David Plouffe, a top aide to the Harris campaign, told The Atlantic that the presidential candidate's lack of a primary was “the cardinal sin” during a discussion about the campaign's defeat by President-elect Donald Trump.
“I'm not sure, given the headwinds, that a Democrat could have won. But if we had had a primary in which a bunch of people showed up and auditioned… through that process, whoever came out …would have been a better trained person, had more time to organize a general election campaign. [Not having that process] is the cardinal sin,” Plouffe told The Atlantic.
A group of Harris campaign aides largely blamed the loss on a lack of time after President Biden dropped out of the race, as well as media treatment of the vice president.
Plouffe also addressed where the Democratic presidential campaign was when President Biden withdrew from the race and said they were in a “horrible” situation.
KAMALA HARRIS’S BAD RESPONSE ON “THE VIEW” ON BIDEN CONSIDERED A TURNING POINT FOR THE CAMPAIGN
“When I arrived, it was the first time I saw the real numbers under the hood,” Plouffe told the outlet. “They were pretty horrible. The Sun Belt was worse than the Blue Wall, but the Blue Wall was bad. And, demographically, young voters across the board – Hispanic voters, black voters, Asian voters – were in really terrible shape . When the [candidate] Change has happened, some of these things have gotten a little better, but nowhere near where we ended up or where we needed to be. It was a rescue mission. It was catastrophic for where it was.”
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi repeatedly said before the election that the process was open to Democrats and that Harris “won” the primary. However, after Harris' defeat, Pelosi said the president should have stepped down sooner so Democrats could hold a primary.
After the Harris campaign spoke to “Pod Save America” in the weeks following the election, they were criticized for not taking any responsibility for the loss.
Harris campaign chair Jen O'Malley Dillon previously complained about the “narrative” that Harris was afraid to do interviews during their “Pod Save America” conversation.
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“I think of a narrative, 107 days… two weeks of talking about the fact that she didn't do interviews, which she did a lot, you know, but we were doing it our way, we had to be the candidates, we had to find a vice presidential candidate and do a rollout, I mean, there were all these things that you kind of wanted to take into account But the real people heard, somehow. 'another, that we Were not going to have interviews, which was not true and also therefore against any sort of norm that was blamed on Trump, I think that was a problem,” Dillon told the host. from “Pod Save America”, Dan Pfeiffer.
After Biden withdrew from the race on July 21, he quickly endorsed Harris as his replacement on the ticket. Harris did not sit for her first interview until 39 days after the president's announcement.
During the interview with The Atlantic, Quentin Fulks, the campaign's top deputy manager, explained why they decided to minimize media engagement during the first month of his campaign.
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“I'm not saying this to be defensive at all, but our priority was How can we bring it to the battleground states? She [had been] ” Fulks said.