CNN
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At a leadership retreat for senior aides in Wilmington last week, Jen O’Malley Dillon, the campaign chair hired by Joe Biden and retained by Kamala Harris, cited battleground states in order and warned that the vice president still does not have a sure path to winning the 270 electoral votes.
Internal data from before the debate shows Pennsylvania is tough but very likely. North Carolina, which has disappointed Democrats in every election for the past 15 years, feels better for Democrats this time around than Arizona, which Biden narrowly won four years ago. Nevada and Georgia are both likely, but will require a lot of scrutiny, depending on the polls. Internal data from the Harris campaign shows Michigan and Wisconsin are likely to be Harris’ most favorable states.
Harris’ aides are excited about her performance in the debate earlier this week but don’t believe it has changed anything.
While O’Malley Dillon told them last week that there were a variety of paths to victory based on current and projected internal data, several senior Harris campaign aides told CNN they were concerned that Trump would still likely win if the election were held next Tuesday instead of Tuesday, eight days from now.
Two and a half weeks after the Chicago convention, Ms. Harris’ activities have slowed, and key Democrats worry she risks losing the excitement and good vibes she needs to sway the high poll numbers and passionate supporters expected to back Mr. Trump.
But that’s not the case at Harris campaign headquarters. Much of the conversation there has been focused on the 5-6% of undecided voters still showing up to the polls in battleground states, their stereotypes about Trump, and their continued interest in learning more about Harris. Senior aides tend to talk about “highlights” and “moments” these days, and any other strategy you can think of. They’ll continue to bring Harris to big rallies, but they’ll sneak in smaller events in between, build affinity groups, and lean into targeted appeals like highlighting her endorsement of former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney. For example, it was a very deliberate choice for Harris to attend the National Association of Black Journalists rally scheduled for National Voter Registration Day in Philadelphia next week.
“There’s a quiet confidence and comfort in our work and our mission, but no one believes we’ve won,” a Harris campaign aide said. “It’s going to be a tough fight leading up to Election Day and beyond.”
Harris’ advisers have removed campaign ads from the debate and are spending their days sifting through data that seems to show Harris made a significant, slight gain. An internal summary of the campaign’s “dial group” that measures immediate reactions, explained to CNN, showed that Harris’ highest ratings came when she talked about abortion, while Trump’s lowest when he cited a fake story about immigrants eating pets. But a dozen key Democrats and officials told CNN they worry about what will happen if they return to their usual rhythm of heralding bus tours, street speeches and one or two unconventional interviews, as they did after this week’s debate.
Some Democratic insiders have been dreamily scrolling through the schedule for Taylor Swift’s “Eraser Tour,” which includes three shows in Miami, New Orleans and Indianapolis before the election, and have begun lobbying Swift to endorse them at campaign concerts. One dream scenario in the minds of some people talking about the matter is that Swift would perform jointly or side-by-side with Beyoncé.
Harris “has become a cultural and political icon. Politics is too small to support him. You have to do something that transcends that,” said one Democratic official working to make the show happen. “An unconventional campaign has to do something unconventional.”
Inside campaign headquarters, Harris aides are already moving to focus more on appearances, like her virtual conversation with Oprah Winfrey next week, rather than big speeches or policy announcements like an economic plan — unless the campaign figures out how to garner more attention that way.
But Harris’ advisers face scheduling constraints: Unless they succeed in persuading Trump to accept a second debate, the only big event left before Election Day is the vice presidential debate between Tim Walz and J.D. Vance on October 1.
David Plouffe, former President Barack Obama’s campaign chairman, has led a push among Ms. Harris’ advisers for groundbreaking moments and groundbreaking appearances. Ms. Harris and many around her tend to discount traditional media, believing they would be more empowered by putting her in situations like the hugs she gave voters during a brief stop at a Pittsburgh spice store on Sunday than by any interview.
While Plouffe’s role is partly influenced by smoldering tensions between various factions — Biden’s continuing aides, the new staff who came with Harris, former Obama officials who parachuted in with him and the core group of advisers who tend to spend the most time with the candidate on the road and at the Naval Observatory — the infighting bears no resemblance to the dysfunction that plagued Harris’ 2019 run.
Last week’s leadership retreat with O’Malley Dillon, for example, was something of a therapy for aides after a rollercoaster summer, but it was also an information sharing session at a time when Harris aides believe stark differences in the political landscape, ballot propositions and candidates could upend the trend in recent elections in which states have been run in regional blocks.
What Plouff faces this year is the trauma of the past two presidential elections for Democrats, who will likely overlook the basics or take their advantages for granted. Plouff himself famously predicted Hillary Clinton would win more than 350 votes in June 2016, before she was widely seen to win all three debates. And four years ago, Biden’s lead in the polls was clearer than Harris’s, even as November drew near.
Transforming summer enthusiasm into fall efforts won’t be easy, said Dan Kildee, a soon-to-be-retiring Democratic congressman from battleground state Michigan. He said it’s encouraging that 35,000 new volunteers have signed up in his state since Harris became the candidate, but they won’t mean much if they’re not properly managed and deployed.
“The weight of the campaign is increasing, but the work is phone calls and door-to-door canvassing. It’s tedious work, but it’s done in sufficient volume and repetition that we’re ramping it up,” Kildee said. “And then there’s the special sauce. Can we get some of that magic?”
Mr. Obama is expected to be at the center of that effort, with aides planning in-person and online gatherings with prominent figures in addition to the usual late-fall battleground rallies, and Mr. Obama is encouraging them to use their platforms to encourage their followers to vote.
The first sign of that will come next Tuesday on National Voter Registration Day, when Obama is already recording videos and other content at his homes in Chicago and Washington that his office estimates will reach 30 million social media users targeted at young voters.
“Our boss always wants to push the envelope and our team is united in that regard. We’re definitely going to have some fun,” an aide to Obama told CNN. The former president is due to kick off the job next week with a fundraiser he’s hosting for Harris in Los Angeles.
Former First Lady Michelle Obama, who spoke at a rally in Chicago, will not campaign and is expected to continue her official nonpartisan voter registration efforts.
Democrats believe they have an advantage over Trump when it comes to volunteers and on-the-ground organizers, especially after Trump’s handpicked new chairmen closed many of the state offices opened by the RNC and outsourced much of the outreach and turnout efforts to outside groups.
But as with many working on the Biden campaign (albeit to a lesser extent), Harris campaign aides and other Democratic activists say they know they’re still dealing with voters who don’t — and never will — listen or heed traditional channels of communication.
“The big thing we know about these voters is they’re voters who weren’t responding before and don’t respond to traditional media,” said Ben Wikler, chairman of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, whose state has had extensive voter-to-voter community outreach since the spring, both in person and through text messaging. “But we also need everyone to be paying attention to traditional media, and we need to do both.”
Mitch Landrieu, the former New Orleans mayor who went from co-chair of the Biden campaign to co-chair of the Harris campaign, told CNN on Thursday he was realistic about the difference between the first 50 days of the Harris campaign, when it was energizing Democrats panicked by Biden, and the remaining 53 days in which they must try to work out a deal.
“She’s still trending in the right direction and she’s continued to win every day and actually has been going up a little bit every day,” Landrieu said. “At some point, you have to stop expecting her to keep going up because there’s not that many fish left in the sea.”
