Well, it really didn't work because of not me. And so we have two interviews I don't have clips from one of them but I will refer to it I would encourage everybody to listen to Chris Lasavita he was on the Trump campaign he talked to David Axelrod on the axe files I listened to that And then the big one, the one where everybody wants to listen, is the Harris Walls leadership on Pod Save America. This is comprised of Jen O'Malley Dillon, Stephanie Cutter, Quentin Falks, and David Plouffe. The interview was done by Dan Pfeiffer let me just get this out of there I thought Pfeiffer did a great job like anybody who's like oh you should have grilled them no come on you're not going to get anything good out of grilling them right now you just literally want to give them a microphone to be honest, it would have been best if you literally just put a microphone in a room and then just flashed keywords on a screen and let them talk about it. That would be ideal. They did enough. They did plenty. This was a very nutritious interview if you knew what to look for, and I'm going to share that with you now however again let me just encourage everybody to do this in the future when you run a campaign please put everything and anything that you can on tape as soon as possible I love it oh boy do I love it so let's start here. This is the first clip that I want to bring you. This is the top of the interview. We're going to go chronologically. How did you feel going into election day? How

did you feel going into election

day? And at what point did you have a sense that things were beginning to break Trump's way? Was there a county result, something about the turnout? Like, was there a moment when you sort of understood that how it was going to end? Well,

the truth is that we really thought this was a very close race. We talked about the entire time we saw it as a margin of error race, almost the entire time the vice president was in the race. And we knew we had to have strong turnout on Election Day. We saw early vote really ending strong for us and saw, you know, the types of voters we wanted to see turn out. But, you know, we expected this to be close. We also expected that Florida was going to come in a bit redder. Virginia, we knew was tracking to being, you know, that we were going to be ahead, but that we would be ahead by less than we were in 2020. So we were expecting to see that when we saw that. We also did anticipate that the night would go relatively long because some of these states would take longer to come in. But I think it was, you know, really after polls close, there was nothing that we saw throughout the day. There was nothing that we saw that told us there was overwhelming turnout or anything out of complete expectations on Trump's side. But it really took us into the hours of polls closing for us to know for sure that things were not tightening. They were tight, but they weren't tightening in the direction we needed them to be.

And is that just because Trump's turnout was so high? Well,

honestly, I think it's a little bit mixed. I mean, we saw certainly Trump turnout high in early vote. We really believe that to be mode shifting. And that's what I think it was. I think we also saw turnout was as expected in rural areas. Like we didn't see anything that said, you know, like maybe we saw in 16 or even in 20 that he had more turnout than we had anticipated. And our analytics really was quite close, much closer than it had been in 20 and in 16. But I do think we saw some lighter turnout in some of the areas we had hoped, but difference of a point here or there, which obviously in a close race makes a huge difference. And then I think we saw a little bit of a drop in support in a few areas for us. So that ultimately, I think, is why we weren't able to close the gap. It wasn't so much that what we were seeing the battlegrounds was out of expectation or that he had some hidden turnout we hadn't picked up on.

So we're going to start here. This is Jen O'Malley, Dylan. This whole interview, especially at certain points, is so defensive that you just kind of strip through that to kind of get to the nectar in the center of it. The big key here, and this is a general theme throughout this entire interview, is everybody wants you to know that they're not an idiot. A lot of this is them having a conversation with people that are online. So it makes a lot more sense when you think about it in that perspective. But let's get into the kind of specific nutritious bits to it. They believed very much that the Donald Trump early vote surge, this is something that I told you a lot about on this show, was mode shifting. So that means that they believed that there was not a surge of new Trump voters. This was just election day Trump voters that were voting early, which means he would have a lower election day vote that would help them. So that partly explains the idea of why they were so enthusiastic going into election day. And they were talking about, oh, we're closing good. We're closing good. We're closing good. Is because they believe Donald Trump's support was being cannibalized into early vote. That did not wind up being true, but it makes some kind of sense, I guess, if that is what you have gaslit yourself into believing. There's a lot of that coming up. She does have to say this, that no matter whether or not it's true, again, that was the campaign's narrative going into election day. But we get to the root of the issue, and I have this written down specifically. I do think that we saw some lighter turnout in some of the areas we had hoped, but it's a difference of a point here or there, which obviously in a close race makes a huge difference. I'll add editorially, Dodoy. And then I think we saw a bit of a drop in support in a few areas for us. I think that's ultimately why we weren't able to close the gap. So from their perspective, they did not do enough to turn out their base. They did not do enough to activate the voters they were counting on to get over the finish line. Here we go.

