‘I Didn’t Hear a Lot of Contrition There’: CNN Panel Scoffs at Excuses from Harris Campaign Staffers
A CNN panel hosted by anchor Manu Raju scoffed at the latest explanation from former Harris staffers for why the campaign lost to Donald Trump.
During a recent interview on Pod Save America, the top campaign officials for Kamala Harris attributed her electoral loss to to “headwinds” and factors beyond their control. Harris’s team also said the campaign only had 107-days to run against Trump following President Joe Biden’s departure from the race.
Axios politics reporter Hans Nichols agreed that many of the issues the Harris campaign faced were out of their control, but noted the internet didn’t love this interview because they didn’t express enough contrition.
CNN’s chief national affairs correspondent Jeff Zeleny agreed, while adding that “you can’t explain your way out of this loss.”
NICHOLS: Why this wasn’t a confessional where you weren’t going to get a bunch of mad culpas from them. They did take a clinical look at what went right and what went wrong with the fact pattern that they were given in the campaign. And when you listen to what they say, the kind of admit to some tactical mistakes which we could probably all kind of agree at this table, but the big strategic direction or questions of the campaign were out of their control. And that’s a decision about two years ago when Joe Biden decided to run Thanksgiving 2022. And that sort of set things into motion. And that was the hand they were dealt with. And they’re explaining how they they played the hand they were dealt with. But again, I didn’t hear a lot of contrition there. And as Jeff and I were talking about it, the Internet doesn’t love this interview.
ZELENY: Not at all. I mean, usually when you’re explaining, you’re losing. This is — they lost and they’re explaining, but they still you know, look, they um you can’t explain your way out of this loss. But a couple of interesting things. David Plouffe said he thought the most effective Trump ad was on Bidenomics. He said that was really an anchor and a weight on the vice president. But interesting, many, many questions about how she responded or didn’t respond to the trans ad. That was one of the Trump campaign’s most successful from their view the spots that they put out. And they said that they had a few ads that they devised and they ran them through focus groups, but they didn’t think that they responded well enough. So they didn’t use them because it was in the vice president’s own words. That is a decision that was made. There’s still a lot of uncertainty about why this was made. Was it the right call or not? As you know, some Senate candidates did respond like Sherrod Brown and others, just to sort of push back on this. So, look, this did not answer a lot of the questions, but the bottom line, the right it was a short campaign, but was it a winnable one with Donald Trump as the opponent?
Watch the clip above via CNN.
