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Exclusive: The Harris Campaign On What Went Wrong · Pod Save America

• 0:19
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. We have
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: a special show for you today. I am here in Washington, D.C.,
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: where I'm about to sit down with the leadership of
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: the Harris-Walls campaign, for their first interview about what happened
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: in the election. Last week, Michael Tyler, who's the communications
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: director for the campaign, called me and said that they
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: were ready to speak and that they wanted to have
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: that conversation on Pod Save America. This is the first
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: time that any of them have done an interview since
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: the election. They don't pretend to have all the answers here.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: There's way more to cover than we could possibly cover
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: in one podcast. This is the beginning of a conversation
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: about understanding what happened in 2024 and learning the lessons
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: that Democrats are going to need going forward. Here in
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: Washington with me are Harris-Wallace campaign manager, Jenna Malley-Dillon, Quentin Fulks,
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: who is the deputy campaign manager and oversaw paid advertising,
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: Stephanie Cutter, who oversaw messaging and communications, and joining by
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: Zoom is David Ploth, who consulted on all of it. Jen, Quentin, Stephanie, David,
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: thanks for joining us. Thank you for doing this. Very
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: much appreciate you having this conversation with us here on
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: Pod Save America. Just a level set, Jen, and I'll
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: start with you. How did you feel going into election day,
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: and at what point did you have a sense that
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: things were beginning to break Trump's way? Was there a
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: county result, something about the turnout? Like, was there a
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: moment when you sort of understood that how it was
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: going to end?
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: Well, the truth is that we really thought this was
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: a very close race. We talked about the entire time
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: we saw it as a margin of error race, almost
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: the entire time the vice president was in the race.
• 1:50
  Speaker 3: And we knew we.
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: Had to have strong turnout on election day. We saw
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: early vote really ending strong for us. And saw, you know,
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: the types of voters we wanted to see turnout. But,
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: you know, we expected this to be close. We also
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: expected that Florida was going to come in a bit redder. Virginia,
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: we knew, was tracking to being, you know, that we
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: were going to be ahead, but that we would be
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: ahead by less than we were in 2020. So we
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: were expecting to see that when we saw that. We
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: also did anticipate that the night would go relatively long
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: because some of these states would take longer to come in.
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: But I think it was really after polls closed. There
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: was nothing that we saw throughout the day. There was
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: nothing that we saw that told us there was overwhelming
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: turnout or anything out of complete expectations on Trump's side.
• 2:40
  Speaker 3: But it really took us into.
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: The hours of polls closing for us to know for
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: sure that things were not tightening. They were tight, but
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: they weren't tightening in the direction we needed them to be.
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: And is that just because Trump's turnout was so high Well, honestly.
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: I think it's a little bit mixed. I mean, we
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: saw certainly Trump turnout high in early vote. We really
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: believe that to be mode shifting. And that's what I
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: think it was. I think we also saw turnout was
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: as expected in rural areas. Like we didn't see anything
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: that said, you know, like maybe we saw in 16
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: or even in 20 that he had more turnout than
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: we had anticipated. And our analytics really was quite close,
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: much closer than it had been in 20 and in 16.
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: But I do think we saw some lighter turnout in
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: some of the areas we had hoped, but difference of
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: a point here or there, which obviously in a close
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: race makes a huge difference. And then I think we
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: saw a little bit of a drop in support in
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: a few areas for us. So that ultimately, I think,
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: is why we weren't able to close the gap. It
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: wasn't so much that what we were seeing in the
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: battlegrounds was out of expectation or that he had some
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: hidden turnout we hadn't picked up on.
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: David, when you say it was a margin of error race,
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: you needed high turnout, what did your polls tell you
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: where the race was heading into Election Day?
• 3:58
  Speaker 4: Well, Dan, you and I talked prior to the election,
• 4:00
  Speaker 4: and just to rewind, I think when Kamala Harris became
• 4:03
  Speaker 4: the nominee, she was behind. We kind of climbed back.
• 4:08
  Speaker 4: And even post-debate, we still had ourselves down in the
• 4:12
  Speaker 4: battleground states, but very close. And so I think by
• 4:16
  Speaker 4: the end, it was a jump ball race. And I
• 4:18
  Speaker 4: think we needed some things to break our way. Maybe
• 4:20
  Speaker 4: Trump's election day turnout would underperform. Our election day turnout would,
• 4:24
  Speaker 4: you know, either be at level or overperform. And, you know,
• 4:28
  Speaker 4: we'd win more of the people who decided in the
• 4:30
  Speaker 4: last three or four days. I think our data and
• 4:32
  Speaker 4: the New York Times data and other public data suggested
• 4:35
  Speaker 4: we did have some progress with undecideds at late October.
• 4:38
  Speaker 4: So it was a dead heat race. But, you know,
• 4:41
  Speaker 4: at the end of the day, um, you know, the
• 4:43
  Speaker 4: political atmosphere was pretty brutal. And that's not an excuse.
• 4:46
  Speaker 4: You had right track, wrong track, I think 2872, about
• 4:50
  Speaker 4: 70% of the country saying they were angry and dissatisfied.
• 4:54
  Speaker 4: You had Trump's approval rating on his first term, frustratingly
• 4:58
  Speaker 4: high 48 to 51, depending on the state. Obviously, the
• 5:01
  Speaker 4: incumbent president's approval rating around 38 to 41, depending on
• 5:05
  Speaker 4: the state. And, you know, I think the economy and
• 5:09
  Speaker 4: inflation still driving a lot of votes. So I think
• 5:12
  Speaker 4: given that we had a challenging political environment, the fact
• 5:15
  Speaker 4: that we got the race to dead heat was positive,
• 5:19
  Speaker 4: but boy, it was slow moving. And I think we
• 5:22
  Speaker 4: were focused on seven states. That's our windshield into the world,
• 5:26
  Speaker 4: the battleground states. But what we saw on election day
• 5:30
  Speaker 4: was New Jersey and California and Connecticut and New York,
• 5:36
  Speaker 4: massive shifts. So I think where Kamala Harris campaigned, we
• 5:39
  Speaker 4: were able to keep the tide down a little bit,
• 5:42
  Speaker 4: but it ended up being a pretty strong, you know,
• 5:45
  Speaker 4: tailwind for Donald Trump. And I think it's worth reminding
• 5:48
  Speaker 4: everybody we saw in 22, even though that was a
• 5:51
  Speaker 4: pretty decent Democratic year, we saw these shifts. We saw
• 5:55
  Speaker 4: them in 20. We saw them in 16. You know,
• 5:57
  Speaker 4: Trump specifically, but Republicans generally improving their vote share amongst
• 6:02
  Speaker 4: non-college voters, particularly non-college voters of color. And this was
• 6:06
  Speaker 4: a surprising race because Kamala Harris actually did, I think,
• 6:09
  Speaker 4: better with senior voters than I think a lot of
• 6:11
  Speaker 4: people would have thought. So margin of error race where
• 6:14
  Speaker 4: we inherited a deficit, we got it to even, but
• 6:18
  Speaker 4: the thing never moved. So to Jen's point, I think
• 6:20
  Speaker 4: we were, you know, we were hopeful. I don't know
• 6:23
  Speaker 4: how optimistic we were, but we thought, OK, this is tied.
