'Jettisoned a strong argument': Biden aide says this Harris strategy cost her the election

07 November 2024

Given the massive rightward shift across the country between 2020 and 2024, there are a multitude of reasons Vice President Kamala Harris lost the election. But one aide to President Joe Biden believes Harris made one consequential decision that doomed her campaign.

The Atlantic's Franklin Foer recently reported that some advisors and staffers in the Biden White House believe strongly that the president shouldn't have dropped out of the race in July, and could have defeated former President Donald Trump again this November. One unnamed member of Biden's inner circle confided to Foer that Harris' key mistake was eschewing her initial populist messaging for a more vanilla approach that included bringing on campaign surrogates like billionaire investor Mark Cuban.

"While Harris was stuck defending the Biden economy, and hobbled by lingering anger over inflation, attacking Big Business allowed her to go on the offense. Then, quite suddenly, this strain of populism disappeared," Foer wrote.

"One Biden aide told me that Harris steered away from such hard-edged messaging at the urging of her brother-in-law, Tony West, Uber’s chief legal officer," he continued. "To win the support of CEOs, Harris jettisoned a strong argument that deflected attention from one of her weakest issues."

While campaigning for Harris, Cuban occasionally took the side of big industries over the American working class. In September, he came out swinging against Trump's proposal to cap credit card interest rates at 10%, as some credit cards can carry interest rates as high as 30%.

"Next in the 'What the Hell is He Thinking' list is the 10 percent price cap on credit card interest rates. Literally, Bernie Sanders suggested a cap of only 15 percent," Cuban said. "So now, you've got Donald Trump getting involved in price caps and price controls to a greater extent than self-described 'socialist' Bernie Sanders."

Harris frequently cast herself as a pro-business capitalist in her 2024 campaign. The vice president frequently leaned on her proposals for small business owners in trying to make her case to voters. And even though Trump's campaign benefited from the largesse of billionaires like Elon Musk and Miriam Adelson, Harris' message was appealing enough to get her own billionaire backers, including investor Ben Horowitz of the firm Andreesen Horowitz.

Foer noted that Biden's legacy will likely be undone by Trump, with his most significant accomplishments being either repealed or co-opted by the incoming administration. Examples include the bipartisan infrastructure law, the CHIPS and Science Act and the Inflation Reduction Act. Because projects in those pieces of legislation are being implemented on 10-year timelines, Foer noted that when they bear fruit, Trump will likely take credit for them.

"Despite Trump’s opposition to those pieces of legislation, the benefits of those bills could bolster his presidency," he wrote. "Biden will have passed along his most substantive legacy as a gift to his successor."

Click here to read Foer's full article in the Atlantic (subscription required).

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