Harris' Failure To Differentiate From Biden Hurt Her Odds

Summary

Summary of "Harris' Failure To Differentiate From Biden Hurt Her Odds"

Podcast: The NPR Politics Podcast
Host: NPR
Episode: Harris' Failure To Differentiate From Biden Hurt Her Odds

Introduction

In this episode of The NPR Politics Podcast, analysts Susan Davis, Serena, Deepa Shivaram, and Sarah McCammon delve into Vice President Kamala Harris's recent concession to former President Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election. They explore the multifaceted reasons behind Harris's defeat, emphasizing her inability to effectively distinguish her campaign from President Biden's administration.

Harris' Campaign Strategies and Leadership Issues

Susan Davis opens the discussion by highlighting that Harris's campaign was not originally designed for her candidacy. “[...] this was not her campaign team. You know, they point a lot of fingers at the leadership of this campaign, people like Jen O'Malley Dillon, who was running the operation, because this was not supposed to be a Harris campaign. Right. This was supposed to be a Biden campaign” (02:38).

Chris Scott, former director of Kamala Harris’s coalition, noted that the campaign was initially built for a different nominee type, resulting in a lack of significant adjustments to accommodate Harris's unique strengths as a black and Asian woman. This misalignment hindered the campaign's effectiveness in reaching and resonating with diverse voter bases.

Struggle to Differentiate from Biden

A critical point discussed is Harris's failure to create a distinct political identity separate from President Biden. Susan Davis remarked, “[...] she was very gauzy to them. She wasn't this like sharply well defined political figure in the way that Joe Biden and Donald Trump are” (08:03). This lack of clear differentiation made it challenging for voters to see Harris as a unique alternative, weakening her appeal beyond being an extension of the current administration.

Serena added, “[...] she still had to introduce herself to the country. She still had to go out on the campaign trail and spend a good first half of those hundred something days telling people who she was and her background” (07:15), highlighting the difficulty Harris faced in establishing her own political narrative within the constrained timeline of her campaign.

Voter Demographics and Outreach Failures

The podcast hosts discuss the campaign's targeted outreach strategies, which heavily focused on suburban white women and attempts to sway moderate Republican-leaning voters. Sarah McCammon pointed out, “They brought in someone to lead Republican outreach and it still seemed to be an important part of the campaign strategy, even after the switch” (05:14). However, this approach did not yield the desired engagement, as these targeted voters were often not present in the events intended to attract them (05:03).

Furthermore, the campaign's singular focus on white women in its abortion rights messaging alienated key demographics. Serena criticized the campaign’s portrayal of reproductive rights, stating, “They specifically talked about Amber Thurman, who was the woman from Georgia who died of medical complications from her pregnancy... it was mostly framed as a white women's issue” (16:29). This narrow focus neglected the broader impact of reproductive rights on women of color, limiting the campaign's resonance across diverse communities.

The Impact of Reproductive Rights Issues

Abortion politics played a significant role in the election, with ballot measures reflecting voters' nuanced positions. Sarah McCammon explained, “In some cases, the split between the vote for Harris and the vote for abortion rights was in the double digits” (14:57). For instance, in Florida, there was a 14-point split between support for Harris and support for abortion rights, indicating that voters were making distinct choices on different issues.

The hosts argue that while the Democratic Party focused on tying abortion rights to their platform, voters prioritized a range of issues, including the economy and immigration, over reproductive rights. This multifaceted voter behavior underscored the complexity of Harris's defeat, as support for abortion rights did not necessarily translate into electoral support for the Democratic nominee.

Conclusion: Synthesis of Harris's Defeat

The episode concludes by synthesizing the various factors that contributed to Kamala Harris's loss in the election. Susan Davis posits, “Fundamentally, she might just not have been a very strong candidate for the Democratic Party” (09:32), suggesting that inherent challenges within her candidacy and campaign strategies undermined her chances. The inability to establish a distinct political identity, coupled with flawed outreach strategies and inadequate engagement with diverse voter bases, ultimately hindered Harris's ability to secure the necessary electoral support.

Notable Quotes

• Susan Davis [02:38]: “This was not supposed to be a Harris campaign. Right. This was supposed to be a Biden campaign.”
• Serena [07:15]: “She still had to introduce herself to the country. She still had to go out on the campaign trail and spend a good first half of those hundred something days telling people who she was and her background.”
• Susan Davis [08:03]: “She wasn't this like sharply well defined political figure in the way that Joe Biden and Donald Trump are.”
• Sarah McCammon [14:57]: “In some cases, the split between the vote for Harris and the vote for abortion rights was in the double digits.”