• 6:26
  Speaker 4: And if a couple of things break our way and listen,
• 6:28
  Speaker 4: I'm not even this way. I just thought at the
• 6:30
  Speaker 4: end of the day, particularly because Trump did not close well,
• 6:33
  Speaker 4: I thought. And I thought Kamala Harris closed well. Trump
• 6:36
  Speaker 4: was reminding people some of the things they don't like
• 6:38
  Speaker 4: about him, that that might give us what we needed.
• 6:41
  Speaker 4: But at the end of the day, I think the
• 6:42
  Speaker 4: political atmosphere, the desire for change, all those fundamentals that
• 6:46
  Speaker 4: you've spent a lot of time talking about really presented
• 6:49
  Speaker 4: huge challenges for us. So, you know, we got there,
• 6:53
  Speaker 4: but we didn't get the breaks we needed on election day.
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: How deep was the hole that she had to climb
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: out of?
• 6:58
  Speaker 4: Well, Jen, I mean, I think, listen, there was the
• 7:00
  Speaker 4: Biden Trump 1.0, which is obviously pretty catastrophic in terms
• 7:03
  Speaker 4: of where the race stood. When we got in, my
• 7:06
  Speaker 4: recollection is some of that snapped back, but we were behind.
• 7:09
  Speaker 4: I mean, I think it surprised people because there was
• 7:12
  Speaker 4: these public polls that came out in late September, early October,
• 7:16
  Speaker 4: showing us with leads that we never saw. I mean,
• 7:19
  Speaker 4: it was just basically a race that in the battlegrounds
• 7:21
  Speaker 4: was 46, 47, 47, 48. So that's not where we started.
• 7:23
  Speaker 4: We started behind. She was able to climb out. I
• 7:29
  Speaker 4: think even after the debate, we might have gained, what, 0.51?
• 7:33
  Speaker 4: It wasn't a race that moved a lot. And so
• 7:36
  Speaker 4: I think when you think about our own internal analytics,
• 7:39
  Speaker 4: you know, if you have Wisconsin at 47-47 or Pennsylvania
• 7:44
  Speaker 4: 48-47 Trump, let's say, which I think is where we
• 7:47
  Speaker 4: had it at the end, you know, you've got to
• 7:49
  Speaker 4: have undecided, break your way more than your opponents, and
• 7:52
  Speaker 4: you've got to get a little benefit from turnout, which
• 7:54
  Speaker 4: we weren't able to do.
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: Obviously, the defining event of this race was the candidate switch.
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: And everything, every decision you guys had to make, everything
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  Speaker 1: you had to do was defined also by the compressed
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: calendar in which you were operating. And Quentin, you were
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: there when that switch happened. Were you able, there was
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: a one month period between the debate and when the
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: president actually dropped out. Obviously, it seemed like dropping out
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: could be a possibility. Were you able to do any
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: thinking or planning in that one month period about what
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: a race with the vice president would look like? Or
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: did you have to sort of start cold on that
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: first day, the moment you got the call or the
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: statement went out?
• 8:33
  Speaker 5: I mean, we started cold. There was no planning involved
• 8:36
  Speaker 5: in any other candidates. I mean, we were honestly in
• 8:39
  Speaker 5: crisis management mode of keeping President Biden in the race,
• 8:43
  Speaker 5: convincing Democratic allies that he could still do this. And
• 8:47
  Speaker 5: one of the things was trying to keep the president
• 8:49
  Speaker 5: out on the road as much. We were still doing
• 8:51
  Speaker 5: everything we could from a campaign. And he made the
• 8:52
  Speaker 5: decision that He did not want to continue on. And
• 8:56
  Speaker 5: he pulled some of the senior leadership together and said
• 8:59
  Speaker 5: that he was going to be with the vice president.
• 9:02
  Speaker 5: It also wasn't anything that our team took for granted
• 9:04
  Speaker 5: to just say, OK, she is the nominee. We knew
• 9:06
  Speaker 5: that there was still a situation where we had to
• 9:08
  Speaker 5: sure up delegates. And that's where we started from. And
• 9:11
  Speaker 5: then after that point, that is when we begin to say, OK,
• 9:15
  Speaker 5: how can we define her? Also, Trump's favorabilities numbers were
• 9:18
  Speaker 5: creeping up, as Plouffe said, and we had to do
• 9:20
  Speaker 5: something about that as well. And so it was a
• 9:21
  Speaker 5: lot of walking and chewing gum at the same time.
• 9:23
  Speaker 5: But there really was no sort of contingency planning to
• 9:27
  Speaker 5: turn the race over to her right after that debate
• 9:28
  Speaker 5: or at any point until President Biden definitively said he
• 9:32
  Speaker 5: wasn't going to continue on.
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  Speaker 1: Stephanie, I think what probably surprised a lot of people
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: in politics was the vice president was a largely unknown
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: quantity to much of the electorate. So you guys, under
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: a very short time frame, had to do two things.
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: As Quinn said, you had to teach people about her.
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: And also make a case against Donald Trump, who would
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: just come off, he was at an all-time high, come
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: off the assassination attempt, the debate against the president. In
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: terms of messaging, how did you think about the balance
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: between the two?
• 9:58
  Speaker 6: Well, the first thing we had to do is put
• 9:59
  Speaker 6: on a show. a convention. And we had about three
• 10:02
  Speaker 6: weeks to flip a convention that was being built around
• 10:05
  Speaker 6: Joe Biden. So we were able to flip it, you know,
• 10:09
  Speaker 6: to fit this very new character of a different generation,
• 10:15
  Speaker 6: different experience, different background. And Looking at the data at
• 10:20
  Speaker 6: the time, which Jen and Plouffe and Quentin have all
• 10:23
  Speaker 6: talked about, she had a huge deficit in favorability because
• 10:27
  Speaker 6: either people didn't know about her or what they did
• 10:29
  Speaker 6: know about her was based off of negative media. So
• 10:33
  Speaker 6: our first priority was to define her in that convention,
• 10:37
  Speaker 6: fill in her bio. As part of that, you know,
• 10:40
  Speaker 6: we already knew how to do the negative on Trump.
• 10:42
  Speaker 6: And we knew that there was a lot of Trumpnesia
• 10:44
  Speaker 6: out there. People didn't remember the four years of the
• 10:48
  Speaker 6: Trump campaign. administration that badly because they had been through hell.
• 10:52
  Speaker 6: They had been through COVID, both under his watch and
• 10:57
  Speaker 6: under President Biden's. I'm putting aside a lot of the
• 11:00
  Speaker 6: details of who's at fault and what Biden did to
• 11:03
  Speaker 6: dig us out and all of that. And then they
• 11:05
  Speaker 6: had a deal with inflation. So they had been through hell.
