Campaign Staffers Rip Harris For What She Said After Election
Some supporters of Vice President Kamala Harris are attributing her historic loss to President-elect Donald Trump to President Joe Biden’s delayed withdrawal from the race. However, numerous former campaign staffers argue that such reasoning is “detached from reality.”
Instead, many believe the defeat stemmed from Harris’s own shortcomings as a candidate, including her struggles to connect authentically with a broad base of voters.
“The biggest onus of this loss is on President Biden,” Andrew Yang, a Harris ally and former 2020 Democratic candidate, told News Nation. “If he had stepped down in January instead of July, we may be in a very different place.”
Critics also contend that Harris’s decisions during the campaign were a significant factor in her loss.
Philadelphia Democratic Chair and ex-congressman Bob Brady pointed to issues with her staff. “Many of Harris’s staffers were just elitist and went out there, did their own thing. They didn’t involve Democratic city committees, ward leaders, or committee people. They just didn’t do it,” Brady explained.
Some campaign staff members expressed frustration over the leadership’s lack of awareness about their missteps.
“People are depressed and frustrated about the overconfident leadership of the campaign,” an anonymous staffer told Axios.
During an all-staff call, tensions surfaced. Harris campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon was reportedly in tears, while Harris herself acknowledged, “Yeah, this sucks … There’s also so much good that has come of this.”
One staffer told Axios the response from leadership felt disconnected. “It was detached from the reality of what happened,” the staffer said. “We are told the fate of democracy is at stake, and then the message was, ‘We’ll get them next time.’”
Campaign leaders also advised staff against speaking with the press, adding to the sense of frustration within the team.
A Biden staffer refuted claims that his late departure from the race was the primary cause of Harris’s loss, instead pointing to mismanagement within her team. “How did you spend $1 billion and not win?” the staffer asked.
“The Harris team benched [Biden], and then they lost,” another Biden supporter told Axios anonymously. “Now the people who pushed him out are saying, ‘Maybe you shouldn’t have benched him.’”
A Pennsylvania Democratic state committee member told Time, “Everyone who destroyed Biden and pushed him out got the race they demanded. There was a choice: The only person that ever beat Trump or a gigantic unknown.”
Others criticized the overall campaign strategy, suggesting Harris allowed Republicans to shape the public narrative about her. “She let the GOP define her,” one senior Democratic operative noted.
According to another source, Harris missed opportunities to reach a broader audience. “She could have left the convention and tried to engage voters from across the political spectrum, but she and [running mate Tim] Walz inexplicably went into hiding and didn’t do interviews for weeks,” the source said.
This strategy contrasted with Trump, who participated in a lengthy interview with popular podcast host Joe Rogan. Harris declined a similar opportunity, reportedly due to a list of demands that Rogan found unacceptable, The Daily Caller reported.
The podcast host disclosed that Harris’s team insisted on certain conditions, including requiring Rogan to travel to her rather than her visiting his studio in Austin, Texas, as Trump had done. While Rogan was open to some of their terms, one key issue derailed the plan.
“There were a few restrictions on topics they didn’t want to discuss, but I said, ‘I don’t give a f**k,’” Rogan recounted. “I told them, ‘Get her in here, we can talk about whatever she wants.’ But they wanted to know if I edit. I said, ‘There’s not going to be any editing. We don’t edit.’”