The more we learn about Kamala Harris’ disastrous campaign, the more entertaining it gets. It’s also a little baffling. The core of her team was seasoned political operatives from the Obama operation who knew how to win elections. Then again, that was a different Democratic Party, one not soaked in far-left wokeism. Democrats knew how to reach voters to win elections. Now, that coalition is dead, as the youth flocked to the GOP, union workers went MAGA, and immigrant voting communities swung 23 points toward the GOP. There was no way Democrats were going to win. Neither Kamala Harris nor Joe Biden was going to beat Donald Trump.
We learned from Chris Whipple’s Uncharted that the former vice president was shell-shocked that she lost all the blue wall states. That was the election. Her campaign chair, Jen O’Malley Dillon, delivered the bad news. Amie Parnes and Jonathan Allen’s new venture, Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House, expounded further on how this operation got a sledgehammer to the face, as reality set in on election night. The best part: Kamala Harris asked if a recount was possible (via Fox News) [emphasis mine]:
While continuing to discuss the confusion within the Harris campaign on election night, Parnes said that Walz was sitting in his hotel room "stunned."
"He has no words. And people are kind of explaining to him, same thing with her. And she's like, are you sure? Have we done a recount? Should we do a recount?" Parnes said on the podcast, recounting how Walz and Harris reportedly reacted to their defeat.
"They thought that they were going to win. And so, you know, when they come back now and say, 'Oh, no, we didn't really have a chance.' No, that's not what they were thinking. They thought they were going to win," she added.
Harris campaign staffers felt "gaslit" by leadership about Harris' chances at winning after being told that "things were looking good" for the candidate ahead of the election, according to Parnes.
[…]
According to the book, Harris reportedly told friends in the aftermath of her defeat that she could've won the election if she had more time and if Biden hadn't run for re-election.
[…]
However, not all of Harris' friends believed time would have helped, according to the book.
"That is f---ing bonkers," one Harris friend reportedly said. "If Election Day was October first, we might have actually somehow pulled it off. Shorter was actually better, not longer."
This book also claimed that Democrats were preparing for Joe Biden to die in office, another sign that everyone and their mother knew this aging, half-brain-dead president shouldn’t be running but propped him up anyway. That last bit is also how you know Democrats have yet to learn anything: Time wasn’t the enemy, though it often is in elections. But when the candidate is politically inept, their message lacking, and their overtones coming off as snooty, bizarre, or maybe a bit of both, you’re going to lose. The Obama coalition was dead. The youth vote, 18-29 year olds, broke for Trump, union workers broke for Trump, and working people, white and non-white, punched a ticket on the MAGA train. With less time, the Democrats lose. With more time, they lose even worse. They were never going to win this election.
It’s stunning for a party that once ran the table on voter outreach and communications. They have lost that ability because they’re so exclusionary, condescending, and trapped in a bubble.
More time? The Biden agenda was still profoundly unpopular, guys.
