Kamala campaign chief blames 'catastrophic' Biden for election loss

By ROB CRILLY, US CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT

Published: | Updated:

Like the old Irish joke about asking a local for directions, Kamala Harris' advisers have one explanation for their defeat to Donald Trump: They started from the wrong place.

In yet another post-election interview passing the buck, senior adviser David Plouffe claimed no Democratic candidate could have won without a proper primary process—what he called 'the cardinal sin' of this race.

And he said he was shocked by the internal polling numbers when he finally joined the team after Joe Biden dropped out with less than four months to go, a situation he described as 'catastrophic.'

'When I got in, it was the first time I saw the actual numbers under the hood. They were pretty gruesome,' he told The Atlantic.

'The Sun Belt was worse than the Blue Wall, but the Blue Wall was bad. And, demographically, young voters across the board—Hispanic voters, Black voters, Asian voters—were in really terrible shape. 

'When the switch happened, some of that stuff got a little bit better, but nowhere near where we ended up or where we needed to be. This was a rescue mission.  

'It was catastrophic in terms of where it was.' 

Biden finally bowed to pressure from allies and stood aside on July 21.

Kamala Harris' campaign team have a clear view on who was to blame for her defeat: Not them. In an interview with the Atlantic, senior adviser David Plouffe said the campaign was in a 'catastrophic' position by the time Joe Biden dropped out and they took over

Kamala Harris' campaign team have a clear view on who was to blame for her defeat: Not them. In an interview with the Atlantic, senior adviser David Plouffe said the campaign was in a 'catastrophic' position by the time Joe Biden dropped out and they took over 

Biden finally bowed to pressure and stepped out of the race on July 21

Biden finally bowed to pressure and stepped out of the race on July 21

With votes still being counted, Donald Trump has 76.9 million votes to Kamala Harris' 74.4 million

With votes still being counted, Donald Trump has 76.9 million votes to Kamala Harris' 74.4 million

The party quickly coalesced around his vice president to become the candidate, avoiding a drawn out contest that some feared would divide Democrats and hand the election to Trump.

Even so, the former president romped to victory, taking all seven of the battleground states and becoming the first Republican to win the popular vote in 20 years.

With votes still being counted, Trump has 76.9 million votes to Harris' 74.4 million. That puts him 2.8 million votes ahead of his 2020 tally, while Harris has about 6.7 million fewer than Biden managed.

'I'm not sure, given the headwinds, any Democrat could have won,' said Plouffe. 

'But if we had a primary in which a bunch of people ran and auditioned … through that process, whoever emerged … would have been a more fully formed person, would have had more time to mount a general election campaign. 

'[Not having that process] is the cardinal sin.'

And then they had to condense a campaign down into a little more than 100 days.  

'Our first week, it was like, "Well, we need a biography ad, we need to talk about the border, we need to lay out an economic contrast, we need to get health care in there, abortion,'" Plouffe said. 

'If you have six, seven, eight months, you storyboard all this stuff, you have a narrative arc. Everything was smashed and collided here.'

Joe BidenDemocratsDonald TrumpPolitics

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