Advisers to Vice President Kamala Harris said they were “surprised” that she was ahead of Donald Trump in polls in September and October of the campaign. That's because internal opinion polls showed her trailing.
“We were behind, because I think people were surprised because the polls that came out in late September, early October were showing a lead that we had never seen before,” Harris said. David Plouffe, senior campaign staffer, said on “Pod Save America.” ”
Harris' team spoke in a podcast interview published Tuesday about what went wrong that caused her to lose all of her battleground states.
The campaign spoke about the difficulties it faced in figuring out how to distance itself from Harris and President Biden because they are part of the same administration, despite concerns from voters.
“She felt as though she was part of the administration. So why did she look back and see some things she would have done differently if she had been involved?” Do we have to be selective? And she had tremendous loyalty to President Biden as well,” Harris adviser Stephanie Cutter said.
“Imagine if we said, ‘Well, we would have taken this approach at the border.’” And then, “She never said that in a meeting,” or “She said this.” Imagine hearing people say things like, “What kind of meeting was that?'' or “I remember when she did that.'' But we didn't get what we needed because it wasn't a complete break. ”
