Following Vice President Kamala Harris' election loss to President-elect Donald Trump, Democrats sure have been in disarray, and they don't look to be in a good place for 2028 or the 2026 midterms. Recently, Jen O'Malley Dillon, the campaign chair for the Harris-Walz campaign, and others, went on "Pod Save America," and it was quite the doozy.
Among those asking the questions, who also served as a top staffer for former President Barack Obama. Both Obama and Pfeffer were among those most vocal in calling for President Joe Biden to step aside from the 2024 race. Biden was ultimately forced out by his fellow Democrats, with threats of the 25th Amendment reportedly involved. David Plouffe was also on, and is another relevant name, as he dramatically deleted his X account days after the election.
"This is the first time that any of them have done an interview since the election. They don’t pretend to have all the answers here. There’s way more to cover than we could possibly cover in one podcast. This is the beginning of a conversation about understanding what happened in 2024 and learning the lessons that Democrats are going to need going forward," Pfeiffer began the interview in part. There's an especially key line in there, about "learning the lessons," and it doesn't look like they were learned.
"How did you feel going into Election Day? And at what point did you have a sense that things were beginning to break Trump’s way? Was there a county result? Something about the turnout? Like, was there a moment when you sort of understood that– how it was going to end?" Pfeiffer began by asking O'Malley Dillon.
Her very first answer was problematic, as she claimed, "the truth is that we really thought this was a very close race." She even claimed that they "expected that Florida was going to come in a bit redder," despite the red waves the Sunshine State has seen. Trump won by about 13 points, as did Sen. Rick Scott, in his battle for reelection against former Democratic Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell.
As Matt covered, Plouffe also admitted to how their internals never actually showing Harris ahead of Trump. He also spoke on the show about "a pretty strong, you know, tailwind for Donald Trump."
Quentin Fulks, who served as the principal deputy campaign manager for the Harris-Walz ticket, was also on, where he answered questions about Biden being in the race, specifically the planning they were able to do.
"Were you able, there was a one month period between the debate and when the president actually dropped out. Obviously it seemed like dropping out could be a possibility," Pfeiffer pointed out. "Were you able to do any thinking or planning in that one month period about what a race with the Vice President look like, or did you have to sort of start cold on that first day, the moment the, you know, you got the call or the statement went out?"
Like Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) did in an interview with The New York Times, just days after the election, Fulks was putting the focus on Biden.
"I mean, we were honestly in, in crisis management mode of keeping President Biden in the race. You know, convincing, um, you know, Democratic allies, that he could still do this. And one of the things was trying to keep the President out on the road as much. We were still doing everything we could from a campaign, and he made the decision that he did not want to continue on," Fulks admitted. He also spoke of how "there really was no sort of contingency planning to turn the race over to her right after that debate or at any point until President Biden definitively said he wasn’t going to continue on."
As O'Malley Dillon kept talking, her answers didn't get much better. This included when Pfeiffer brought up how Harris struggled to define herself as separate from Biden and Trump which she did by reminding people she was not the same person as either of those men.
Pfeiffer also specifically brought up "The View," where Harris last month failed to say she'd do anything differently from Biden.
"So, in every step of what we were trying to do, we had to tell a pretty robust story in, in one ad or one policy rollout or one event that you don’t often have to do because of the time we were in," she offered as an excuse. A "robust story?" Harris was mocked repeatedly, for answering virtually every question with a claim that she came from the middle class.
"But, I do think that we really focused from the get go on how she was different than everyone else, different than Joe Biden, different than Donald Trump," O'Malley Dillon also claimed. "And at the end of the day, the choice was her versus Donald Trump. And at the same time, you know, she was very clear that she was a new generation of leadership, but it wasn’t just like a statement. It was, here’s what I need to focus on. Her first policy announcements were economic," she continued. "Talking about housing, talking about lowering costs, understanding that people really didn’t feel like things were progressing in the way that they wanted to, a la the right track, wrong track data, but how she brought her own point of view to thinking about housing, sandwich generation. That was probably her biggest applause line, one of the best testing things that we did."
Harris often copied Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance's plans. Those plans that were her own, to do with price controls, were slammed as being communist in nature.
What O'Malley Dillon did get right, in a way, is the mention of Trump, as she offered, "we also believe this race was not just about Kamala Harris. It was Kamala Harris versus Donald Trump. And we had to set that choice and that frame up," she offered. It was always about Trump though, which included demonizing him when providing completely unrelated answers. Even in her closing arguments a week before the election, Harris focused on slamming Trump.