Final Thoughts

This episode provides a comprehensive analysis of Kamala Harris's campaign challenges, emphasizing the critical importance of establishing a unique political identity and effectively engaging with a broad spectrum of voters. The discussion highlights the complexities of modern electoral politics, where multifaceted voter priorities can significantly influence election outcomes.

Transcript

[Serena]

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[Susan Davis]

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[Sarah McCammon]

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[Susan Davis]

Hey, it's Sue. A quick word before the show. The 2024 presidential election is over and maybe you're taking a break from election stuff for a while. I get it. Or maybe you cannot stop scrolling. Either way, do do not stress about where to go for reliable information. In the next few months and beyond across the NPR network, we will be working to explain the biggest stories and fact check so you can keep a grip on what's happening. If that sounds valuable to you, please help make it possible. Go to donate.NPR.org to get started. If you're already a supporter, we're taking this moment to say thank you. And if you're not, the link again is donate.NPR.org okay, here's the show.

[Serena]

Hi, this is Serena from Maryland. And today's my 30th birthday. I'm having some friends over for dinner tonight, and we're going to be watching Disney movies.

[Susan Davis]

This podcast was recorded at 1:09pm on Thursday, November 7.

[Serena]

Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but I'll be watching the Emperor's New Groove in eating spinach puffs.

[Susan Davis]

Spinach, spinach puffs.

[Sarah McCammon]

It's a cute way to spend your birthday, though.

[Serena]

I'm so shocked by that. It's an Emperor's New Groove, though. Great movie and a great Disney Channel original series if you ever watched the TV version of it.

[Susan Davis]

We were just talking about snacks and I feel like she can do better than a spinach, spinach puff. It's your birthday, girl.

[Sarah McCammon]

Treat yourself seriously.

[Susan Davis]

Oh, I get it. Producer saying in my ear it's a snack from the movie. You know what?

[Serena]

Spinach puff away.

[Susan Davis]

Okay. You do you.

[Serena]

Hey there.

[Susan Davis]

It's the NPR Politics podcast. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics.

[Serena]

I'm Deepa Shivaram. I cover the White House.

[Sarah McCammon]

And I'm Sarah McCammon. I cover the campaign.

[Susan Davis]

And Vice President Harris publicly conceded to former President Trump on Wednesday afternoon. She addressed her supporters at her alma mater, Howard University in Washington, D.C. now, I know folks are feeling and experiencing a range of emotions right now. I get it. But we must accept the results of this election. Earlier today, I spoke with President Elect Trump and congratulated him on his victory. I also told him that we will help him and his team with their transition. Deepa Yesterday on the pod, we talked through how Trump won the campaign. Today, we should talk a little bit more about why Harris and how Harris lost. You covered her campaign in 2019. You covered this campaign. There's not one reason. There's a lot of reasons. But what does Harris campaign see as the reasons why she lost this race?

[Serena]

I think there's a lot of folks who I've been talking to, and not just in the last two days since this has all shaken out, but even before the election, people kind of start to have their hot takes and they start sharing, like, if we lose, this is gonna be why. Right? And the thing that I kept hearing over and over again from a lot of folks on the campaign and who've worked with Harri is that this was not her campaign team. You know, they point a lot of fingers at the leadership of this campaign, people like Jen O'Malley Dillon, who was running the operation, because this was not supposed to be a Harris campaign. Right. This was supposed to be a Biden campaign. And the thought processes and the decisions and the strategies that came with that largely, from what I understand, held over. And there wasn't a significant shift to addressing the fact that they not only had a different candidate, they had a candidate of a different gender, of a different race, who had a different, different political background, experience, strengths, things that she brought to the table. And that was not really factored in as much as a lot of folks really thought was needed. I talked to Chris Scott, who was Kamala Harris Coalition's director when she was still the vice president, hadn't been the nominee yet. So he worked solely with the vice president's team before she was the nominee, and then, of course, stayed after everything switched around in July. And this is what he said. The campaign, as it was originally built, was built for a different type of nominee. And so while you can feel that magic and the crowd sizes and that energy of how she just filled arenas, I think a lot of us, especially that started with the Obama campaign, expected that also switching organizing, and that never fully happened. His background is as an organizer. He spent the last month of the campaign on the ground in Michigan really talking to a lot of black voters as well. And one thing he pointed out to me that really stuck in my brain was that he thinks that there was a large assumption made by campaign leadership that because their nominee was now someone who is a black woman, an Asian woman, they could spend less time bringing out some of those voters. And that's kind of something we saw as the campaign really, really really tried to target what they saw as these reachable Republicans. Right. So like suburban white women folks who were really not. They had voted for Trump in the past, didn't want to vote for him this time around. Nikki Haley, Republicans, folks like that, they spent really a lot of focus on those groups. And there were some folks in the camp who thought that was just not really as on brand for Kamala Harris as a candidate, to be honest.