We did have some progress with undecideds at late October. So it was a dead heat race. But, you know, at the end of the day, you know, the political atmosphere was pretty brutal. And that's not an excuse. You had right track, wrong track. I think 2872, about 70 percent of the country saying they were angry and dissatisfied. You had Trump's approval rating on his first term, frustratingly high, 48 to 51, depending on the state. Obviously, the incumbent president's approval rating around 38 to 41, depending on the state. And, you know, I think the economy and inflation is still driving a lot of votes. So I think given that we had a challenging political environment, the fact that we got the race to dead heat was positive. But boy, it was slow moving. And I think we were focused on seven states. You know, that's our windshield into the world, the battleground states. But, you know, what we saw on election day was, you know, New Jersey and California and Connecticut and New York, massive shifts. So I think where Kamala Harris campaigned, we were able to keep the tide down a little bit, but it ended up being a pretty strong, you know, tailwind for Donald Trump. And I think it's worth reminding everybody we saw in 22, even though that was a pretty decent Democratic year, we saw these shifts, we saw them in 20, we saw them in 16. You know, Trump specifically, but Republicans generally improving their vote share amongst non-college voters, particularly non-college voters of color. And this was a surprising race because Kamala Harris actually did, I think, better with senior voters than I think a lot of people would have thought. So margin of error race where we inherited a deficit, we got it to even, but the thing never moves. There

are two things that the Harris Walls team would like you to come out of this conversation understanding. Number one, there were historic headwinds. Headwinds, a challenging environment against Kamala Harris. And this is something that I was telling you guys from the beginning. I said from the beginning with Biden, I said from the beginning with Harris, at the end of the day, this is a 60-30 right track, wrong track country. It's going to be very hard and challenging for Kamala Harris or Joe Biden to win when people see the country going in that pore of a direction. Usually it's a throw the bums out situation. So you can create whatever the other narrative that you want around it, but you run yourself the risk of just creating a get a a echo chamber that you yourself believe if you don't understand this one very clear clarion call coming from the populace it sucks now it's still a bit of excuse making because everybody knew this and you should have known it. So if you're in a situation where you are in a 60-30 right track, wrong track, then you got to shake it up. You can't just min-max a normal campaign. Big things have to change. need to demonstrate through actions that this is not acceptable i understand where you're coming from and i'm gonna do something different because if you try to just be elegant about it it just doesn't make any sense All right. We got a little bit on the polling internally.

No, I mean, it was just basically a race that in the battlegrounds was 46, 47, 47, 48. So that's not where we started. We started behind. She was able to climb out. I think even after the debate, we might've gained what 0.51. It wasn't a race that moved a lot. And so I think when you think about our own internal analytics, you know, if you have Wisconsin at 47-47 or Pennsylvania 48-47 Trump, let's say, which I think is where we had it at the end, you know, you've got to have undecided to break your way more than your opponents. And you've got to get a little benefit from turnout, which we weren't able to do.

