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Campaign Staffers Rip Harris For What She Said During Post-Election Meeting

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OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.


While some surrogates for Vice President Kamala Harris are blaming her historic loss to now-President-elect Donald Trump on President Joe Biden’s late exit from the race, a bevy of former campaign staffers say that thinking is “detached from reality.”

Rather, the loss should be blamed on the candidate herself and her inability to appear authentic to and connect with a majority of voters.

“The biggest onus of this loss is on President Biden,” said Andrew Yang, a Harris supporter who sought the 2020 Democratic nomination, according to the Associated Press. “If he had stepped down in January instead of July, we may be in a very different place.”

But, as noted by Newsweek, other critics say that Harris bears the blame herself for the decisions she made on the campaign trail.

Philadelphia Democratic Chair and former congressman Bob Brady said many of Harris’s staffers were “just elitist and went out there, did their own thing and didn’t include Democratic city committee or (ward leaders) or committee people. They just didn’t do it.”

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Some campaign members believe that the leaders are unaware of what went wrong, according to Axios, which cited a memo to staff stating that the race was very close.

“People are depressed and frustrated about the overconfident leadership of the campaign,” said a staffer, who was not identified by Axios.

During a Thursday night all-staff call, there was noticeable dissonance, with Harris campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon reportedly in tears and Harris herself reportedly saying: “Yeah, this sucks … There’s also so much good that has come of this.”

“It was detached from the reality of what happened,” a staffer Axios did not name said. “We are told the fate of democracy is at stake, and then the message was, ‘We’ll get them next time.’”

Another Biden staffer pushed back on the accusation that he left the race too late and put the onus back on Harris and her team: “How did you spend $1 billion and not win?” the staffer asked.

“The Harris team benched [Biden], and then they lost, so now the people who represent Biden are saying, ‘Maybe you shouldn’t have benched him,’” a Biden supporter told Axios anonymously.

“Everyone who destroyed Biden and pushed him out got the race they demanded,” a Democratic state committee member in Pennsylvania said, according to Time. “There was a choice: The only person that ever beat Trump or a gigantic unknown.”

Others said Harris simply ran a bad campaign. “She let the GOP define her,” a senior Democratic operative said.

“She could have left the convention and tried to reach out to voters from across the political spectrum, but she and [running mate Tim] Walz went inexplicably into hiding and didn’t do interviews for weeks,” the source said.

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To that point, Trump sat for a long interview with popular podcast host Joe Rogan in his studio prior to the election, but Harris refused to do so.

The podcast host revealed that the Democratic presidential nominee had a list of demands, which included her requirement that he come to her rather than her visit his Austin, Texas, studio like Trump did, The Daily Caller reported.

The host said he was fine with the restrictions they imposed except for one key condition that he would not agree to, which ultimately led to her not doing the show.

“There was a few restrictions of things they didn’t want to talk about, but I said, ‘I don’t give a f**k.’ I go, ‘Get her in here, like whatever you want to talk about.’ And they wanted to know if I edit,” the host said. “I’m like, ‘There’s not going to be any editing, there’s no editing. We’re not going to edit.’”

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