Harris campaign senior adviser David Plouffe said that Vice President Kamala Harris’ loss to President-elect Donald Trump was due to the electoral weaknesses in the battleground states.
“It’s always worth reminding people: it’s really hard for Democrats to win battleground states,” Plouffe said in a podcast posted Tuesday.
Plouffe appeared on a podcast with Harris’ former campaign chair Jen O’Malley and other Democratic Party strategists to discuss why Harris failed to defeat Trump.Â
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Plouffe gave his analysis of the electoral situation in each of the battleground states prior to the election.Â
“Given that we had a challenging political environment, the fact that we got the race to a dead heat was positive, but boy, it was slow moving.”Â
“Let’s look at Pennsylvania,” he said, beginning a discussion of some of the most critical swing states. “Twenty-five percent of the electorate is liberal, roughly. Thirty-four percent is conservative. By the way, in most battleground states, that conservative number is over 40. So in every battleground state, there’s more conservatives than liberals. So, in Pennsylvania, if exits are believed, Trump won conservatives 91-8, Harris won liberals 93-6. Moderates, Harris won 56-43, but you kind of got to win 60% of them, right?”Â
“For Democrats to win battleground states, it is a false choice,” Plouffe continued. “You want to maximize your base, of course, and that was a place where we spent an enormous time, a lot of resources. That’s critical. And obviously, I think in Milwaukee, just to use that as an example, we hit our turnout targets. Fell a little bit short in Philly and Detroit, so that’s not good, that’s part of the equation.”
Plouffe said that Democrats “need to dominate” the moderate vote in order to win national elections or otherwise they face difficulties as a party.
“The math just doesn’t f—ing work,” Plouffe said.
“It was a dead heat race,” Plouffe continued. “The political atmosphere was pretty brutal.”Â