• 11:08
  Speaker 6: So looking back, you know, you remember a previous time
• 11:12
  Speaker 6: much more fondly because you've now think that you've gone
• 11:15
  Speaker 6: through the worst. So we had to remind people what
• 11:18
  Speaker 6: life was like. That was our second imperative. And then
• 11:21
  Speaker 6: the third imperative as part of the convention and leading
• 11:25
  Speaker 6: into the remaining days of the campaign is what's that choice?
• 11:28
  Speaker 6: What are the two very different visions between Trump and
• 11:32
  Speaker 6: Kamala Harris? So the convention demonstrated a lot of enthusiasm
• 11:37
  Speaker 6: for Kamala Harris, a lot of freshness, future-oriented, bringing a
• 11:42
  Speaker 6: variety of coalitions together. We had independents, Republicans, Democrats. business leaders,
• 11:48
  Speaker 6: sports figures, everybody coming together around a new way forward
• 11:52
  Speaker 6: and finally turning the page. So, you know, through the
• 11:56
  Speaker 6: rest of that campaign, through our next thing was the
• 11:59
  Speaker 6: debate just a few weeks later, and it was boom, boom, boom,
• 12:02
  Speaker 6: all the way through probably early October after the walls
• 12:04
  Speaker 6: debate that we had to move through these things so quickly.
• 12:08
  Speaker 6: Once we got through all of that, then the race
• 12:10
  Speaker 6: started to gel. And to the extent people were open
• 12:14
  Speaker 6: to remembering what life was like under Trump, we were
• 12:18
  Speaker 6: trying to fill that in. To the extent people had
• 12:20
  Speaker 6: questions about Kamala Harris, we were still trying to fill
• 12:23
  Speaker 6: that in. So in 107 days, what typically takes us
• 12:27
  Speaker 6: a year and a half, two years in a presidential campaign,
• 12:29
  Speaker 6: we were defining someone who was wholly undefined from the start,
• 12:33
  Speaker 6: trying to remind people about the opponent and what life
• 12:37
  Speaker 6: was like underneath him, and also take into account what
• 12:40
  Speaker 6: the political environment was and the realities that we had
• 12:43
  Speaker 6: to deal with, which, you know, she was the incumbent,
• 12:46
  Speaker 6: which was she really wasn't the incumbent. People didn't know
• 12:49
  Speaker 6: that much about her. The economy was still slightly getting better,
• 12:53
  Speaker 6: but we couldn't really take credit for it. So we
• 12:56
  Speaker 6: were in a bit of a crossroads trying to figure
• 12:58
  Speaker 6: out what that October messaging and closing messaging would look like.
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: Plouffe, there is a sort of a debate outside of
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: your campaign about the primary and most important thing to
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: do was to educate voters about Kamala Harris and that
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: voters sort of knew all they needed to know about Trump.
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: I take it you guys disagreed with that analysis and
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: you felt a need to at least knock his numbers
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: down a little bit. Is that right?
• 13:21
  Speaker 4: Of course. I mean, that is nonsense. So first of all,
• 13:25
  Speaker 4: back to where the question you were talking to Stephanie about.
• 13:29
  Speaker 4: Kamala Harris started this race, if I recall, with favorable
• 13:31
  Speaker 4: 33 to 35. She ended it at 48. She actually
• 13:35
  Speaker 4: ended the election with a higher approval rating than Donald Trump.
• 13:37
  Speaker 4: I'm not sure someone's won the presidency with a lower
• 13:41
  Speaker 4: approval rating. So I think as people got to know her,
• 13:44
  Speaker 4: they liked her. I think her approval rating now post-election
• 13:47
  Speaker 4: is north of 50. That was really hard work. And
• 13:48
  Speaker 4: I will say that, you know, think about if Kamala
• 13:52
  Speaker 4: Harris had come out of a process that was traditional,
• 13:56
  Speaker 4: running in and winning a primary. So maybe become the
• 13:58
  Speaker 4: nominee March or April. You know, you spend a month,
• 14:01
  Speaker 4: six weeks on your biography. You keep coming back to it.
• 14:04
  Speaker 4: You define the Trump first term. You raise the stakes
• 14:07
  Speaker 4: of what a Trump second term would be like. You
• 14:09
  Speaker 4: have like a month just to run paid advertising on
• 14:11
  Speaker 4: things like housing and your tax cut. So this is
• 14:15
  Speaker 4: where there was a price to be paid for the
• 14:17
  Speaker 4: short campaign. And you can't even say 107 days because
• 14:20
  Speaker 4: to Quentin's point, some of that was spent shoring up
• 14:23
  Speaker 4: the Democratic nomination. Then you really have to have said
• 14:26
  Speaker 4: everything you want to say by the time people start
• 14:28
  Speaker 4: voting early. So we had a little more than two
• 14:30
  Speaker 4: months to do bio, contrast on the economy, on healthcare,
• 14:35
  Speaker 4: raising the stakes of Trump. So yes, when you have
• 14:38
  Speaker 4: a race where you've got the current incumbent president with
• 14:41
  Speaker 4: approval ratings of let's say 38 to 40, never in
• 14:44
  Speaker 4: history have we had this before, at least since I
• 14:46
  Speaker 4: guess Grover Cleveland. So once you have a former president
• 14:50
  Speaker 4: running where 48 to 51% of the people approve of
• 14:53
  Speaker 4: his first term and people are dissatisfied with the direction
• 14:56
  Speaker 4: of the country, you have to raise the stakes of
• 15:00
  Speaker 4: what a second term would be like. So I think
• 15:03
  Speaker 4: for us, we spent much more time trying to raise
• 15:05
  Speaker 4: the stakes of a second term than re-arbitrating the first
• 15:07
  Speaker 4: because voters just weren't open to that. So that's why
• 15:11
  Speaker 4: pointing out his tariff and what that would mean in
• 15:13
  Speaker 4: terms of a huge sales tax for the American people,
• 15:16
  Speaker 4: the fact that he's more unhinged. He wants unchecked power.
• 15:19
  Speaker 4: Project 2025 ended up being about as popular as the
• 15:22
  Speaker 4: Ebola virus. So we did a lot of good work there.
• 15:25
  Speaker 4: And now, of course, the son of a bitch lied
• 15:27
  Speaker 4: about it. And he's hiring everybody who authored it. Project 2025.
• 15:31
  Speaker 4: is going to be the Trump administration agenda, as we
• 15:34
  Speaker 4: pointed out. So we had to do that. So if
• 15:36
  Speaker 4: we had just run a race solely on Kamala Harris positives,
• 15:40
  Speaker 4: though we did a lot of that on what Kamala
• 15:42
  Speaker 4: Harris wants to do on the economy, we did a
• 15:45
  Speaker 4: lot of that. It's worth reminding your listeners who live
• 15:47
  Speaker 4: in California or New York or Alabama or Florida, you're
• 15:51
  Speaker 4: not experiencing the presidential race as it's experienced in Pennsylvania, Michigan,
• 15:55
  Speaker 4: North Carolina. We spent a lot of time. She spent
• 15:58
  Speaker 4: a lot of time. driving a core economic message. But
• 16:01
  Speaker 4: in our view, that was not enough. When you've got
• 16:03
  Speaker 4: someone whose first term was judged favorably enough by enough
• 16:07
  Speaker 4: people to give him the election, and people are dissatisfied
• 16:10
  Speaker 4: about where you are now, and you're part of that administration,
• 16:13
  Speaker 4: you have to basically raise the stakes. And for us,
• 16:17
  Speaker 4: it was on the economy. It was on the fact
• 16:19
  Speaker 4: that all the people who stood in his way last
• 16:21
  Speaker 4: time were warning us about him. It was about Project 2025.
