Democratic consultants explored ways for Vice President Harris to distance herself from President Biden once she become the party’s White House nominee, but it proved to be a major messaging challenge, according to one of the strategists who worked on the Harris-Walz IE effort.
Joe Biden’s negative approval rating was a challenge for Harris throughout, who struggled during the campaign when asked in interviews how her potential administration would be different.
Meanwhile, her argument on the stump that she was a candidate for change drew attention and ridicule from major right-wing online voices like Barstool Sports founder David Portnoy, who recorded a widely viewed Instagram video attacking her for using the phrase “turn the page” while being the sitting VP.
Oren Shur, a partner at Democratic mega firm SKDK, said Wednesday that while working for Future Forward USA, the IE backing Harris-Walz, strategists explored ways for Harris to separate from Biden.
“That’s something we certainly thought about, looked at, but that’s difficult to do,” he said.
Shur is among the practitioners who believe that environmental factors doomed Harris’ effort. “They deserve some credit for making it as competitive as it was,” he said during C&E’s Postscript conference in DC on Wednesday. “It would have been difficult for anyone to run in this climate.”
“It shouldn’t have even been close — the fundamentals were so bad,” said Nicole McCleskey, a Partner with Republican polling firm Public Opinion Strategies.
On the question of environment vs. strategy and messaging, Democratic media strategist Raghu Devaguptapu said the idea that Harris lost because she’s a woman of color isn’t the takeaway people should leave ’24 with.
“That’s not the reason why she lost,” said Devaguptapu, a partner at Left Hook Strategy. He pointed to Democrats losing communities that typically vote for them, including working-class voters of color: “We’re an easier coalition to pickoff.”
Going forward, Shur said Democrats need to “re-establish ourselves as the part of working people.”
“Both parties are probably renting some voters right now,” he said pointing to suburban women in Orange County, Calif. who voted Democrat and working-class voters of color who voted for Trump. “We’ve got to fix that. The math there isn’t good.”