So here we go. We get a sense of the Harris campaigns polling specifically that their campaign analytics never showed the most bullish case that in some places were being shown by public polls, meaning Kamala Harris over 50 percent in some of the swing states. They never saw that. They were seeing things at 47, 47, 47, 48, 46, 47. That means that they understood Kamala Harris was going to be in a depressed position polling wise, which is danger. Will Robinson danger. I said on the show repeatedly that if Kamala Harris consistently polls at 47, then Donald Trump is the 47th president. She actually wound up doing better. But what they did not in any way see coming was Donald Trump doing better. In fact, totally missing from any of this conversation whatsoever, something that I'm going to get into with Ed and Germantam a little bit later. And that is, you need to think of donald trump as a popular candidate they certainly did not but the low public polling in their internal analytics does speak to some of the super a schizophrenic idea of how were messaging. If they were not seeing anything really take root in their favor, then it explains how they go from, boy, are they weird, Brad Summer, coconut memes, am I right? To the man is Hitler and he will round up you and your family if you don't vote Harris. Let's go to this. This is a Quentin folks who you are about to hear. Were

you able to do any thinking or planning in that one month period about what a race with the vice president would look like or did you have to sort of start cold on that first day, the moment you got the call or the statement went out? I mean, we started cold. There was no planning involved in any other candidates. I mean, we were honestly in crisis management mode of keeping President Biden in the race, convincing Democratic allies that he could still do this. And one of the things was trying to keep the president out on the road as much. We were still doing everything we could from a campaign, and he made the decision that he did not want to continue on. And he pulled some of the senior leadership together and said that he was going to be with the vice president. It also wasn't anything that our team took for granted to just say, okay, she is the nominee. We knew that there was still a situation where we had to sure up delegates. And that's where we started from. And then after that point, that is when we begin to say, OK,

how can we define her? So Quentin Foulkes is somebody that I thought was probably came off the best in this interview. He was the most kind of no BS, at least of those four. He ran Raphael Warnock's campaign in Georgia. In my estimation, he's probably somebody that will be highly sought after after this. I don't know if I could say the same about the other three, Jenna Malley-Dillon, Stephanie Cutter, or David Plouffe. One has to wonder that if you were going back in time and you were switching from Biden to Harris, whether or not it might have also made sense to put Quentin Fulks at the top of the leadership. I think he will probably get his chance to do that going forward. But I just wanted to play that clip so you guys know. Quentin Falks, a name that I think that you're probably going to hear more of. The rest of these names, not so much. Hey, how many days did the Harris Walls campaign have?

So in 107 days, you know, what typically takes us a year and a half, two years in a presidential campaign, we were defining someone who was wholly undefined from the start. Huh. That's

a specific number of days. So this is

where there was a price to be paid for the short campaign. And you can't even say 107 days because to Quentin's point, some of that was spent shoring up the Democratic nomination.

Well, I'll be.

It was even less than that specific number of days. We spent much more time trying to raise the stakes of a second term than re-arbitrating the first because voters just weren't open to that. So that's why pointing out, you know, his tariff and what that would mean in terms of a huge sales tax for the American people, the fact that he's more unhinged, he wants unchecked power. Project 2025 ended up being about as popular as the Ebola virus. So we did a lot of good work there. And now, of course, the son of a bitch lied about it. And he's hiring everybody who authored it. Project 2025 is going to be the Trump administration agenda, as we pointed out.

So not to make this a, I was really right about this race. I was right. I was right about a lot of stuff. And this is one of the things that always confused me. And that's like, oh, we are radiated. We made Project 2025 less popular than the Ebola virus. And you're right. You did. It went from something that was not on the radar at all to something that was extremely negative and the Trump campaign eventually had to distance themselves from. The problem is that the Trump campaign really didn't care about Project 2025. Project 2025 did not mean anything to Republican voters, so Trump distancing himself from it didn't really cost him anything. And essentially, you spent a lot of time and a lot of money and a lot of effort defining something that Trump could get credit for walking away from. You made a trash barge, a toxic waste dump, and then allowed the person that you're trying to beat to push it away off into the sea. I never got Project 2025 as a strategy because of that. You don't need to invent a scary brand. Donald Trump is the scary brand. Make that brand scary to invent something else or to highlight something else. Again, I think there are probably voters considering how bipartisan his support was that gave him credit for walking away from it. You made it up. You made a villain. He was able to get credit for walking away from it and all you were left to do was say boo hoo hoo he's lying great trade those credits in at the sizzler and see if you get to the baked potato bar hey how many days did they have in this race i

