As the dust settles from President-elect Donald Trump’s landslide victory in the 2024 presidential election, Vice President Kamala Harris’s team is beginning to diagnose what went wrong. According to reports, Lindy Li, a member of the Democratic National Committee Finance Committee and Pennsylvania Commissioner, Harris’ running mate Tim Walz is partially to blame for the massive loss.
After interviewing Li, Fox News Senior White House Correspondent Jacqui Heinrich took to X, sharing her findings from the Democratic operative. “Tim Walz was a bad choice of running mate; Shapiro would have carried the blue wall states,” Heinrich explained before sharing a quote from Li, suggesting a different running mate, such as Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, would’ve been a better choice.
Li said, “People are wondering tonight what would have happened had Shapiro been on the ticket. And not only in terms of Pennsylvania. He’s a famously a moderate. So that would have signaled to the American people that she is not the San Francisco liberal that Trump said she was, but she went with someone actually to her left Minnesota….In the eyes of the American people, Walz was the governor who oversaw the protests.”
The senior White House correspondent added, “Harris’ positions were not clearly staked out.” This was a common criticism against the Harris campaign, where many felt that the vice president could not properly articulate her agenda. When asked substantive questions, Harris would often give word salad answers and avoid directly answering the question. Furthermore, Harris appeared to have significantly changed her stances on key issues compared to the last election cycle.
“She knows was a mistake was to say on The View that she couldn’t think of a single thing that she would do differently from the Biden administration,” Li said. “That was opener for her to show Americans that she’s going to get tough on the border, that she’s going to take drastic measures to bring down inflation. That was her chance. And she knew that she maybe should have were two things differently when in the next 40 minutes, she said I would appoint a Republican to the cabinet. So she walked that back a little bit.”
Furthermore, Heinrich called out Harris and the Democratic Party’s attempt to convince voters that Trump was a fascist, often comparing him to Hitler. “The focus on fascism was not working,” she said. Li added, “Future Forward, they were right.” The Fox News correspondent further stated, “Too many cooks in the kitchen led to muddled campaign messaging, poor staffing decisions in key battlegrounds.” The high-ranking DNC member weighed in that they had made suggestions to Harris regarding staffing.
Li opined, “She heard us. We raised serious concerns about the Pennsylvania campaign’s leadership. She actually installed someone on her own people in the final weeks of the campaign, but I fear it was too late….We should have people who deeply understand, intimately understand the contours of the state rather than out-of-state operatives who move from campaign to campaign.”
“Harris team was expecting a protracted legal fight – even extended hotel rooms for big donors thru Thursday. Now they’re going home,” Heinrich added, highlighting other controversies. Li claimed, “We were expecting Trump to declare victory, you know, regardless of the outcome…we probably can’t win at this point just given all the factors.”
Watch Tim Walz react to Vice President Kamala Harris’ concession speech:
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