A brand new leaked Democratic Party “autopsy” of former Vice President Kamala Harris’ failed bid for the presidency in 2024 is causing quite a stir online as it reveals what former First Lady Jill Biden’s role was in the campaign following her husband’s own humiliating resignation as the nominee. According to a 192-page dossier, the Harris campaign treated Jill as though she were a political queen and all-important asset, while leaving Harris herself flat-footed when Democrats pivoted to her as the nominee.
The dossier was commissioned by the Democratic National Committee and revealed that the White House at the time ordered tons of polling completed on the settings, issues, and messaging that the former first lady should put to use in order to give her husband’s presidency a boost. However, the report then goes on to say that there was no such effort made to evaluate Harris, test her messaging, or create any kind of research backbone for a potential future campaign.
An oversight of epic magnitude, the gap quickly morphed into a mad scramble in July 2024 when then-President Joe Biden had his arm twisted into stepping aside as the nominee after an embarrassing debate performance against then-candidate Donald Trump in June. Harris was immediately shoved into the nomination with the election rapidly approaching.
According to a report from Trending Politics News, the report stated that pollsters rushed three emergency studies into the field once Harris was made the nominee due to the research pipeline being empty. Paul Rivera, a highly experienced Democratic strategist, who wrote the report, referred to it as a “massive missed opportunity,” going on to add the White House never positioned its own vice president to take over for the president.
“As a result, at the moment of the candidate switch the polling team discovered there was no self-research on the Vice President to guide the development of the research instruments,” Rivera said in the report. “An incumbent Vice President. With no research to share once she became the nominee.” The strategist then made the case that years were wasted by Democrats that could have been preparing Harris for this very scenario.
“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,” he said. Rivera’s report then takes the proverbial ax to the Biden White House for not pushing back hard enough as the GOP successfully branded Harris as the administration’s border czar during the thick of the immigration crisis.
Ultimately, this issue became a dark cloud hanging over Harris’ head as voters headed to the polls in November 2024. “The national campaign did not effectively drive Trump’s negatives, and the White House did not effectively support Vice President Harris over three and a half years to improve her standing before the candidate switch,” he stated in the report.
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Later in the report, Rivera notes that the damage done to the Democratic Party with Harris’ train wreck of a campaign could have been even worse had Biden remained the nominee following his highly criticized debate performance. The report revealed that dial-testing during that debate “demonstrated the weakness of the President’s performance.”
Biden became the first president since Lyndon B. Johnson in 1968 to drop a reelection bid, leaving his vice president with only 107 days to create a national campaign against Trump and his well-oiled machine that was already going full steam. After the dossier was written, DNC Chair Ken Martin resisted publishing it at first, but then later changed his mind after receiving criticism from his party.
Martin later confessed that trying to bury the report was a huge mistake that led to an unnecessary controversy for Democrats. Left-leaning media outlet CNN published the dossier with annotations from the DNC disputing the accuracy of several claims, which, according to TPN, underscored “just how raw the intraparty finger-pointing remains as Democrats sift through what went wrong and who, exactly, was calling the shots when it mattered most.”