think that in a 107 day race it is very difficult to do all the things you would normally do in a year and a half, two years. Damn,

you know, 107 days. That's wild. There's a fair amount of self-delusion on this podcast, and I want to highlight one of the pinnacles of it. Here's a clip. I believe this is Jen O'Malley Dillon.

Anywhere we campaign in all seven of these states, where Donald Trump, by the way, campaigned to he did worse and we did better. And we did make real progress against these national headwinds. If in every other state but the battlegrounds, there was a negative eight point shift to the right in the battlegrounds. There was only three. So we needed it to be better than that. And perhaps if we had more time, we could have done that.

So again, everybody in this is trying to get hired again. Everybody in this is trying to prove to everybody that was around them and all the donors that gave them money that they are competent. And so you do a lot of explaining why what you did was good. And it's like, Oh, well, yeah, we got blown out in all the other states, but the states that we actually cared about, that we actually worked on, that we actually put money into, then we only lost those by 3% compared to 2020. Well, cool. All those states were decided by less than 3% in the previous election. So you lost. You lost all seven swing states. This is not something to brag about. You know. I know that they're not going to do this because, again, it's career suicide. Although maybe, I don't know, radical honesty sometimes has its place. But there's not a lot of lessons that you should take out of this campaign. You really shouldn't. When you have that much money and you have a chance at a fresh start, if you're assuming that Kamala Harris is a fresh start compared to Joe Biden, you know, what else do you want? Like, granted, it's not the ideal situation, but nobody running for president is in an ideal situation unless you're a popular incumbent. And you weren't a popular incumbent. So congratulations, you had about as good a shot as anybody. You had a better shot than most financially. This clip blows my mind. This is Stephanie Cutter. And I think it is emblematic of the ability for the modern Democratic Party to gaslight themselves into pure fictions. Here we go. Stephanie Cutter.

So we did talk about things like she's a different generation. Most of her career is from outside of Washington, not inside Washington. So she knows a lot of the best ideas are from across the country. Her career has been about reaching across the aisle, finding common sense ways to get things done. It's not been based in ideological politics. All of these things, we were trying to tell a story and give the impression that she was different without pointing to a specific issue. I

want to break down what you just heard. All right. So we did talk about things like she's of a different generation. She's 50 years old. All right. So she's of a different, granted, 28 years younger than Donald Trump, who's the oldest candidate, and more than that to Joe Biden, but she's 50, right? So she's not the Barack Obama very beginning of his political campaign. Not bad, right? New generation, eh, okay. Most of her career is from outside of Washington, not inside Washington. It's all from California, okay? She grew up in California, was a California politician, came to California, or came to D.C. as a representative from California, and then went to the White House. But if you talk about her being, most of her career was from outside Washington, is from California Okay? The most identifiably proud progressive state in the union. She didn't come from Iowa. She didn't come from Michigan. She didn't come from Texas, Florida, Georgia,orgia wisconsin new york anywhere she came from california and if you don't recognize that that branding cannot just be painted over by saying well she was from outside washington she's from california it carries with it a reputation especially now if you want to understand modern politics man i all right this is another quote here she knows a lot of her best ideas are from across the country yes across the plains in california the most proudly progressive state in the union her career has been about reaching across the aisle finding common sense ways to get things done. This is a lie. This is just like, I mean, you can just say things that aren't true and you can hope people believe them. But Kamala Harris came from a one party state and then had no meaningful reaching across the aisle moments when she was a Senator before she became a member of the White House. Whether or not it was progressive or centrism, there was never a question that Kamala Harris was a ready, willing, and able Democratic vote. She wasn't Kyrsten Sinema.