Vice President Harris boards Air Force One in Middletown, Pennsylvania, on October 30, 2024.
Brendan Smialowski/AFP
Hide caption
Toggle caption
Brendan Smialowski/AFP
By the time CNN called North Carolina looking for former President Donald Trump on Tuesday night, the atmosphere at Vice President Harris’ viewing party at Howard University had already soured — so much so that soon after, the crowd began screaming for a DJ to boost the case Moods. .
So, at 11:45 p.m., Dr. Dre’s “California Love” blared while some supporters danced listlessly, keeping their eyes peeled for a giant screen showing Harris’ dwindling chances of winning the presidency.
Staff were preparing the stage as votes from Pennsylvania began to be counted, but Harris never arrived.
A supporter of Vice President Harris reacts to the election results during an observation party at Howard University in Washington, D.C., on November 5, 2024.
Charlie Tripalo/AFP
Hide caption
Toggle caption
Charlie Tripalo/AFP
Less than 24 hours later, the Democratic candidate – who would have made history as the country’s first female president – came to her university and said she had conceded the race.
“The outcome of this election is not what we wanted, not what we fought for, and not what we voted for,” Harris said. “But hear me when I say – hear me when I say – that the light of the American promise will always shine, as long as we never give up and as long as we keep fighting.”
Harris’s truncated 107-day campaign began with President Biden’s dramatic exit from the race on July 21 after he botched a debate and lost the trust of key party leaders. But it ended in crushing setbacks for the Democratic Party.
How did that happen?
Vice President Harris leaves the stage after conceding the election at Howard University on November 6, 2024, in Washington, DC
Andrew Harnick/Getty Images
Hide caption
Toggle caption
Andrew Harnick/Getty Images
The campaign process remained for Biden
When Biden withdrew, Harris stuck with his campaign staff. Many people in her orbit said that was probably a mistake.
Harris retained Biden campaign chairwoman Jen O’Malley Dillon and other campaign leaders such as Quentin Foulkes and Michael Tyler. Harris has worked with Biden campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez in the past, but did not have a great track record with others.
Chris Scott, the vice president’s director of coalitions, said that while Harris had members of her own team who engaged, there was a disconnect between the team Biden had built and the new nominee they were working with.
“The campaign in its current form is designed for a different type of candidate,” said Scott, who worked on the vice president’s campaign team before becoming the nominee in July.
Vice President Harris speaks during a rally in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, on October 30, 2024.
Brendan Smialowski/AFP
Hide caption
Toggle caption
Brendan Smialowski/AFP
One of the biggest obstacles, Scott said, is that even after Harris became the nominee, voters still couldn’t understand who she was. Biden campaign leaders also didn’t know her well and weren’t well equipped to tell her story and run her campaign to her strengths, he said.
Even internally, there seemed to be a conflict.
“When the merger came, and I think this will be true for a lot of Black employees, they felt like it was a harder time for us after that switch, almost as if there was a little bit of punishment now that she was the nominee for President Biden,” Scott said of Harris.
Harris’ race started out strong and rallied with tens of thousands of attendees, but some staffers felt a lack of cohesion contributed to slowing campaign momentum after the convention in Chicago in August.
“With the energy that came out of the Democratic National Committee, I think the whole click took it to the next level that never quite happened until it got to October,” Scott said.
President Biden embraces Vice President Kamala Harris during a campaign event at IBEW Local Union #5 on September 2, 2024, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
Hide caption
Toggle caption
Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
Harris tried to be the candidate for change. But she did not distance herself from Biden
Harris was quick to draw contrasts between herself and Trump, but hesitated when it came to Biden.
At the beginning of her campaign, she began with remarks thanking the president for his leadership and had the crowd applaud his difficult decision to leave the race.
Then in an interview on ABC The view In October, Harris was asked if she would do anything differently than Biden has done in the past four years.
“There’s nothing that comes to my mind,” Harris said. Later in the interview, she changed course.
“You asked me what’s the difference between me and Joe Biden?” she said. “I will have a Republican in my cabinet because I don’t feel the burden of letting pride get in the way of a good idea.”
But that wasn’t enough for someone who was trying to run as a “candidate for change” — voters consistently had concerns about Biden’s handling of the economy, immigration and Israel’s war in Gaza. Harris struggled to create a new narrative that would put distance between herself and the president’s agenda.
Vice President Harris sits in the “lucky chair” in Philadelphia on October 27, 2024 in Philadelphia. According to the barbershop, anyone who ran for office and sat in that chair won.
Andrew Harnick/Getty Images
Hide caption
Toggle caption
Andrew Harnick/Getty Images
Delay and disconnect with the voter base
Exit polls show Harris was unable to revive the “Obama coalition” of voters that helped propel the former president to the White House twice.
Turnout by key groups such as black voters and young voters was disappointing. Trump has achieved great successes with Latino and Asian voters.
Scott and others felt that campaign leadership calculated that they could focus on other voters — such as white women and Republicans who don’t like Trump — delaying outreach to groups such as black men.
“There’s a little bit of an assumption that because the nominee was a Black woman…that some things are going to be taken for granted,” Scott said.
Adrienne Shropshire, executive director of BlackPAC, said outreach to Black voters this election cycle was significantly delayed, before Harris became the nominee. She said funding and resources coming to independent organizations like hers this cycle were significantly delayed — and that resulted in a lack of outreach to Black communities for months.
“The resources to do this work didn’t come until much later. When you get a big chunk of your budget for the course in the last month of the campaign, that’s a real problem,” she said.
However, Shropshire — who spoke with NPR before the election results were announced — said Harris’ campaign had done “hard work” in a short period of time.
“I think at times it was so chaotic and hectic that we lost sight of the fact that this woman became the nominee and she had three months to run the campaign,” she said.
“Hopefully we can look back and gain some appreciation for exactly what she was asked to do at this critical moment in the country’s history.”