[Susan Davis]

I mean, Sarah, that was our lived reality. That was something we were both looking for on the campaign trail was who is this elusive centrist, moderate Republican leaning voter that's coming into the Democratic coalition? They were hard to find.

[Sarah McCammon]

We both went to these events that were designed around these kinds of voters, and there weren't many of those voters there. It was a lot of Democrats and independents who'd already voted Democrat in the past. And you know, to your point, Deepa, this was a part of the campaign's strategy before Harris was on the ticket. You know, when Biden was still the nominee. They brought in someone to lead Republican outreach and it still seemed to be an important part of the campaign strategy, even after the switch.

[Serena]

Well, and they really thought that they might have a shot at bringing out some of these like, very key, like young voters, right, who were super disillusioned with Biden. Black voters, Latinos, like voters of color who have typically stood strong with the Democratic Party because this campaign was very clear once Harris became the nominee, that their paths to 270 had just hugely expanded. They were very optimistic about that. That like, oh, she's opened up so many more doors for us. And then in the 11th hour on Tuesday night, you get that memo that came out from Jen O'Malley Dillon too, you know, that was publicized by the campaign that was like, our path is the blue wall states. And it was like, what, what happened? Where was your calculus this whole time?

[Susan Davis]

I mean, we brought up Joe Biden and the thing I keep going back to is like, isn't that the original sin here is that Kamala Harris ran, I think it's fair to say, a pretty competent campaign. It was a strong campaign convention.

[Serena]

Yeah.

[Susan Davis]

There wasn't a lot of blunders. She ran a strong campaign. They had a good convention. She had a great debate performance. She raised an ungodly sum of money in a really short period of time. She had a professionalized national infrastructure. Get out the girl, you know what I mean? But she tried to do something almost no one has done in American politics, is run a 100 day sprint to the White House. And I think, look, we will never know this, but if Joe Biden last year had said, I will not stand for reelection, let the Democratic Party work its will, would Democrats have had a better chance?

[Sarah McCammon]

I mean, that's the thing. She always had a really tough hill to climb here. And she said that from the beginning, right. That this was going to be a tough battle, that it was going to be a close election, that she was the underdog. And she was right about that. 107 days. Deepa is not very long to get a campaign off the ground, regardless of who you are.

[Serena]

But this was also, you know, I talked to another source who is in a swing state, has worked in Democratic politics, close with Harris, et cetera, et cetera, and said something that really stood out to me too, which he said the results of this are not a reflection of her 100 day campaign. This is a reflection of four years of a Biden presidency and the lack of communication and well communicated information out to the public. Another frustration that I heard from a lot of folks was that why is it that even though she had 100 days and this was after four years of a Biden administration, she still had to introduce herself to the country. She still had to go out on the campaign trail and spend a good first half of those hundred something days telling people who she was and her background and her and people weren't familiar with who she was. And a lot of people blame Biden officials for not having put her in a position as vice president to share her story.

[Susan Davis]

That was something that was really striking to me in the focus groups we did with Trump to Biden voters is that she was very gauzy to them. She wasn't this like sharply well defined political figure in the way that Joe Biden and Donald Trump are. And like one of the hardest things to do in national politics is build a brand. And once it's built, the hardest, the second hardest thing to do is get people to change the way they think about you. And I felt like a lot of the country and a lot of the voters we talked to seemed much more engaged at the idea of defeating Donald Trump than necessarily having a firm affirmative sense of who she was and what she was going to do.