• 16:24
  Speaker 4: It was about abortion. And, you know, I think we
• 16:28
  Speaker 4: did a good job of that based on our data,
• 16:30
  Speaker 4: but we had to stay on that. So I think
• 16:32
  Speaker 4: that that is an incredibly faulty reading that what we
• 16:36
  Speaker 4: should have done is just lift up Kamala Harris. We
• 16:38
  Speaker 4: clearly did. Her favorability rating increased by, I believe, 15 points.
• 16:43
  Speaker 4: If you look at who do you trust more to
• 16:45
  Speaker 4: look out for people like your family, who do you
• 16:47
  Speaker 4: think is going to fight for the middle class? Huge
• 16:50
  Speaker 4: progress for Kamala Harris. Even on crime and immigration, we
• 16:53
  Speaker 4: were able to make double digit progress. So We were
• 16:55
  Speaker 4: very focused on lifting her up. But to win a
• 16:58
  Speaker 4: race like this, given the political atmospherics, which were quite challenging,
• 17:02
  Speaker 4: we had to raise the risk of a Trump second term.
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: Jed, you guys are obviously operating in a very, very
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: tough political environment. Income and president, very low approval ratings.
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: Liz Plouffe mentioned wrong track, right track, approval of the economy,
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: all very challenging. Also, in at least the public polling,
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: huge desire for change, right? Frustration with the status quo,
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: not just that's here in the United States, but we've
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: seen that across the world since COVID. Challenging place to
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: be if you were the vice president to the unpopular
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: incumbent president. I felt like much of the convention, as
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: Stephanie mentioned, was trying to make her a change candidate
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: to talk about turning the page. Can you talk a
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: little bit about how you tried to do that and
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: whether you think she could or should have done more
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: to distance herself from President Biden? Something that I think,
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: as evidenced by the answer on The View, she was
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: at least personally uncomfortable with?
• 17:51
  Speaker 6: Well, yeah.
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: I mean, look, first of all, I think people, when
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: they vote for president, want to vote about the future.
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: And they saw in the vice president someone they didn't know,
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: someone they didn't know.
• 18:01
  Speaker 3: A lot about a background.
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: So you know, who she was, what she stood for,
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: what she did as vice president. So in every step
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: of what we were trying to do, we had to
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: tell a pretty robust story in one ad or one
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: policy rollout or one event that you don't often have
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: to do because of the time we were in. But
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: I do think that we really focused from the get-go
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: on how she was different than everyone else, different than
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: Joe Biden, different than Donald Trump. And at the end
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: of the day, the choice was her versus Donald Trump.
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: And at the same time, you know, she was very
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: clear that she was a new generation of leadership, but
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: it wasn't just like a statement. It was, here's what
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: I need to focus on. Her first policy announcements were economic,
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: talking about housing, talking about lowering costs, understanding that people
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: really didn't feel like things were progressing in the way
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: that they wanted to, a la the right track, wrong
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: track data, but how she brought her own point of
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: view to thinking about housing. sandwich generation. That was probably
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: her biggest applause line, one of the best testing things
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: that we did. That wasn't a poll-tested, let's work on
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: this data to tell us this is the right.
• 19:12
  Speaker 3: Issue we should go talk about. That was about her life.
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: And also understanding what people in the country were really needing.
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: So I think that in a 107-day race, it is
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: very difficult to do all the things you would normally
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: do in a year and a half.
• 19:25
  Speaker 3: Two years.
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: But I think wherever we had an opportunity, the vice
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: president did put her own stamp on this and did
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: it in a deeper way than I think probably we
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: got the kind of full breadth of coverage on it.
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: Of course, when you have an administration that a lot
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: of progress has been made and you're part of that progress,
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: it's complicated when you're asked questions in certain ways.
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: But at the end of the day, I think.
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: She really, every time she talked to a voter, every
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: time she was out on the stump, she really leaned
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: into her own vision. But the headwinds were tough. I
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: will also, though, add, of course, we lost. So I'm
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: not here to say that that didn't happen. We would
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: much rather not have that happen. But where she campaigned,
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: We did way better than the rest of the country.
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: And Donald Trump did worse to the point that you
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: were just talking about with Plouffe. This idea that people
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: have just a well-constructed, already baked in idea about Trump
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: and they don't need to learn anymore is just complete fallacy.
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: I mean, his numbers are stronger today than they have
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: ever been. And that was critical for us. And we
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: also believe this race was not just about Kamala Harris.
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: It was Kamala Harris versus Donald Trump. And we had
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: to set that choice in that frame up. And I
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: think that we were able to anywhere we campaign in
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: all seven of these states where Donald Trump, by the way,
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: campaigned too. He did worse and we did better. And
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: we did make real progress against these national headwinds. If
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: in every other state but the battlegrounds, there was a
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: negative eight point shift to the right in the battlegrounds,
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: there was only three. So we needed it to be
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: better than that. And perhaps if we had more time,
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: we could have done that. But I think that's fundamental
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: that when people learn more about.
• 21:06
  Speaker 3: Her, understood what she stood for.
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: Where she came from and what her vision was, they
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: responded well to that. And they responded in a favorable way,
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: especially in contrast to, you.
• 21:16
  Speaker 3: Know, a point of view that Donald Trump will be worse.
• 21:19
  Speaker 3: And I think that's playing out right now.
• 21:20
  Speaker 6: And Dan, on the Biden question, we, of course, got
• 21:24
  Speaker 6: that everywhere we went. And we knew what the data was.
• 21:28
  Speaker 6: We knew we had to show her as her own
• 21:31
  Speaker 6: person and point to the future and not try to
• 21:34
  Speaker 6: rehash the past. But She also felt that she was
• 21:39
  Speaker 6: part of the administration. And unless we said something like, well,
• 21:43
  Speaker 6: I would have handled the border completely differently, we were
• 21:46
  Speaker 6: never going to satisfy anybody. So we did talk about
• 21:49
  Speaker 6: things like she's a different generation. Most of her career
• 21:53
  Speaker 6: is from outside of Washington, not inside Washington. So she
• 21:56
  Speaker 6: knows a lot of the best ideas are from across
• 21:59
  Speaker 6: the country. Her career has been about reaching across the aisle,
• 22:03
  Speaker 6: finding common sense ways to get things done. It's not
• 22:06
  Speaker 6: been based in ideological politics. All of these things, we
• 22:10
  Speaker 6: were trying to tell a story and give the impression
• 22:13
  Speaker 6: that she was different without pointing to a specific issue.
