A senior adviser to Kamala Harris’ 2024 presidential campaign has outlined key factors behind her defeat in the recent U.S. elections. David Plouffe, a pivotal figure in Harris’s campaign and former campaign manager for Barack Obama in 2008, discussed the challenges on the “Pod Save America” podcast on Tuesday.
Plouffe revealed that internal polling consistently showed Harris trailing President-elect Donald Trump, even as public polls briefly suggested otherwise. “We were behind,” Plouffe said. “It surprised people because public polls in late September and early October showed us with leads that we never saw.”
Harris suffered a decisive loss to Trump, who won all seven battleground states, securing both the Electoral College and popular vote—the first Republican to achieve this since George W. Bush in 2004.
In a candid discussion, Plouffe was joined by high-ranking Harris campaign officials Stefanie Cutter, Jen O’Malley Dillon and Quentin Fulks for their first post-election interviews. Reflecting on the campaign’s trajectory, Plouffe noted that Harris had started the race trailing and faced an uphill battle throughout. “Even post-debate, we still had ourselves down in battleground states, but very close,” he said.
The campaign faced a challenging political landscape shaped by a struggling economy, low approval ratings for President Joe Biden and the abrupt start to Harris’s campaign after Biden dropped out in July. Plouffe described the environment as “incredibly difficult,” noting that despite their best efforts, these factors made it hard to gain traction.
READ ALSO: 5 real reasons Kamala Harris lost the election
Efforts to highlight the risks of a second Trump presidency included linking him to Project 2025, a controversial conservative transition blueprint. “Project 2025 ended up being about as popular as the Ebola virus,” Plouffe joked. However, he expressed frustration that Trump distanced himself from the project during the campaign, only to embrace its authors after his win.
Another key challenge was Harris’s difficulty in distinguishing herself from Biden’s administration. According to Cutter, an Obama-era adviser, the campaign struggled to present Harris as a forward-looking candidate without alienating Biden loyalists or criticizing his record.
“We knew we had to show her as her own person and focus on the future, but she was deeply loyal to President Biden,” Cutter explained. Harris resisted pressure to criticize Biden’s administration, arguing that vice presidents rarely break from their presidents. “The most she felt comfortable saying was, ‘Vice presidents don’t break with their presidents,’” Cutter noted, adding that the only recent exception was Mike Pence’s break with Trump after January 6.
Ultimately, the campaign faced an electorate dissatisfied with the economy, disillusioned with Biden’s presidency, and receptive to Trump’s messaging. While Plouffe acknowledged the campaign’s effort to make the race competitive, he conceded that these challenges proved insurmountable in the end.
