The failed presidential candidacy of Vice President Kamala Harris might well go down as the worst political disaster in American history.
The campaign not only spent $1.5 billion in the 15 weeks of her candidacy, but also kept the truth about its internal polling from top Democrats and donors. That polling showed that Harris couldn’t win. And it completely contradicted the Pollyanna polls from the far-left, pro-Harris mainstream media and polling partners. They all had Harris ahead of Trump from the day she entered the race.
Amusingly, despite the shellacking and the voters’ rejection of the Democratic Party’s woke agenda, Harris is telling her backers to keep their powder dry. She might just run again for public office.
Kept in the Dark on Internal Polling
The news that campaign staffers hid the truth about internal polling came from Lindy Li, a member of the Democratic National Committee’s Finance Committee, Fox News reported.
Li “recently revealed that internal polls never actually saw [Harris] defeating President-elect Donald Trump, but apparently this was not conveyed to those collecting high-dollar donations for her bid,” the website reported:
“We were told definitely that she had a shot at winning — it wasn’t even a shot. I was even told that Pennsylvania was looking good, that we would win 3-4 swing states.”
That prediction was nearly the opposite of seasoned analyst Mark Halperin’s prediction. The former chief of political news at ABC disclosed that campaign insiders in Pennsylvania — from both camps — told him that Trump might win the state. Trump might win six of the seven battleground states, he said.
“And on the night of election night,” Li continued, “we were told that we were going to win Iowa.” That prediction, too, was a bust. Trump crushed Harris 56 percent to 42.7 percent.
Continued Fox:
But Harris senior adviser David Plouffe presented a much different analysis of the vice president’s chances at that point in time on “Pod Save America,” a show hosted by staffers of former President Barack Obama.
“We didn’t get the breaks we needed on Election Day,” he told the hosts in the episode which aired on Tuesday.
“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.”
Pro-Harris Media Polls Skewed
No kidding, one might say. The RealClearPolitics polling average had Harris ahead of Trump almost from the minute that top Democrats forced Biden out of the race.
The only polls that consistently showed Trump ahead of Harris were Rasmussen’s. Fox News, Atlas Intel, and The Wall Street Journal put Trump ahead as well. But almost all the rest, those from the major network and newspapers, consistently showed Harris winning.
Not until close to election day did Trump finally take a 1.6 point lead in the RCP average.
No matter. From internal polling, campaign staffers knew the truth. Harris was headed for a beating.
Fox continued:
While the top advisers on the campaign were apparently aware of Harris’ polling deficit, this information was seemingly obscured to other relevant parties, including those soliciting capital from donors, such as Li.
According to Li, it is “absolutely not” normal for a campaign to obscure this type of information.
“I’ve been doing this since I graduated from college more than a decade [ago]. Absolutely not.”
She also shared that donors’ trust will need to be gained back because of the daylight between what the campaign was telegraphing about its situation and the reality. “But like for some casual donors, they’re going to be like, no f—ing way,” Li said.
“It’s not that he’d beat her that’s a shock. It’s the extent to which he beat her. It wasn’t even close. It was a decisive defeat.”
Harris had rivaled Trump and even defeated him in numerous respected public polls across the country, which Plouffe acknowledged in the appearance.
“When Kamala Harris became the nominee, she was behind. We kind of, you know, climbed back, and even post-debate, you know, we still had ourselves down, you know, in the battleground states, but very close. And so, I think, by the end, it was a jump-ball race,” he said.
Still, Harris campaign staffers lied by omission, or were simply delusional.
Said Halperin back in October:
We all know from our contacts in both campaigns that Pennsylvania is tough for her right now,”
And without Pennsylvania, there are paths, but there aren’t many. There’s no path without Wisconsin. … Tammy Baldwin’s Senate campaign poll shows Harris down three in Wisconsin. We all said yesterday, Wisconsin and Michigan are looking worse for Harris than before. Baldwin has Harris down three.
“Very robust private polling shows she’s in a lot of trouble,” Halperin said:
The conversation I’m having with Trump people and Democrats with data are extremely bullish on Trump’s chances in the last 48 hours, extremely bullish. You think of the seven battleground states, which ones is Harris in danger of losing? I would say Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, North Carolina and Georgia. I’m not saying she’ll lose all six, but she’s in danger. The only one that the Democrats say she’s not in danger of losing is [Nevada]. You guys agree with me.
So everyone knew that Harris was in trouble, yet, as Li said, kept that truth from top donors.
$1.5 Billion Down the Drain
That lie by omission cost a lot of people a lot of money.
After the election, The New York Times revealed that the campaign spent $1.5 billion in 15 weeks. That’s a whopping $100 million every seven days, or $14.3 million every 24 hours. Noted the paper:
The frenzied spending has led to second-guessing among some Democrats, including whether investing in celebrity-fueled events with stars such as Lady Gaga and Beyoncé was more ostentatious than effective.
Another big expenditure was the $1 million paid to Oprah Winfrey’s production company.
Harris burned $494 million from July 21 through October 16. That was spent “on producing and buying media, a category that includes both television and digital ads. The total sum through the election is said to be closer to $600 million,” the Times reported.
Harris outspent Trump two to one, the Washington Examiner reported. She spent $654 million to Trump’s $378 million from July 22 through the election.
Stay Ready
Despite the embarrassing loss and waste of money, Harris is telling her backers to stay ready. She might run again in 2028 or try for California governor, Politico reported.
“As Harris has repeated in phone calls, ‘I am staying in the fight,’” the website explained.
“She doesn’t have to decide if she wants to run for something again in the next six months,” a former Harris campaign staffer told the website:
“The natural thing to do would be to set up some type of entity that would give her the opportunity to travel and give speeches and preserve her political relationships.”
Most immediately, Harris and her advisers are working to define how and when she will speak out against Donald Trump and reassert her own role in the Democratic Party. Closing out her term as vice president, she’s set to preside over certifying the November election she lost to Trump, and then appear at the once-and-future president’s inauguration on Jan. 20.
“There will be a desire to hear her voice, and there won’t be a vacuum for long,” a person close to Harris said.
Given the news that her campaign was at best disingenuous about her chances to win, and the $1.5 billion of donors’ money the campaign threw away, believing that claim might be the triumph of hope over experience.
