The Apollo 13 Election (Part III)

I Thought I was Done...Then I Listened to Pod Save America

You can read Parts I and II below:

Part I

Part II

We made it through Thanksgiving and into December. Donald Trump’s government-to-be insanity continues apace. I’ve spent the last month or so reflecting on the work I did, the things I believed, and how Trump defeated Vice President Kamala Harris in November.

I wrote the first two installments of this series in the immediate aftermath of the election (they’re linked above.) While I’m not finished with my personal, strategic, or political analysis, I’m compelled to take finger to keyboard after listening to Harris’ campaign leadership on the very popular Pod Save America podcast.

First, an aesthetic comment: I watched a video clip of the interview before I listened to it. Based on just one thing I saw I knew that Jen O’Malley Dillon, Quentin Fulks, Stephanie Cutter, and David Plouffe would not offer a candid assessment of why they lost: They had notebooks, printouts, and materials in front of them on the table.

They didn’t come to this conversation with Dan Pfeiffer (another Obama alum) ready to take all questions, good or bad. They probably sat in a room or on Zooms and gamed out how they were going to answer every question they were asked. Pfeiffer isn’t a journalist, he’s a partisan Democrat so I shouldn’t have expected him to prod his friends and colleagues.

And he didn’t.

Missing the Overall

Throughout the course of the 90 minute conversation, the guests continually bemoaned the logistics of campaigning. Kamala Harris only had 107 days to campaign. True, given that, she as a candidate did well. Why doesn’t the Democratic Party have more super PACs? Why are their lawyers too cautious? Why is it that Trump and the Republicans are so much better coordinated? Why didn’t either the Biden and then Harris campaigns have the ability to message earlier or tell their allies they needed support sooner than Labor Day? Why did the press give us so much grief?

This, my friends, is exactly what I’ve been saying for years. MAGA is a movement led by Donald Trump. The Republican Party is its political wing. It has financiers, front groups, a massive media ecosystem, and elected officials all working hand-in-glove to push forward a consistent message either on Trump’s behalf or beating Democrats over the head.

Even before Trump, the GOP I worked for was far better at this than the Democrats. When a Republican president gave a speech, the entire conservative ecosystem acted as it the words were etched on tablets Moses just brought down the mountain. When Joe Biden gave a State of the Union speech, multiple Democratic politicians gave their reaction to it, often negative.

It wasn’t just Joe Rogan. It wasn’t just the ‘trans’ ad. It wasn’t just 107 days. It was the result of one party understanding what it takes to win and being willing to do it (even while they destroy norms) and another unwilling or unable to work together long enough to win elections.

The campaign’s leadership noted that Trump had multiple super PACs and the Democrats had only one, Future Forward. My question is why do a bunch of nerds in Seattle running data analysis get to spend a billion dollars without any oversight from either donors or people the campaign trusts?

Who decided that only spending money after Labor Day, because the super PAC guys said so, is the way you’re going to run a railroad? They’re staffers, not principals. They’re consultants shielded from the outcomes of their poor decision making.

I, for one, am not comfortable putting the future of the country in the hands of people who believe computer models will tell them all they need to know, as if they’re selling toothpaste.

Meet Me in the Middle

David Plouffe was Barack Obama’s campaign manager in 2008. He’s gone on to major positions with companies such as Uber. This year, was a senior advisor to the Harris campaign. In one segment that’s received a lot of play, Plouffe outlines the necessity of pulling soft Republicans and conservative-leaning independents into a winning coalition, because the seven swing states are getting harder for Democrats to win.

First, why these states, geographically, demographically, and economically diverse, are slipping away from Democrats should be a red, blinking, screaming warning to the party as it moves forward.

Next, though I don’t believe Harris’ embrace of Republicans and Liz Cheney was the reason she lost, I do believe it was a misuse and misplacement of time and resources. For the last five years, The Lincoln Project (of which I’m a co-founder) and other “Never Trump” Republican groups beat the drum on Trump’s return with our people. It worked in 2020 and 2022.

