David Plouffe, a top aide to the Harris campaign, told The Atlantic that the Democratic Party’s lack of a presidential primary was “the cardinal sin” during a discussion about President-elect Donald Trump’s campaign loss.
“I’m not sure that, given the headwinds, any Democrat could have won. But if we had had a primary in which a group of people ran and auditioned… through that process whoever emerged… would have been a more fully formed person, would have had more time to put together a general election campaign (not having of that process) is the cardinal sin,” says Plouffe told The Atlantic.
A group of Harris campaign aides have largely attributed the loss to a time crunch after President Biden dropped out of the race. the media treatment of the vice president.
Plouffe also spoke about where the Democratic presidential campaign was when President Biden withdrew from the race, saying they were in a “horrible” place.
Harris campaign adviser David Plouffe said during an interview that he wasn’t confident a Democrat could have won, given the historic headwinds. (Getty Images)
KAMALA HARRIS’ WRONG ANSWER TO ‘THE VIEW’ ABOUT BIDEN SEEN AS A TURNING POINT FOR THE CAMPAIGN
“When I got in, it was the first time I saw the actual numbers under the hood,” Plouffe told the outlet. ‘They were quite gruesome. 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. (Candidate) change happened, some things got a little better, but nowhere near where we ended up or where we needed to be. It was catastrophic in terms of where it was.
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said several times before the election that this is how the process was done open to Democrats and that Harris “won” the primaries. After Harris’ loss, however, Pelosi said the president should have done so dropped out earlier so that the Democrats could have held a primary.
After the Harris campaign spoke to “Pod Save America” in the weeks after the election, they were criticized for not doing so take some responsibility for the loss.
Harris campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon previously complained about the “narrative” that Harris was afraid to give interviews during their conversation on “Pod Save America.”
Vice President Kamala Harris delivers a concession speech following the 2024 presidential election, on Wednesday, November 6, on the campus of Howard University in Washington, D.C. (AP/Jacquelyn Martin)
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“I think a story, 107 days… two weeks talking about how she didn’t do interviews, which you know she did enough, but we did it our own way, we had to be the nominee, we had to find a running mate, and doing a rollout, I mean, there were all these things that you kind of want to take into account. But real people somehow heard that we weren’t going to do interviews, which was both not true and also so contrary to any kind of standard that was set about Trump, that I think that was a problem,” Dillon told Pod Save America host Dan Pfeiffer.
After Biden dropped out of the race on July 21, he quickly endorsed Harris as his replacement on the ticket. Harris only participated in her first interview 39 days after the president’s announcement.
During the interview with The Atlantic, top deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks explained why they decided to minimize media involvement in the first month of her campaign.
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“I don’t say this defensively at all, but our priority was How do we get her into the battlegrounds? She (had) been traveling, but when she was vice president, she was focused on the peripheral states and not the core states as President Biden traveled to those places quite often,” Fulks said.
