Democratic officials from Vice President Harris' campaign say efforts to sway voters have been woefully inadequate amid widespread dissatisfaction among voters with the direction of the country.
Officials involved in the campaign told The Washington Post on Thursday that the former president also took advantage of new media opportunities largely left untouched by Harris.
“We're looking at a number of things to understand whether we made the right decision,” campaign chair Jen O'Malley Dillon told the Post. “But fundamentally, it wasn't just one voter audience or one program that influenced this. Especially in 107 days, the headwinds were just too strong for us to overcome. But we both came very close to what we expected, both in terms of turnout and in terms of support.”
According to the newspaper, campaign officials said internal modeling leading up to Election Day had Harris narrowly leading in Wisconsin and Michigan, and effectively tied in Pennsylvania. Their model had President Trump leading in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina.
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Vice President Kamala Harris has been unable to overcome general dissatisfaction with the current administration, her staffers say. (AP/Jacqueline Martin)
“We are very focused on understanding what happened,” O'Malley Dillon said. “We were focused on battleground states. We knew it was going to be a race with a margin of error, but given the organization we had and the movement we saw, it was possible. That's what I thought.
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Campaign officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, acknowledged that the Trump campaign and the Republican Party in general have stepped up outreach to young people across the country.
“I think what we've seen is that the people on the other side of Team Red have been doing a lot of this work for years,” a source told the Post. “And there’s a lot of room for us to make up, especially in terms of where young men, especially young men who aren’t explicitly looking for political content, receive information.”
President-elect Donald Trump waves with Kid Rock, Dana White and Elon Musk during UFC 309 at Madison Square Garden on Saturday, November 16, 2024 in New York. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
During the campaign, Mr. Trump and his running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance, appeared regularly on a wide range of podcasts, along with prominent celebrities, many of them comedians, such as Theo Fung and Tim Dillon. It culminated in Trump and Vance's nearly back-to-back appearances on the world's biggest podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience, just before Election Day.
Just before Election Day, former President Trump sat down for a three-hour interview with podcast giant Joe Rogan on “The Joe Rogan Experience.” (Screenshot/Joe Rogan Experience)
Harris attempted a similar form of media, which is much more appealing to young women, with her appearance on the podcast “Call Her Daddy.”
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“We're not here to tell you that everything was perfect,” O'Malley Dillon said. “We lost. But part of the reason we lost was because of some idiosyncratic things, like what we just did.” [an interview with] Joe Rogan, that would have solved the youth problem. It's too simplistic and doesn't solve anything, and it certainly doesn't solve the way forward. ”