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: Can I ask this? Why not a specific issue? Is
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: it something she was unwilling to do? You're worried you
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: would feel disingenuous?
• 22:23
  Speaker 4: Because.
• 22:26
  Speaker 6: She felt like she was part of the administration. So
• 22:28
  Speaker 6: why should she look back and pick out cherry pick
• 22:30
  Speaker 6: some things that she would have done differently when she
• 22:32
  Speaker 6: was part of it? And she also she had tremendous
• 22:35
  Speaker 6: loyalty to President Biden. And, you know, if we had
• 22:39
  Speaker 6: said just imagine this. I mean, you've been on plenty
• 22:43
  Speaker 6: of campaigns. Imagine if we said, well, we would have
• 22:46
  Speaker 6: taken this approach on the border. Imagine the round of stories.
• 22:50
  Speaker 6: coming out after that of people saying, well, she never
• 22:53
  Speaker 6: said that in the meeting or what meeting when she
• 22:55
  Speaker 6: said this, or I remember when she did that. And
• 22:58
  Speaker 6: it was just, it wasn't going to give us what
• 23:01
  Speaker 6: we needed because it wouldn't be a clean break. It
• 23:04
  Speaker 6: would be, you know, days upon days in a limited
• 23:07
  Speaker 6: time window that we had of dealing of who, what, when, where.
• 23:12
  Speaker 6: So the best we could do and the most that
• 23:15
  Speaker 6: she felt comfortable with was saying like, look, Vice presidents
• 23:18
  Speaker 6: never break with their presidents. The only time in recent
• 23:21
  Speaker 6: memory is when Pence broke with Trump after Trump stormed
• 23:26
  Speaker 6: the Capitol.
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: They call that the murder exemption. If the president tries
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: to murder you, you can break.
• 23:34
  Speaker 6: If you are ripping up the Constitution, trying to overturn
• 23:37
  Speaker 6: an election, people die, then you can break with your president.
• 23:41
  Speaker 6: But absent that, vice presidents stick by their presidents. And
• 23:46
  Speaker 6: she wasn't willing to change that precedent for whoever the
• 23:50
  Speaker 6: future president vice presidential partnership would be, because it would
• 23:54
  Speaker 6: mean a whole different set of problems as if we
• 23:58
  Speaker 6: don't have enough problems in our democracy right now. So
• 24:01
  Speaker 6: unless we were willing to say, you know, Biden said
• 24:05
  Speaker 6: green and she said blue on any particular issue, we
• 24:08
  Speaker 6: were never really going to satisfy that. So our focus
• 24:11
  Speaker 6: was let's look to the future. Let's describe her and
• 24:13
  Speaker 6: her approach to things. Let's use policies, future looking policies
• 24:17
  Speaker 6: to demonstrate that difference. But in the end, you know,
• 24:21
  Speaker 6: we've all seen the data. It's the too many people
• 24:24
  Speaker 6: thought that you'd be a continuation, which on the economy was,
• 24:28
  Speaker 6: you know, the incumbent killer.
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: So, Quentin, in the post-election analysis, there's been a ton
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: of focus on the very ubiquitous trans ad that the
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: Trump campaign spent tens of millions of dollars on. There
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: have been sort of two strains of all this. One,
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: the sense that her position and the Democratic Party position
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: on trans-related issues were one of the reasons why we lost,
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: but also real questions about why the campaign decided not
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: to respond to the ad. Specifically, my understanding from reporting,
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: at least, is that you guys tested a bunch of
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: responses and it didn't and they didn't work. Just tell
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: me your thinking there and what role you think that
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: ad and those issues actually played.
• 25:15
  Speaker 5: In the race.
• 25:16
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 25:16
  Speaker 5: I mean, I think, you know, it's important to put
• 25:18
  Speaker 5: everything into context. We've, you know, very well established the
• 25:22
  Speaker 5: timeframe and it's honestly a lot shorter than 107 days,
• 25:25
  Speaker 5: but we had three core objectives to the paid media.
• 25:28
  Speaker 5: It was to define the vice president. It was to
• 25:30
  Speaker 5: defend her on incoming attacks. And a lot of these
• 25:33
  Speaker 5: attacks have been baked in for the past three and
• 25:35
  Speaker 5: a half years while she was the vice president, they
• 25:38
  Speaker 5: were attacking her. You know, she was at negative 20
• 25:41
  Speaker 5: something on immigration. We got that down to negative 10.
• 25:45
  Speaker 5: Trump had a positive 22 point advantage on the economy.
• 25:48
  Speaker 5: We got that down to seven. And we had to
• 25:50
  Speaker 5: respond to those things. And when you sort of looked
• 25:52
  Speaker 5: at the core issues, aside from the attacks, like trans
• 25:55
  Speaker 5: issues are just at the bottom for voters. The economy, inflation, crime,
• 26:00
  Speaker 5: immigration are the top issues. They were also some of
• 26:03
  Speaker 5: the issues that she was getting attacked on. And to
• 26:06
  Speaker 5: the element of sort of defining her and doing it
• 26:08
  Speaker 5: in a way that sort of fit within what you're
• 26:10
  Speaker 5: trying to do, there's a direct approach that you can
• 26:12
  Speaker 5: take to anything, and then there is an approach that
• 26:14
  Speaker 5: you can take that accomplishes two of the three objectives.
• 26:17
  Speaker 5: A lot of the stuff that we did, such as
• 26:20
  Speaker 5: talking about her prosecutorial background and then saying that she
• 26:23
  Speaker 5: went after transnational gangs, cartels, it was to push back
• 26:27
  Speaker 5: suitably on the immigration attacks that were coming at her,
• 26:30
  Speaker 5: as well as credentialing her background on things that were
• 26:34
  Speaker 5: absent and standalone of the Biden administration. We did a
• 26:37
  Speaker 5: lot of stuff about her record as AG, her record
• 26:40
  Speaker 5: as a prosecutor, not as vice president, because it also
• 26:43
  Speaker 5: allowed her to stand alone separate from the Biden administration.
• 26:46
  Speaker 5: On the trans attack, one, obviously it was a very
• 26:49
  Speaker 5: effective ad at the end. I ultimately don't believe that
• 26:52
  Speaker 5: it was about the issue of trans. I think that
• 26:54
  Speaker 5: it made her seem out of touch. And it was
• 26:57
  Speaker 5: sort of a pseudo-economic ad underneath it because he was
• 27:00
  Speaker 5: saying you're going to pay for it with taxpayer money.
• 27:02
  Speaker 5: And it was in her own words. And that's something.
• 27:04
  Speaker 5: But we tested a ton of responses to this, direct responses.
• 27:09
  Speaker 5: And none of them ever tested as well as basically
• 27:11
  Speaker 5: her talking about what she would do to Jen's point,
• 27:14
  Speaker 5: the future, the type of president that she would be.
