How the Democrats Blew It: Insiders open up about how the Harris campaign lost touch with voters — and how Trump came out on top
How the Democrats Blew It: Insiders open up about how the Harris campaign lost touch with voters — and how Trump came out on top
Kamala Harris and Donald Trump campaign insiders talk about the 2024 campaign, voter outreach, social media, and that Las Vegas Sphere ad.
When they started listening to Democrat leadership instead of going with the momentum, I knew it was over. Pelosi and the gang urged the campaign to stop using "weird" and to court centrists with the Cheyne stunt.
If she had publically turned on Pelosi instead of bowing to her, she might have won. Hell, might have even had more luck attracting people on the right who didn't like Trump that way.
One of the things the MAGA heads I used to live around liked about Bernie was that he was giving Clinton grief.
We don't need campaign insiders to tell us anything. We watched her do all the wrong things, just as any corporate democrat candidate would. It's not like anything was a secret. If she wanted workers' votes, all she had to do was actually push some decent policies.
all she had to do was actually push some decent policies.
yeah you showed that woman what for, and the next 4 are going to be simply GRAND.
pfft.
We don't need campaign insiders to tell us anything.
Mostly because they haven’t learned shit. They still think they just needed more time or to change their advertising strategy. It’s infuriating. It’s not how the message was presented, it’s the damn message!
Is it too cynical to say that her billion dollar campaign was a money laundering operation?
Its crazy, they spent all that money when all they had to say on live TV to win everyone over (if all you want is to win of course) by saying fuck Israel, no more arms, and fuck all of you being poor, we're going to fix that shit like we did a century ago. Thats all they had to do imo. The Steam from it would have reverberated through every nook and crany.
They could have handled the Michigan problem in a lower key. Letting them speak at the convention and promising real investigations with paused shipments. That way they get the moral high ground for both sides without taking a side.
And as for the affordability crisis. All they had to do was say, we know we have more work to do, we successfully avoided a recession and more we must make sure we don't leave everyday Americans behind. Then go on to talk about trust busting, grocery prices, housing prices, car prices.
Instead they chose fear mongering and status quo. It was an out of touch campaign run by out of touch corporate elites.
They could have handled the Michigan problem in a lower key. Letting them speak at the convention and promising real investigations with paused shipments.
Exactly. As much as I wish Americans were ready to cut off aid to Israel, that's just not the case. The majority of Americans disapprove of Israel's actions in Gaza, but they're still broadly supportive of Israel. Labeling the conflict a genocide and ending all military support would have won me over, but it probably would have been a net loss. Still, there were a lot of small steps they could have taken to show support to the Palestinian population and capitalize on the growing disapproval on Gaza, and instead they chose full-throated support.
This is so fucking naive. Majority of Americans don't give a shit about the Palestinian people.
Well, if those that do aren't significant enough to listen to, they're not significant enough to blame.
Most people care their tax dollars are being spent on genocide. Even if the sales make us money.
The comment is also about how she never effectively messaged she would make changes for the poor and working class.
Basically she wasn't willing at any point to acknowledge Biden failed to tackle some things like the affordability crisis and reigning in Netanyahu.
No way, instead let me bombard you with emails like a needy ex.
They lost because they were offering the same bs they always do. No amount of time would have saved them. Trump won because he said he would do things differently. Harris lost because she wasted time fighting the Trump icon instead of offering solutions for everyday people.
Hopefully this failure will help push forth a party for the people instead of the garbage us vs them that we always get from both major parties.
If they’d had an actual primary they would have gotten the pulse of the nation and wouldn’t have been defending an economy most people thought was bad.
Yeah don't forget to add the fact she couldn't differentiate herself from biden on the palestine issue
Yeah don’t forget to add the fact she couldn’t differentiate herself from biden on the palestine issue
She absolutely could have. She chose not to.
Not one word in there about turning to the right, campaigning with Cheneys, ignoring all progressive policies, and generally behaving like R-lite in a bid to court R-votes that never came, with no message other than "look how much worse Trump is". I'm a little disappointed in Rolling Stone, but not at all surprised that the people they interviewed left those things out.
Ultimately, if this is their analysis, they'll make the 2016 mistakes for a third time in 2028.
Twelfth.
Democrats fall for this grift so often, they should change the party symbol to a pigeon.
Don't over analyze it, America is not ready for a woman to be president. So many women just want to take down other women that its just not time, which is sad. Adding some racial diversity in there just sealed the deal.
Funny how female Democratic senators won in three of the swing states Kamala lost, almost as if sexism wasn't the deciding factor... but that could imply that Kamala failed for a reason that's potentially her own fault, which might require some kind of self-reflection on the part of the Democratic party, and we absolutely can't have that under any circumstances. The Democrats can never fail, they can only be failed.