[Sarah McCammon]

You know, I also listened to some focus groups. These were organized by a group called Galvanize Action. And the polling group IPSOS focused on self described white moderate women. And that was something I heard from several of those who were leaning toward Trump was this idea that they just didn't know who Kamala Harris was, or that she was all over the place in terms of her messaging, that she'd flip flopped. It was a feeling that they just couldn't figure out what she would stand for.

[Susan Davis]

I think part of our job as political correspondents is to talk to smart people and then take their ideas and frame them as our own analysis. So I will offer this as something someone smart said to me, that they thought that Democrats lose when it looks like they're anointing candidates and they win when they have rough and tumble primaries. And they made the point of Barack Obama in 2008, wide open field, big race, big upsets, that Hillary Clinton was largely seen as an anointed candidate in 2016. Joe Biden won in 2020 after a rough and tumble primary in which he had to, like, go through the trials.

[Sarah McCammon]

Right.

[Susan Davis]

And that you need that process to build a brand and define a candidate. And again, Kamala Harris wasn't a great presidential candidate back when she had to do that process. I mean, fundamentally, she might just not have been a very strong candidate for the Democratic Party.

[Sarah McCammon]

That became a talking point on the right, this idea that there hadn't been a primary. Now, you know, there were no rules that were broken in choosing Harris as the nominee, but it is true that she wasn't the product of a primary.

[Serena]

You know, if this was a referendum on four years of a Biden presidency. Harris herself made a mistake in the last 107 days of not distancing herself from that presidency. Right. And even when she was asked, like she did that interview with the View, you know, about a month ago at this point, and she was directly asked, like, how would your presidency be different than a Biden presidency? And she sat there on live television said, I can't really think of anything. Yeah. When you have large swaths of the Democratic Party and Democratic voters who found Joe Biden to be an enormously unpopular candidate, there is enough data that that is backed up, in fact. And to say that I'm not going to be a separation from that while also trying to brand yourself as the change candidate, how does that, you know, you can't fit a square. Whatever the saying is, the square pig, round hole, whatever that was, that was never going to be a sound argument to be made. And she really, you know, she has a lot of personal loyalty to Joe Biden. And I think that clouded some of this decision making here where it was like, you need to run your own campaign. And based on the leadership that she had and also based on her own, you know, maybe loyalty to the president. She didn't. All right.

[Susan Davis]

Let's take a quick break, and when we get back, we'll talk about abortion politics. This is Ira Glass of this American Life. Each week on our show, we choose a theme, tell different stories on that theme. All right, I'm just going to stop right there. You're listening to an NPR podcast. Chances are you know our show. So instead I'm going to tell you we've just been on a run of really good shows lately, some big, epic, emotional stories and some weird, funny stuff, too. Download us this American Life.

[Sarah McCammon]

Okay. So does this sound like you, you love NPR's podcasts.

[Susan Davis]

You wish you could get more of all your favorite shows, and you want to support NPR's mission to create a more informed public. If all that sounds appealing, then it is time to sign up for the NPR bundle.

[Serena]

Learn more at plus.npr.org the code switch.

[Susan Davis]

Team spent Election Day talking to folks about how the outcome might impact them. It's a time capsule of people's hopes and fears before they knew the results.

[Serena]

One way or another, there's a change coming.

[Susan Davis]

I wanted to vote for Trump, but.

[Sarah McCammon]

I voted for her.

[Susan Davis]

Gays for Trump.

[Serena]

I cried this morning. I've been crying on and off. I'm terrified.

[Susan Davis]

Listen to Code Switch, the podcast about race and identity from npr. And we're back. And one of the many fascinating dynamics that played out across the country on Election Day is where voters all over the country affirmed rights to abortion access and then voted against the Democratic Party in their respective states. Sarah, you've covered the issue of abortion access and reproductive rights extensively. First, can we talk about what were some of these ballot measures and where were they?

[Sarah McCammon]

So there were 10 states that had abortion on the ballot. Most of them had to do with essentially protecting abortion access or expanding access, putting that in the state constitution in some form. Nebraska was a weird state because it had one that was essentially protecting abortion rights and another one that would have done the opposite. So seven out of ten of these passed the pro abortion rights measures. Three of them failed. And on the one hand, this is sort of a continuation of what we've seen since the Dobbs decision two years ago. Every time since then, up until now, that abortion was on the ballot, voters signaled support for abortion rights. They either voted to protect abortion access or to reject efforts to restrict it. In many ways, this is in keeping with that trend. At the same time, there were these three states where these measures didn't succeed. In Nebraska, the pro abortion rights one failed, the one to Restrict abortion succeeded. In South Dakota, an abortion rights measure failed. And in Florida, a measure to protect abortion in the state constitution got majority support, but not 60%, which is the threshold to pass. What this tells us, if you look at the numbers in a little more detail, is that people were, on the one hand voting in many states to protect abortion rights, but at the same time voting for Donald Trump.