• 27:17
  Speaker 5: There were elements of it where we did try to say,
• 27:20
  Speaker 5: you know, and we put ads on television of her saying,
• 27:22
  Speaker 5: you've seen all the negative attacks against me and try
• 27:24
  Speaker 5: to bottle it up. Because I also think you have
• 27:26
  Speaker 5: to think about the entire sentiment when you're running a
• 27:28
  Speaker 5: paid campaign. And the trans ad, I think because of
• 27:31
  Speaker 5: the content, a lot of people felt like it was
• 27:33
  Speaker 5: much bigger than what it was. But to put that
• 27:35
  Speaker 5: into context, Team Red, meaning Trump and all the super
• 27:38
  Speaker 5: PACs that were spending on Trump's behalf, that was 7%
• 27:41
  Speaker 5: of their total ads was on that issue.
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: Was that specific? I think it was two ads, right?
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: There was the original and then there was the one
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: with Charlamagne. And it was all Trump.
• 27:49
  Speaker 5: So Trump spent 37% of his $ 200 million on that ad,
• 27:55
  Speaker 5: but Trump wasn't the only spender. We were getting hit
• 27:57
  Speaker 5: across the board. And so you have to take into
• 28:00
  Speaker 5: account what all the super PACs are doing and play
• 28:02
  Speaker 5: off of that. And I think that's what Trump was doing.
• 28:04
  Speaker 5: His super PACs were hitting us on the economy, immigration,
• 28:07
  Speaker 5: and crime. And Trump even started hitting us on immigration.
• 28:09
  Speaker 5: And I think the veracity of which we came out
• 28:12
  Speaker 5: of the gate and responded to that, they weren't expecting
• 28:15
  Speaker 5: that from us. And then they backed off of that.
• 28:16
  Speaker 5: And at that point, they started going into it. And
• 28:18
  Speaker 5: so It is easy to say with the kind of
• 28:20
  Speaker 5: resources that we raised, we should have been able to
• 28:22
  Speaker 5: do everything, but that's not the case. You have to
• 28:25
  Speaker 5: make decisions in the timeframe that we were in, in
• 28:28
  Speaker 5: this race, we had to choose. And we chose to
• 28:31
  Speaker 5: focus more of our attention on one driving down Trump
• 28:34
  Speaker 5: because that was not being done in our ecosystem on
• 28:37
  Speaker 5: our side. And it was incredibly important that we did
• 28:39
  Speaker 5: that as well as defining her. And so if we
• 28:41
  Speaker 5: spent this entire race and not to be defensive about
• 28:44
  Speaker 5: it at all, but if we spent this entire race
• 28:46
  Speaker 5: pushing back on immigration attacks or crime attacks, and pushing
• 28:49
  Speaker 5: back against trans attacks, at what point are we bringing
• 28:52
  Speaker 5: Trump down and or introducing the vice president on our
• 28:56
  Speaker 5: own terms? We're playing on their field. And I think
• 28:58
  Speaker 5: that that was ultimately what went into it. But again,
• 29:00
  Speaker 5: it wasn't something that we missed. It's just all of
• 29:02
  Speaker 5: our testing told us that the approach that we were
• 29:04
  Speaker 5: taking of her being more positive and talking about the
• 29:07
  Speaker 5: economy and what she would do was a better tactic.
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: Not to be sort of overly nerdy about it, but
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: that 7% is total money spent, not number of ads run.
• 29:15
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: So it's higher than that terms of ads run because
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: it was candidate side ads, right?
• 29:19
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: But I mean- Probably like, do you know?
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: But we did, I mean, I would just add, we
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: did respond. What our testing showed, and look, there's no
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: easy answers to this.
• 29:29
  Speaker 7: Yeah, of course.
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: But we looked at this a lot and she never
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: got directly asked about it, but was you know, obviously
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: something we looked at in responding there. But we did
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: respond for the people that were getting this on digital.
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: And we did a ton more digital than the other
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: side did. But we definitely threw out ads to make
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: sure anyone that was getting these directly, we would be
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: engaging with them with a little bit more specific content. Obviously,
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: she spoke some of this in the Fox News interview
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: and the Trump administration oversight during this period. But we
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: saw that we could neutralize the ad, but we couldn't
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: actually put points on the board for us if we
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: responded in kind. So then you really have a question.
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: People don't know her. They need to know more about
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: who she is, what she stands for. They're concerned about
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: the economy. They're We need to push down Trump's numbers.
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: So how do you fit all of that in? And
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: what we tested showed us that ads that were much more,
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: as Quentin is saying, on the economy or other issues
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: that people cared more about actually had better response for
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: our testing than head to head. So, you know, as
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: we looked at this, the Trump side didn't close on
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: this issue. You know, obviously, economy was far more effective
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: and we had to really play the game there. And
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: we had a lot of work to do and we
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: were successful to a point. But that's sort of the
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: balance that we had. And while we had a lot
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: of resources in a short amount of time, we were
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: also trying to think about what does a person receive?
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: We looked at certainly testing, but we're looking at our qualitative.
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: And a lot of people thought it was very political.
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: They thought it was over the top. They had different
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: kind of points of view that didn't really anchor it
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: as a vote mover. But I know it anecdotally had
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: a lot of attention. And they played it in places
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: that we saw it and we monitored it as we went.
• 31:16
  Speaker 4: And I would just add, Dan, so both campaigns, super PACs,
• 31:20
  Speaker 4: there was a lot of national ads. So I think
• 31:21
  Speaker 4: if you're sitting in California or Texas or Florida, you
• 31:24
  Speaker 4: see this ad, you don't see any of our responses, right?
• 31:27
  Speaker 4: So in the battleground states, her talking in a very
• 31:32
  Speaker 4: common sense way, in a very practical way, whether it
• 31:35
  Speaker 4: be about immigration, whether it be about the economy, was
• 31:38
  Speaker 4: our best defense to... Because... This was less about trends
• 31:41
  Speaker 4: than it was about priorities and being out of the mainstream.
• 31:44
  Speaker 4: So I think these voters in the battleground states, both
• 31:46
  Speaker 4: through ads and through seeing her doing local interviews, and
• 31:50
  Speaker 4: I think that's one of the reasons you had such
• 31:51
  Speaker 4: a difference between the battleground states and the non-battleground states
• 31:54
  Speaker 4: is people knew her better, number one. Number two, as
• 31:57
  Speaker 4: Jen said, it's very easy these days to understand who
• 32:01
  Speaker 4: has experience in ads. So we were feeding a lot
• 32:03
  Speaker 4: of digital ads to people who might have saw that spot. But,
• 32:07
  Speaker 4: you know, at the end of the day, we were
• 32:08
  Speaker 4: spending a lot of time with voters in these battleground states,
• 32:11
  Speaker 4: both quantitatively and quantitatively. And this trans ad was not
• 32:15
  Speaker 4: driving vote. I mean, the most effective ad, Quentin, I
• 32:17
  Speaker 4: think they ran was not that. It was the Bidenomics ad, right?