More women voted for Hillary than Kamala by percent. The gender gap was way wider too. You can literally just look at the statistics and disprove your own bullshit. Kamala didn't lose because she was a woman because even compared to the other recent woman candidate she did poorly with women.
Meh... Less than 3 million vote swing and everyone is clamoring to explain how this is the most successful precise strategic political victory in history for Democrats. Instead everyone has their own opinion about why it's the greatest meandering boondoggle ever.
I think the gist of the article is correct. And it could be written a lot shorter. Basically Democrats have ignored men. It's been about 10 years and they still don't get it. Men are people too. We vote.
Yeah we suck. We're shitlord ra[p|c]ists. So forget about men, right? We're persona non grata. Pretty much the Democrat strategy of this generation. Both parties have siloed into their own base. Unfortunately for Democrats they don't have the disaffected male vote which is costing them greatly.
This wasn't so much a political loss for the Democrats. It was a cultural one. Politically the people want liberal policy. As evidenced by the fact that without the lens of partisanship, people tend to prefer what liberals offer. e.g. Obamacare without the stink of "Obamacare" is just healthcare that even republicans support and rely on.
Republicans are winning the culture war which is translating to sweeping political victories. As much as the claim to be taking devastating hits in the face of some made up Democrat goliath of oppression. Reality has proven to be the opposite. Democrats are not in tune with the people. Having entertainment and the music industry has only gotten them 1 for 3 in as many elections.
The article is wrong about Democrats having mainstream media on their side. MSM supports Trump. It was clear in 2016 for those of us keeping score. Trump was the medias favorite to win back then too. They loved the ratings. Now? I think some of them have simply gone mask off. "Sanewashing" as people are calling it. The media won't cover things as they are. They stretch the overton window to normalize the far right while the left gets no such reciprocation.
The article is also wrong about gamers being historically progressive. This is a fictional archetype of innocent nice-guy nerds. This is basically an entirely made up Hollywood movie trope. Gamers have always been reactionary. The difference is that gamers we're not political.
And I think "gamer" should be expanded to internet culture. The historically predominantly male online nerd cultures but we'll keep calling them "gamers" here.
Republicans identified this back in 2016. Democrats are still clueless about it in 2025. Just a bunch of edgelord gamer kids who don't vote anyways. Those kids are now adults. In fact many of those gamers were adults back then too. Yeah they're pathetic old man-children playing video games all day but they vote none the less. At least they can be persuaded to which is what Republicans have been doing. So by now Democrats have lost generations of voting age men. They will continue to fight this ever steeper uphill battle.
Nobody on the left has an answer for how to actually reach these voters. It's made even more difficult when people won't even acknowledge the fact that these men we're not ever progressive to begin with. Gamers have always been racist and sexist. The difference that people can't attune to is that they were not political so they assume these nerds must be progressive by default. Because shouting n-bombs is fine when you follow up with "it's just a joke bro". To be frank people seem to have fallen for one of the oldest tricks when someone says "I'm no racist but ... It's just the facts bro. You can't argue with facts." That's a classic gamer-isms / internet-isms.
Gamers did not pivot into reactionary. They were activated politically. It's an old meme that you would not be anyone's "personal army". In other words you'd remain apolitical. Not to be mistaken for not having political opinions but that you wouldn't be actively engaged in politics. Republicans blew up floodgates holding that back. Another meme was to "hide your power level". In other words don't reveal you're far right opinions. Another thing that was done away with. But really it was a symbolic gesture since nobody really hid their bigotry online. Especially not gamers.
Democrats should have prioritized trying strategize this problem. They've had 10 years of ignoring it. They've dug their own grave at this point. If they still don't know these basic things about internet culture then they're doomed to keep losing in the foreseeable future.
The economic messaging was the main thing but even taking that as a given that they had to follow their donors' interests, it was just a really poorly executed campaign. Had to be to get the worst results since the Republicans won California. Tbh Harris just has terrible political instincts and she would've never survived a competitive primary (as evidenced by 2020).
One thing that's staggering to me is that they left Hasan Piker as an untapped resource. I'm not like a big fan of his but if you have this field of streamers where all the big names are right-wing, except one, you should really consider, like, figuring out what he's tapping into or doing right, idk, hire him as a consultant, go on his stream, do something with him. The Democrats are so slow to adapt strategically while the Republicans are much quicker to adapt, and idk what that's about, complacency ig.
Obviously the Dick Cheney strategy was completely useless, as usual. Democrats are married to this conventional wisdom, treated as a truism, that the way to win is by appealing to the median centrist voter, along this purely one dimensional spectrum of politics which is completely divorced from reality. I suspect the article is correct that they're too caught up in analytics that they lose sight of how people actually think.
