The Democratic National Committee’s finance director was highly critical of Kamala Harris and her campaign after her defeat by now-President-elect Donald Trump, accusing the vice president of failing to “take responsibility” for the blowout loss in an interview with Fox News this week. On Tuesday, Harris thanked her supporters during a virtual call and assured them that the “fight’s not over” in her first remarks following President-elect Donald Trump’s victory.
However, the DNC’s Lindy Li criticized the call, saying that everyone involved was “self-congratulatory” without addressing what the party could have done better. “I was on the call, and on one hand, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, but then secondly, on the other hand, this is just so par for the course and right on brand,” Li said. “No one took responsibility, and I don’t want to be saying this,” she told CUOMO on NewsNation. “I just know that if I don’t, everything will continue. The status quo will continue. And the consultants who made tens of millions of dollars fleecing the campaign while losing so decisively to Trump.
“We’ll just move on to the next campaign like nothing ever happened. The call was very self-congratulatory, everyone was patting themselves on the back for I’m not sure what since we lost all 7 swing states. There was no sense of analysis or introspection or even humility,” Li continued. “I have a duty of caring for my donors, to stand up for them, and ask where all the money went? Because, right now, as far as we know, millions went to celebrities. $2.5 million went to Oprah, $500,000 went to Al Sharpton right before he interviewed Kamala Harris. It’s just a boondoggle.”
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The leadership of the outgoing Harris 2024 presidential campaign, meanwhile, shockingly stated this week that internal polling never showed her ahead of President-elect Donald Trump, despite the fact that several so-called ‘legacy’ media outlets repeatedly put her in front of the incoming 47th president. After President Joe Biden began trailing Trump significantly in the polls in June and July, Harris’s entry into the race seemed to address Democrats’ concerns. From August until just before the election, many accredited public polls showed Harris leading Trump.
David Plouffe, a senior adviser on the Harris campaign, stated that internal polling consistently showed Harris behind or tied with Trump. “We didn’t get the breaks we needed on Election Day,” he said in an appearance on the left-wing Pod Save America podcast. “I think it surprised people because there was these public polls that came out in late September, early October, showing us with leads that we never saw.” Plouffe noted that internal polling remained mostly unchanged during the election, staying relatively static since Harris entered the race in July.
He appeared on the podcast alongside other leaders of the Harris campaign: Jen O’Malley Dillon, the campaign’s head; Quentin Fulks, the deputy campaign manager; and Stephanie Cutter, who managed messaging and communications. All of them agreed with the assessment. Overall, the Harris campaign leadership characterized the race as doomed from the outset, suggesting that there was little Harris could have done to alter the outcome. The comments on the video of the podcast on YouTube were heavily against the guests. “This interview was absolutely bananas. They admit zero fault. What a disaster,” one commenter wrote.
“The long and the short of it is that none of these people should ever run a national campaign ever again. The Obama era is over,” another said. The Harris campaign was experiencing internal panic, but this remained unknown to the public, leading to a widespread perception that the race was highly competitive. The results were the best for Republicans since 2004, with Trump winning the popular vote and sweeping every swing state.
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