• 32:21
  Speaker 4: Because that was kind of core to people's concern. It
• 32:25
  Speaker 4: was like, well, maybe you're not change. You're defending an
• 32:28
  Speaker 4: economic program that I don't think has helped me. Listen,
• 32:30
  Speaker 4: I think we are very proud of what Joe Biden
• 32:33
  Speaker 4: and Kamala Harris and Democrats did. to help us dig
• 32:36
  Speaker 4: out of the pandemic, but people weren't feeling it. So
• 32:38
  Speaker 4: that was more effective. So I think in many respects,
• 32:41
  Speaker 4: my concern here, as we think about the future, is
• 32:45
  Speaker 4: if there's a belief that if only we had responded
• 32:49
  Speaker 4: to this trans ad with national and huge battleground state ads,
• 32:53
  Speaker 4: we would have won. I don't think that's true, number one.
• 32:56
  Speaker 4: Number two, there's also a fact pattern here. So if
• 32:59
  Speaker 4: we could have just said, that's a lie. It's not
• 33:01
  Speaker 4: anything she's ever believed. She was on tape. surgery for
• 33:05
  Speaker 4: people who want to transition in prison was part of
• 33:07
  Speaker 4: the Biden-Harris platform in 2020. It was part of what
• 33:13
  Speaker 4: the administration did, right? We also saw Colin Allred and
• 33:17
  Speaker 4: Sherrod Brown, both who ran good races, kind of directly
• 33:19
  Speaker 4: responded to trans attacks. And in our view, you know,
• 33:22
  Speaker 4: you're playing on your opponent's side of the field. I
• 33:25
  Speaker 4: understand why they felt they needed to do that in
• 33:26
  Speaker 4: those states. So to Quentin's point, you know, you have
• 33:29
  Speaker 4: a set of things you're trying to get done. It
• 33:31
  Speaker 4: doesn't mean that you're in such a comes at you
• 33:35
  Speaker 4: that you don't, we spent, I mean, Jen, Quentin, Stephanie,
• 33:38
  Speaker 4: I don't know, dozens of hours on this. Like what
• 33:41
  Speaker 4: should we do? How are voters responding to it? Maybe
• 33:44
  Speaker 4: hundreds of hours on it. So we took it very seriously,
• 33:46
  Speaker 4: but it wasn't something at the end of the day,
• 33:48
  Speaker 4: what matters in election is, is something causing someone to
• 33:53
  Speaker 4: behave differently, either who they vote for or whether they vote.
• 33:57
  Speaker 4: And our sense was in the battleground states, this was
• 34:02
  Speaker 4: not driving vote behavior. to the same extent like the
• 34:06
  Speaker 4: economy was generally, even immigration. So I think that it's
• 34:13
  Speaker 4: important to understand, I think, that we were very much
• 34:16
  Speaker 4: in voyeuristic listening mode here in terms of how are
• 34:20
  Speaker 4: voters processing this. And in the battleground states, what we
• 34:24
  Speaker 4: got from voters, that doesn't seem like her. She seems
• 34:27
  Speaker 4: sort of mainstream and normal, number one. It's a political
• 34:30
  Speaker 4: attack and we trust it. So I think in many respects,
• 34:33
  Speaker 4: Democrats who live outside of battleground states would see this
• 34:36
  Speaker 4: ad and were convinced it was the thing that cost
• 34:40
  Speaker 4: us the election. But I think in the battleground states,
• 34:43
  Speaker 4: it was a different brew.
• 34:46
  Speaker 5: Well, I also, the last point I'll make on this, too,
• 34:48
  Speaker 5: is that I think, again, to Plouffe's point about it
• 34:51
  Speaker 5: moving vote, I think that the Trump campaign knew that, too.
• 34:55
  Speaker 5: And I think that the way in which they targeted
• 34:57
  Speaker 5: this ad, they were trying to, I think, make our
• 34:59
  Speaker 5: job harder with black voters. I'm just going to say
• 35:02
  Speaker 5: a point blank. And I think that specifically black men, ultimately,
• 35:06
  Speaker 5: we got the same amount of the vote share that
• 35:07
  Speaker 5: President Biden got with black men, and we increased among
• 35:09
  Speaker 5: black women. But when you look at where Trump was
• 35:12
  Speaker 5: running this ad, it was in Philadelphia, it was in Atlanta,
• 35:16
  Speaker 5: and then the outer markets where there wasn't as many
• 35:19
  Speaker 5: diverse voters or black voters, they weren't doing this. We
• 35:22
  Speaker 5: saw them targeting this in the mailboxes of black voters,
• 35:24
  Speaker 5: black male voters. So There was this theory out there
• 35:27
  Speaker 5: that we were struggling with black men. And I think
• 35:29
  Speaker 5: that while we were doing the work to try to
• 35:32
  Speaker 5: make sure that that wasn't the case, and we saw
• 35:34
  Speaker 5: that consolidation come back after President Biden got out of
• 35:36
  Speaker 5: the race, I think that Trump and them weren't using
• 35:39
  Speaker 5: this ad to move vote share as much. I think
• 35:41
  Speaker 5: that they were using this ad to try to make
• 35:44
  Speaker 5: our job of getting these voters back or consolidating them.
• 35:47
  Speaker 5: And I think ultimately, if you look at it from
• 35:49
  Speaker 5: that metric, it wasn't effective. But I think, again, the
• 35:52
  Speaker 5: content of it And, you know, getting it from the
• 35:55
  Speaker 5: way it was talked about in the press and narrated
• 35:57
  Speaker 5: about this sort of earned echo chamber around these things
• 36:00
  Speaker 5: can have much more of an impact on them than
• 36:03
  Speaker 5: the money that's put behind them. And I think that
• 36:06
  Speaker 5: this trans ad is one of those, because if you
• 36:08
  Speaker 5: look at how Trump was targeting it, it didn't move
• 36:10
  Speaker 5: those voters he was targeting to Plouffe's point. But I
• 36:14
  Speaker 5: think it did make our job of sort of trying
• 36:16
  Speaker 5: to get in front of them and making us seem
• 36:18
  Speaker 5: like we knew what they were going through and we
• 36:20
  Speaker 5: were focused on their problems much more difficult. And so
• 36:23
  Speaker 5: that's how I sort of see it, but I don't
• 36:24
  Speaker 5: think it was moving the vote.
• 36:26
  Speaker 6: And I mean, where we saw the first indication of
• 36:29
  Speaker 6: what Quentin is talking about is when Charlemagne started talking
• 36:32
  Speaker 6: about it. And that was when we clued in that, okay,
• 36:36
  Speaker 6: so their strategy isn't to pull in new voters to them,
• 36:40
  Speaker 6: it's to mess with us.
• 36:41
  Speaker 5: And a day after Trump took the clip of Charlemagne,
• 36:44
  Speaker 5: ran the exact same ad and just put Charlemagne at
• 36:46
  Speaker 5: the opening. And so he had a black man talking
• 36:48
  Speaker 5: about it at the beginning and then tried to do
• 36:50
  Speaker 5: it and then started serving it the exact same way.