There was a whole losing attitude of being in denial about the media interviews that Harris did or lack thereof. It's worth reminding that the friendly mainstream media tried to put the warning signs out there during the campaign.
Meanwhile, unlike Trump and Vance, Harris wouldn't even go on "The Joe Rogan Experience," the most popular podcast in the world, because the campaign feared progressives didn't want her to. Rogan also shared how he couldn't come to agreement with her team on basic points, such as the length of the interview, or that she would come film it in studio. If she were to do the interview, talking about marijuana legalization was off limits. On the eve of the election, Rogan endorsed Trump, despite Trump reminding how much of a leftist Rogan has been in the past.
"We needed big moments. We were behind in the race with a candidate who was not fully defined. So, that’s why I think we would’ve done Rogan," Plouffe added, with Pfeiffer then pointing out how "the core of Trump’s media strategy was to do a bunch of these podcasts."
What followed was the entire show, guests and co-hosts alike, complaining about how Trump got "no s**t" for how they said he didn't do traditional media, and double standards for women:
Dan Pfeiffer: Do you have, she, like, she did more traditional media than Trump did, as you point out, did basically none.
Stephanie Cutter: Trump did none.
Dan Pfeiffer: Literally none.
Jen O’Malley Dillon: And got no s**t for that.
Stephanie Cutter: Got s**t from the interested party, you know, the media that wasn’t getting their interview. But voters don’t give a shit.
Jen O’Malley Dillon: Wait, Trump got shit for that? That’s what I’m saying. We got s**t. I’m saying Trump got no s**t.
Stephanie Cutter: Oh, yes. We got tons of s**t that she wasn’t doing enough media.
Dan Pfeiffer: He got no s**t.
Stephanie Cutter: You know? Not, you know, yeah.
Jen O’Malley Dillon: Double standard.
Stephanie Cutter: Like, don’t even get me going on that.
Dan Pfeiffer: Now that the campaign’s over and you’ve sort of identified who, sort of the voters were who moved at the end. How do you feel about the utility of some of that earned media stuff? Is it, is it now feel a little bit like we’re just sort of talking to our own people all the time?
...
Jen O’Malley Dillon: I would say, I mean look, I am not a media hater by any measure and I think that, you know we women don’t get far in life talking about double standards.
Stephanie Cutter: Mm-hmm
The more Harris was trotted out, the more people got to know her, the less they liked her, the less genuine they found her to be, the more sick they got of her merely focusing on anti-Trump narratives. When it comes to points about "young men," the Harris-Walz campaign did particularly poorly with such a demographic.
This was a part of the interview that had others in disarray as well, with pollster Nate Silver and CNN's Brian Stelter going at it.
The Harris campaign folks are the most non-agentic people I've encountered in a position of comparable decision-making authority. They don't even see themselves as victims so much as Non-Player Characters with no will of their own.
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) November 27, 2024
Another point that Silver brought up is how O'Malley Dillon blamed Hurricanes Helene and Milton. What both of them miss is how the federal government's response was and continues to be so terrible, as well as how Harris thought it was the right time to get into a fight with Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), with even Biden refusing to play her games.
As the interview went immediately following the excerpt above:
Jen O’Malley Dillon: So that’s not the point. But I do think a narrative – 107 days, two weeks fucked up because of the hurricane. Two weeks talking about how she didn’t do interviews, which, you know, she was doing plenty, but we were doing in our own way. We had to, you know, be the nominee, had to find a running mate and do a rollout.
I mean, there was all these things that you kind of wanna factor in. But, real people heard in some way that we were not going to have interviews, which was both not true and also so counter to any kind of standard that was put on Trump that I think that was a problem. And then on top of that, we would do an interview and to Stephanie’s point, the questions were small and processy and about like…
Stephanie Cutter: Dumb. Just dumb.
There's a lot going on here and whole thing worth reading but the idea the hurricane was some massive October surprise that specifically disadvantaged Harris is just so weird. Relatively speaking, NC/GA even showed less vote swing than other swing states.https://t.co/S2EBSVQgI0 pic.twitter.com/z74MkCsetX
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) November 27, 2024
Keep it up, Democrats, the 2026 midterms aren't that far off, and Republicans sure aren't tired of winning.