A dear friend and long-time colleague laid out how we (former GOPers) would help Biden/Harris win: “They have to get to the two yard line. If they can get there, we’ll get them into the end zone.”

The Harris campaign got to the five. There was never a chance enough Republicans would cross the line or stay home to equal victory for the vice president.

Checking My Own Premises

As I listened to Plouffe, I came to believe we NeverTrumpers had it wrong, too. Instead of fighting alongside, but separately, from the Democrats as we did the last two cycles, we allowed ourselves to become part of the broader Democratic coalition. I think by trading our origins for the (relative) safety of people liking us, we sacrificed the credibility to communicate with non-Trump voters effectively.

We didn’t didn’t gently prod our Democratic friends away from minefields of Trump’s (or their own) making. Instead of motivating soft Republicans, I think we became cheerleaders, applauding anything and everything Democrats did in the service of being good and loyal soldiers to the small “d” democratic cause.

I’ve got a lot more thinking to do on this front, what it means for a broader pro-voter, pro-American coalition, and how we rigorously stay on task and on target.

What Do You Believe In?

On another Pod Save America episode, progressive streamer Hasan Piker said the following, a version of which I’ve expressed for years, but he put perfectly:

“And when you don’t have a North Star that every single person can point to and say, this is what the party is about, your enemies can portray you as whatever they want. And that’s why the trans, the anti-trans ads are even remotely effective, because you can make the Democratic Party look clownish and inconsistent and even silly and hyper-focused on whatever key issues there are…”

YES!

I reference Piker because if 10 years ago you’d have told me that the two of us would be in fundamental agreement on what ails the Democratic brand, I wouldn’t have believed you. Maybe if two people who come from vastly different backgrounds and worldviews are telling you the same thing, it’s worth consideration.

Which brings me to what I saw as the largest omission of the conversation. Kamala Harris didn’t lose because Donald Trump got more votes, though he did. She lost because millions of should be-Democratic voters stayed home. It doesn’t really matter if she did better in the Milwaukee suburbs if the campaign tanked in Philadelphia and Detroit. Two million urban voters stayed home.

I can only speculate as to why Pfeiffer didn’t push them on this. Campaigns are always fought between the 45 yard lines. That assumes a candidate will capture 95%+ of its their base. When that doesn’t happen, winning isn’t just unlikely, it’s impossible. If campaigns matter on the margins, this one was lost before the first vote was ever cast.

Demeanor

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a piece entitled “Defeat Requires Accountability.” Not once in the 90 minute conversation did I hear O’Malley Dillon, Plouffe, Cutter, or Fulkes take responsibility for the decisions they made, strategically, tactically, or financially, or any accountability for losing to Donald Trump (again) and what they told the American people that meant for the country.

The four seemed detached from the arguments they’d just spent months and $1.5 billion making. If Trump really is as bad as we say he is, where is the remorse, concern, or self-reflection? At the end of the show, O’Malley Dillon said:

“So, we lost and that really sucks and we came really close and obviously we believed we that could pull this off and something we all have to live with and will have to live with for the next four years…”

Not good enough.

This is the attitude of someone who doesn’t really believe that Trump will be the end of the ‘campaign industry’ as she called it earlier in the program, or America as we’ve known it. They’re already looking forward to 2026 and 2028 as if they’re just the next two elections on the calendar. I believe fundamentally that professional Democrats have not, did not, and do not either understand or worry enough about what’s about to occur.

Perhaps it’s because they’ve never believed it. Perhaps it’s because, being in DC, they’ll find work to do. Maybe it’s because they haven’t had to put everything they’ve known, believed in, and worked for on the line in the face of a very ugly, and vengeful group of people who’ve already marked out so many of us.

Whatever the reason, I think it’s time we thank these folks for their service and move on. This fight isn’t about who runs the Democratic Party or individual campaigns. It’s about the future of the country so many of us love, and in that we all have a voice.