Harris gave up some of her party’s lead among highly educated voters, while losing significantly among voters without a four-year degree, who make up nearly 60 percent of the electorate. Black voters doubled their support for Trump to 16%, and his support among Latinos increased by 6 points, to 41%. Harris also lost traction among voters with a family income of less than $100,000, and increased her support among the smaller, higher-income group of voters.

In Michigan, on the eve of the election, at a rally held by vice presidential candidate Tim Waltz, there was a clear sign that the Democrats were in trouble. The rally was held at Hart Plaza in downtown Detroit, a venue that can hold thousands of people. But the audience filled only a small part of the space, according to one of the volunteers. At one point, the campaigners asked the audience to gather in the stands in front of a camera, so that the impression of a full audience would be obtained.

“We got a kick in the ass”

Waltz and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer were among those who spoke briefly at the lackluster reception. Artists also appeared at the rally, including the lead singer of REM, Michael Stipe, and Jon Bon Jovi, who sang hits including a hit from 1992 that served as a rallying cry: “Keep the Faith”.

On Tuesday night, wealthy Democratic donors and activists, who had received positive updates from the campaign throughout the day, gathered at the Conrad Hotel in Washington and watched in horror at the results of the incoming election. Many of those invited to the VIP gathering at Howard University, where the Harris campaign held its election night party, decided to stay at the bar or go back to their hotel rooms and grieve alone.

“‘We just got kicked in the ass’ was the dominant sentiment of the night,” said one of those present, adding that although some began pointing fingers of blame, Trump’s victory was so resounding that most realized it was a bigger problem, beyond the Harris campaign alone. “We can’t get caught up in small details.”

By about 10 p.m., with North Carolina and Georgia seemingly out of reach and warning signs flashing for the other states on Harris’s ever-shortening path, the mood among Harris aides and allies turned to fear.

Frustration with Biden

Pinning the blame for Harris’ loss, Democrats were quick to point to Biden’s decision to run for re-election two years ago, and subsequent efforts to quash any opposition from those who thought it was a bad idea or sought to undermine it.

When he ran in 2020, Biden said he would be a transitional figure, passing the baton to a new generation of Democratic leaders. But after the party performed better than expected in the 2022 midterms, the oldest president in US history felt confident that the voices in the party who doubted his leadership had been proven wrong again. He waited until April 2023 to publicly announce his decision.

Before Biden’s decision was announced, Biden’s personal attorney, Bob Bauer, prepared a presentation for the president outlining the legal risks involved for his family, including his son Hunter Biden and his brother James Biden, according to people familiar with the matter. The goal was not to convince him not to run, but to give him a full picture of the potential consequences. A White House official said that such a presentation is an accepted standard. Bauer did not respond to a request for comment.

Top White House aides, meanwhile, assumed he would run again, and there was little debate about it. “I don’t think for him it was a hesitation,” said Bob Schrum, a Democratic strategist close to Biden’s advisers. “It’s not realistic to fight about it. You’re president. You’ve wanted this position for 50 years.”

At the same time, there was a quiet dissatisfaction with the wisdom of the decision, among mid-level White House staff and on a larger scale in the party, according to former and current White House officials. No one wanted to raise those concerns publicly, reasoning that it would cost them their position in the White House, and they wanted to be able to influence him or continue to be employed by him, according to former officials.

“I’m hearing a lot more frustration with Biden and the people who allowed Biden to act this way than I do with Harris. She’s performed quite admirably as a candidate, given the circumstances,” said Brian Goldsmith, a Los Angeles Democratic consultant and Biden-Harris donor. “It was very clear the moment he turned down the Super Bowl interview (on CBS) that of course he couldn’t handle the nomination, and they thought they could just text it and run a campaign against Trump.”

In June, the Wall Street Journal reported that Biden, 81, had shown signs of deterioration in private meetings with congressional leaders. The White House and senior Democrats denied this. The Wall Street Journal later reported that senior White House advisers carefully managed Biden’s schedule and personal interactions to minimize signs that his age was taking its toll on him.

The result was that the president, during the last two years of his presidency, was unable to effectively use the stage at his disposal to justify another term in the eyes of the public, which put the Democrats behind the Republicans, who spent the time channeling the concerns of the American people.

