Harris Campaign Adviser Says She Lost Because ‘It’s Really Hard for Democrats To Win Battleground States’

Harris campaign senior adviser David Plouffe suggested this week that Vice President Kamala Harris lost the 2024 presidential election because “it’s really hard for Democrats to win battleground states.”

During an appearance on Pod Save America, Plouffe defended the Harris campaign’s loss to President-elect Donald Trump, claiming, “It’s always worth reminding people, it’s really hard for Democrats to win battleground states.”

He explained:

Let’s look at Pennsylvania. 25% of the electorate is liberal, roughly. 34% is conservative. By the way, in most battleground states, that conservative number is over 40. So, in every battleground state, there’s more conservative 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? For Democrats to win battleground states, it is a false choice. 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 argued, “You’ve got to couple that with dominating in the middle, not just winning it a little. We have to dominate the moderate vote, and I think as we look ahead to ’26 and ’28, particularly where you have seen drift amongst non-college voters generally – particularly those of color, specifically – we obviously have to get some of that back.”

He concluded, “We can’t afford any more erosion. The math just doesn’t fucking work.”

Watch above via Pod Save America.