A draft of an internal Democratic autopsy of the 2024 presidential election released Thursday argues that former Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign failed to make an “affirmative case” for her, did not sufficiently separate her from President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and was hurt by a Trump ad attacking her for supporting surgery for transgender inmates.
The draft report released by the Democratic National Committee, which is missing many sections and is filled with annotations questioning its methods, suggested that the Harris campaign missed opportunities to dent Donald J. Trump’s standing with voters.
Still, it says, the late campaign switch to Ms. Harris from Mr. Biden at the top of the ticket helped Democrats running in other races.
Here are five takeaways from the report.
It said the Harris campaign did not make an ‘affirmative’ case for her.
The autopsy said that the Harris campaign relied too heavily on an assumption that voters would reject Mr. Trump and did not make a sufficiently strong case for the vice president.
“Base voters needed reasons to vote FOR Harris as well as against Trump,” the report said. “Without an effective contrast with a difficult (and unaffordable) status quo, the obvious contrast with Trump was not a sufficient motivator.”
Ms. Harris, seeking to demonstrate loyalty to Mr. Biden, had missed opportunities to make “even measured breaks” with him on policy that would have helped her in the race, the draft report found.
It was “necessary to find ways to demonstrate how a Harris-Walz administration would be more effective in addressing American needs,” the report said.
It said the campaign did not land meaningful blows against Mr. Trump.
The document found that even as Republicans found ways to attack Ms. Harris, her campaign did not establish a “defined or consistent” strategy to eat into Mr. Trump’s public standing.
The Harris campaign’s inability to influence how voters viewed Mr. Trump was a “major failure,” the report said. It suggested the Harris campaign should have been able to “remind voters of his incompetence.”
“Given the ability of right-wing entities to slash and smear the vice president, it was essential to prosecute a more effective case as to why Trump should have been disqualified from ever again taking office,” the report said. “The grounds were there, but the messaging did not make the case.”
The campaign erred, the report said, by assuming that the American public’s views of Mr. Trump were “baked in,” calling it a “major failure of analysis and reality — given how his favorability has cratered” since his return to office to serve a second term.
It said that Mr. Biden’s exit helped Democrats in November, even as Ms. Harris fell.
Although the timing of the change to Ms. Harris from Mr. Biden as the party’s front-runner limited her path to the presidency, Democrats still benefited from Mr. Biden’s decision to drop out, the report said.
Democrats running in other races across the country performed better in November than they would have if the president had stayed in the race, according to the document.
“Having Kamala Harris on the ballot actually helped down-ballot Democrats maintain part of their base support,” the report said.
It said a Trump attack ad about transgender inmates worked.
During the race, the Trump campaign aired a commercial that showed video of Ms. Harris expressing support for taxpayer-funded surgeries for transgender inmates. The ad told viewers that “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.”
The ad landed with voters, according to the draft report.
Pollsters analyzing the race “all recognized the attack as very effective, and felt the campaign was boxed — the ad was a video of her saying what she said, and it was framed as an attack on her economic priorities.”
(Former President Bill Clinton was said to have pushed the Harris campaign to respond to the ad, and to have been told that it was not necessarily making a clear impact on the race.)
Still, Ms. Harris had no good way to respond to it, the report said.
“If the vice president would not change her position — and she did not — then there was nothing which would have worked as a response,” the report said. “The pollsters generally concurred with the opinions shared by campaign leadership — given the stakes and timing, the focus needed to be on attacking Trump.”
It faulted the Biden White House for how it positioned Ms. Harris.
The draft report said the Biden administration had displayed a “significant failure of imagination” in its use of Ms. Harris.
It noted that before the 2022 midterms the Biden team had directed the party to poll on how Dr. Jill Biden, the first lady, could help the president, and what issues and messages to emphasize. But there was no similar polling undertaken on Ms. Harris.
The White House set her back, the report said, by making her a face of its handling of immigration — an issue that was a weakness for the party going into the 2024 presidential election after border crossings increased significantly under Mr. Biden.
The decision to give Ms. Harris a “controversial issue brief” was a “massive missed opportunity,” the report said. It argued that any “fair critic” of Ms. Harris would need to “acknowledge the strength and ability she demonstrated as the nominee.”
“The White House did not position or prepare the vice president,” the document said. “Had the White House explored and evaluated ways to leverage Kamala Harris earlier in the administration, perhaps it would have improved the president’s standing, and it certainly could have helped prepare her to lead the ticket.”
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