The headaches of the campaign

Although Harris inherited the campaign infrastructure of Biden, who vacated his place after his disastrous performance in the June showdown, he came with his own headaches. Harris, who brought along some of her longtime aides, also bolstered Biden’s team with a group of senior Democratic advisers who helped elect Barack Obama, including David Floppe, Stephanie Katter and Mitch Stewart. Some more senior campaign aides said this created internal friction and disagreements over decision-making and messaging, according to Harris aides.

One of Harris’s aides said the team struggled to decide what word to use to best describe Trump as dangerous. Flope and several campaign pollsters wanted to label the former president “dangerous,” while campaign chairwoman Jen O’Malley Dillon thought she should call Trump “risky.” And others, like pollster Molly Murphy, wanted to warn against Trump’s pursuit To achieve “uncontrolled power.” The end result was a fusion of these messages, the aide said.

There was also internal disagreement over whether Harris should be interviewed by Joe Rogan, the host of the country’s top podcast, which is particularly popular with young men. Schedule constraints ultimately prevented the interview from taking place.

Instead, the vice president was interviewed by journalists and podcast hosts who were generally friendly to her candidacy, but even those exposed her limitations. Chief among them was her interview last month on The View, where she said she wouldn’t have done anything differently from the president. Even when she answered this again later in the interview – that she would have put a Republican in the cabinet – she was unable to distinguish herself from the president.

Harris’ advisers rushed to craft an economic platform that would assuage voters’ concerns about the economy, when polls showed it was the most important issue to them.

In contrast to Biden’s focus on jobs, Harris put an emphasis on prices, proposing a federal ban on price gouging, help for first-time home buyers with their down payment and additional support for small business owners. Instead of advancing the administration’s economic agenda, she sympathized with the voters’ frustration. But in poll after poll, voters continued to favor Trump on the economic front.

The economic plans did not show how they would help the average household

Within her campaign, Harris’ advisers had long debates about whether her policy plans should be more detailed and expanded on. In the end, they decided to eliminate many of the details, reasoning that the voters want to know what the vision is as a whole, and not to receive detailed documents.

But even before Harris lost, some of her advisers recognized that this was a strategic mistake. Voters, many of whom said they didn’t know enough about Harris, wanted more information about how she would govern. In contrast, Americans felt they understood what Trump’s return to the White House would look like based on his first four years in office.

Over the past two years, Trump has outlined dozens of policy moves that he hoped to carry out from the start of his second term, including mass deportations and increased oil drilling. Harris struggled to clearly explain what her first day on the job might look like.

Once Harris’ loss was clear, some Democrats pointed to her economic plans, saying they did little to show how they would help the struggling average household.

In October, as Harris’ advisers saw the race slipping away from her, the campaign moved toward portraying Trump in a more negative light. Future Forward, Harris’ main “super PAC” (an independent body that can support a political candidate), signaled to her Democratic allies that the campaign was making a mistake.

“Our mission is still to focus more on Harris than Trump,” the group wrote in a memo to allies. “Give voters new and specific information about how a Harris presidency will help them and their families.”

Future Forward, a relatively new player in the ecosystem of democratic groups outside the political system, has made some controversial decisions of its own. The group, which has spent about $500 million in disclosed expenses alone, has urged major donors to donate large checks as early as possible so they can reserve advertising time in the final months before Election Day.

Super Pac teams usually go on air earlier in the election season. But Future Forward told donors that the weeks after Labor Day are by far the most powerful time to reach voters and planned some advertising earlier, even as Biden struggles in the polls.

As Harris rose to prominence and Democrats rushed to define her new campaign, some donors and strategists wanted the group to pour in big money more quickly to give Harris a boost. The group also created several ads and tested them rigorously before choosing which ones to use—a process that frustrated many in the party, who believed their testing was not leading to the selection of the most effective ads.

One of the group’s aides said that one in 20 ads the group created went live, and its data showed that their ads had a greater impact. The aide noted that the group spent $60 million over a three-week period shortly after Harris entered the race.

Future Forward also announced a $100 million advertising offensive for the last week before the election. Many in the party believed it was too late.

As Democrats searched for answers to her defeat, Harris told supporters in her loss speech yesterday (Tuesday) to look forward and not give up. “I’m so proud of our run in the race,” she said.

Emily Glaser, Maggie Severance, Andrew Restuccia, Siobhan Hughes, Erich Schwarzl, and Aruna Viswanatha contributed to this article.