[Susan Davis]

Do you have a sense of the why there? Because I think that Democrats spent basically all campaigns since the Dobbs decision trying to tie restricting abortion access to the Republican Party and running as the party of abortion rights. That didn't matter to voters in the end.

[Sarah McCammon]

Right. I mean, voters in a presidential election are looking at a range of issues. And as we've talked about so much, the economy and immigration were higher priorities for most people. I mean, there are groups of voters for whom abortion ranks really high. Those are typical Democratic constituencies. Women, younger voters, voters of color tend to put that issue higher on the list. And one other thing I'll say if you just look closely at these numbers. Our colleague Daniel Wood did an analysis based on Associated Press data. In some cases, the split between the vote for Harris and the vote for abortion rights was in the double digits. Wow. Just take Florida, for example. It was about a 14 point split. Now, that's a state where that's huge. Trump did really well and abortion rights almost passed. And that is huge. And I think what it says is that there are voters who are willing and able to disentangle a variety of issues.

[Serena]

That's really interesting. There's one conversation I had with the voter a while back, and I wonder how much of this maybe played in is this point where, you know, I was talking to this person, she's young. It was actually her first election, and her perception of the Democratic Party was you keep talking about why, you know, Roe v. Wade was scaled back. You're in the White House. Why aren't you doing anything about it? Right. And that, of course, is a lack of full understanding how this works literally on the ground. But the other thing that I also am, like, kind of tracking in my head is that it goes back to some of the conversations I had with staffers on the campaign, which was this choice to also really paint reproductive rights and abortion rights as, like, a white women's issue. If you look at.

[Susan Davis]

Say More.

[Serena]

Yes. If you look at most of the ads and the, you know, kind of faces that the Harris campaign chose to have tell their stories, they didn't make it about those people's, like, political opinions necessarily it was all pretty much white women.

[Susan Davis]

Yeah, you're right. As you're saying that, I'm thinking about the ads, and it was mostly white women. Yes.

[Serena]

And it was this big, like, push to win over or win back those white women in the suburbs who they thought were these convincible Nikki Haley Republican folks to be like, look at my family. Like, it could happen to your family. Like, these are folks who are trying to expand their families. They're already mothers. When in reality, like, we also know that, yes, abortion and the curtailing of abortion rights affects a lot of people in a lot of ways. It is a specific issue that impacts black and brown women in enormous ways compared to white women. And that is something. An element of this that Harris did talk about a lot when she was the vice president and kind of fell off the cliff when she became the nominee.

[Sarah McCammon]

Well, two things are true. Statistically, black and brown women are more likely to get abortions than white women. At the same time, the stories that we heard told by these white women, as you mentioned, were usually women who had had complicated pregnancies that left them in a medical crisis in a state like Texas where they couldn't get abortion care. Women who'd been victims of rape or incest and could talk about what that was like and what it might be like to need an abortion in that situation. Those are the kinds of situations in which there is overwhelming, I mean, not quite unanimous, but overwhelming support for access to abortion, even among many Republicans. So it seems to me that perhaps the campaign was focusing on sort of the safe examples of abortion, the types of abortion that are widely palatable to most voters, including white voters, including more conservative voters, as part of that larger strategy to try to reach the middle. But as you said, they weren't speaking to the breadth of reasons and situations in which people do.

[Serena]

No. And most of those women whose stories they highlighted were from places like Texas, Kentucky, and to be clear, they didn't ignore women of color and black women. Right. Like, they specifically talked about Amber Thurman, who was the woman from Georgia who died of medical complications from her pregnancy. And there were other black women whose voices were featured. But it was for a long time a predominantly framed white women's issue, although.

[Susan Davis]

White women with college degrees is one of the groups of people that Kamala Harris did better with, although she also did well with black women. All right, we're gonna leave it there for today, but we will be back tomorrow. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics.

[Serena]

I'm Deepa Shivaram. I cover the White House.

[Sarah McCammon]

And I'm Sarah McCammon. I cover the campaign.

[Susan Davis]

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