'Does all of this still matter?' Harris’ reliance on these 2 things may have doomed her

09 November 2024

On the surface, Vice President Kamala Harris ran a great campaign in terms of how much money she raised in just over 100 days and her impressive ground game in the critical battleground states. But given her recent drubbing at the hands of President-elect Donald Trump, several veteran political journalists are wondering if the metrics that have traditionally defined what makes a good campaign have changed.

In a recent Politico article, reporters Natalie Allison, Meredith McGraw, Holly Otterbein, Myah Ward and Adam Wren all weighed in on how they believe Harris' campaign ultimately fell short on Tuesday night. While they offered varying explanations including her economic message, voters' frustration with President Joe Biden's administration and sexist attitudes of swing state voters, one journalist posited that conventional thinking around get-out-the-vote efforts and campaign fundraising may now be outdated.

Toward the end of the article, Politico politics editor Kay Steiger asked the five reporters to offer what they viewed was most "overrated," or something that "dominated the news but ultimately didn't seem to matter" when determining the outcome. Ward opined that too much stock was put in candidates' war chests and ground game.

"I’ve been thinking a lot about what this race tells us about the future of campaigns," she said. "The Harris campaign raised money like crazy, appeared to have a much stronger ground game, pulled in major endorsements — but at the end of the day, how much does all of this still matter?"

Wren agreed, saying he shared his colleague's "questions about fundraising and ground game."

"Harris raised a billion dollars; she finished $20 million in debt. The Trump campaign said they would have the money they need to run the race they wanted to run. They were met with eyerolls. There were serious questions about Trump’s ad hoc, duct tape-and-bailing-twine ground game," Wren said. "Harris’ camp was wrong; Trump’s camp was right."

Democrats handily won the campaign finance battle. According to Opensecrets' rally, the Harris campaign raised more than $1.6 billion when including President Joe Biden's campaign operation prior to his July exit. Meanwhile, Trump raised roughly $600 million less, yet still emerged with both the Electoral College majority and even won the national popular vote. Harris also didn't refrain from spending significant sums in the final weeks of the campaign to go all-in on motivating voters to show up.

"The campaign spent an average of $7.5 million a day in August, in comparison to the $2.7 million that Trump spent," wrote the New Republic's Edith Olmsted. "In September, the Harris campaign spent $152 million on advertising, more than double the $63 million that Trump shelled out."

Additionally, Harris' campaign correctly identified the seven swing states that decided the Electoral College majority, and even zeroed in on the small handful of suburban counties that could make the critical difference in the statewide vote count. Simultaneously, Trump's campaign outsourced his ground game to outside groups like billionaire Elon Musk's America PAC and far-right activist Charlie Kirk's Turning Point USA, with those decisions attracting criticism even from Trump's own advisors. Ward said Trump's victory in spite of his inferior fundraising and get-out-the-vote strategy could instead be attributed to his omnipresence on social media platforms.

"Social media has changed politics. And Republicans have dominated this space, building a robust online infrastructure since 2015 on Youtube, in the podcast space and on the airwaves," she said. "I was talking to an immigration advocate yesterday who said they have even seen this at play in their own space. Republicans are winning the online messaging war."

Click here to read Politico's full report.

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