• 36:52
  Speaker 6: And so And that's when we, you know, well, we
• 36:55
  Speaker 6: had been doing the research to try to figure out
• 36:58
  Speaker 6: what the actual policy was, you know, where does this
• 37:01
  Speaker 6: come from, and discovered that it was the Trump policy also,
• 37:05
  Speaker 6: and tried to push that out there. The New York
• 37:07
  Speaker 6: Times wrote about it. We tried to force a discussion
• 37:10
  Speaker 6: on it. It didn't ultimately get going. She did get
• 37:14
  Speaker 6: asked about it on Fox News. Her response was that
• 37:17
  Speaker 6: was the Trump policy as well. We're to follow the law.
• 37:20
  Speaker 6: But Ultimately, there wasn't enough earned media on that piece,
• 37:23
  Speaker 6: and we certainly weren't going to run ads on that
• 37:25
  Speaker 6: this was a Trump policy.
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: Jen, you guys obviously raised a ton of money very quickly.
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: You made huge investments in linear television. You made the
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: largest investment ever in digital. You had a huge field operation.
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: In the post-election analysis, there has been, even from some folks,
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: anonymously at least, inside the campaign, some critique of some
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: of the spending decisions around things like the set for
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: Call Her Daddy, this, you know, renting the sphere, that
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: sort of stuff. I'd love to hear you respond to
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: those criticisms and then maybe give, just want to get
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: clarity on the point is that when you, do you
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: think when all of the, when you guys have done
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: all the books that whether the DNC will be in
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: debt at the end of this race?
• 38:06
  Speaker 2: So first of all, I think it was an extraordinary
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: testament to the vice president to have the kind of
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: grassroots support that she had. And built on the foundation
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: of the list and the support that President Biden had
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: and had built and we cultivated over years. We had
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: some unique things that we had to do in this
• 38:25
  Speaker 2: race that I think were really critical to do early
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: and spent a lot of resources at an earlier stage
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: than we would have traditionally.
• 38:35
  Speaker 3: Ads, but also the field program.
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: I mean, we had massive investment of staff, you know, 3,000 staff,
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: hundreds and hundreds of offices in battleground states. We had
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: canvassers and people out knocking doors.
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: And that's pre-Kamala Harris, too?
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: Yes, 100% started at pre-Kamala Harris, and we've been building
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: for the entire campaign. But we really had to take
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: it into hyperdrive because we had so much work that
• 39:01
  Speaker 2: we had to do. We knew that we couldn't just
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: reach people with one medium, and we had to make
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: sure we were maximizing it.
• 39:07
  Speaker 3: And we had to.
• 39:08
  Speaker 2: Really move up spend when we're announcing the vice president
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: as the new nominee. We are, you know, a couple
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: weeks later announcing a run of me. We are, you know,
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: building out who is she standing for, all the things
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: we've been talking about. And so those things cost a
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: lot of resources, especially when you're running seven states. There
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: was different opportunities for us to look at the battleground
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: map and to say, you is anything moving away from us?
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: And we saw up until the very end that every
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: single state was in such a margin of error. There
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: was nothing that told us we couldn't play in one
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: of these states. And we needed to ensure with Pennsylvania,
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: which was our toughest of the blue walls from the
• 39:45
  Speaker 2: beginning where we were tied, what's the alternative to make
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: up those electoral votes? So we ran a very wide
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: map in other races that some of us have worked
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: on together. We had to move off of states. That
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: was not actually part of our plan. And then we
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: had to reach very hard to find voters. So we
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: were trying to, yes, spend more resources on digital, not
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: for the sake of that, but because we're trying to
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: find young people. We're trying to find these lower propensity
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: voters that were tuned out to politics.
• 40:15
  Speaker 3: So much of the.
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: Electorate pre-Vice President Harris and post had opted out of
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: political engagement, had opted out of wanting to talk through
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: or hear the kind of partisan environment. So we had
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: to work extremely hard to find them. And doing so
• 40:31
  Speaker 2: made us make really key choices. Call Her Daddy was
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: really an important choice to make. And the hurricane, which
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: you're alluding to and why we had to make some
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: adjustments on schedule, The hurricane impacted two weeks of our
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: ability to reach people, not just in North Carolina and Georgia,
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: but all across the country. I mean, we put her
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: on the Weather Channel in part because that's where people
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: were watching. So everything, of course, you can look at,
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: did we get the best deal here? This was quite
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: costly here. It's quite expensive. At the end of the day,
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: though— You know, if you look at the spend we had,
• 41:03
  Speaker 2: majority of the money we spent, it was to reach voters.
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: The money we spent at the end, I mean, Trump
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: was every single day for the last two weeks of
• 41:10
  Speaker 2: the race, he was dumping millions of dollars on our
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: head on more points. And we didn't go chase him everywhere,
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: but we had to look at what are people getting served?
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: How do we match that? How are we hitting our
• 41:21
  Speaker 2: voters and not getting distracted? How are we making sure
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: the people that he's serving stuff to were getting to?
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: And he had an army of super PACs. That were
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: so coordinated. I'm sure there's some legal way they were communicated.
• 41:34
  Speaker 3: Coordinated, but like.
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: I'm sure it was legal.
• 41:35
  Speaker 6: Yes.
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 41:36
  Speaker 6: Or illegal.
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: But they, you know, from the beginning they were, you know,
• 41:40
  Speaker 2: week to week all, you know, one super PAC would
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: take a couple of weeks and hit Pennsylvania.
• 41:45
  Speaker 3: And then the next one will come in and do
• 41:46
  Speaker 3: the same. And they're all coordinated.
• 41:47
  Speaker 2: We didn't have the benefit of that. So I am
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: very confident that the fidelity of our finances was strong throughout,
• 41:55
  Speaker 2: and we focused it on direct voter contact. You know,
• 41:58
  Speaker 2: you mentioned the sphere. Of course, as you well know,
• 42:01
  Speaker 2: to do something like that, we had to make some bets.
• 42:04
  Speaker 3: Pretty early on.
• 42:05
  Speaker 2: But we believed as we were closing the race that
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: it was really important for people to feel like they
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: were part of something bigger and that we were trying
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: to identify opportunities to culturally reach people, not just politically
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: reach people. So while the point of this sphere wasn't
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: really necessarily a Las Vegas play, it was a play
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: to get the kind of attention and awareness and to
• 42:27
  Speaker 2: see in that, you know, the song and, you know,
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: just you want to be part of that. That was
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: a big part of our strategy. It's why in Philadelphia
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: we spent, and in all of our urban markets, real
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: resources on out of home. Yes, billboards, but also murals
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: and other ways that people could walk down a street
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: and they see something that's cultural and cool and something
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: that connected with them, not in a political way to
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: reach people. And we felt like that was really, really
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: important for the voters we had to reach. There is
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: lots of important work that the DNC does week to week.
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: We worked in tandem and in partnership this whole time.
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: And part of the reason that the vice president was
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: able to be so quick is because of the campaign,
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: but also because of the infrastructure and the work the
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: DNC has done. So they're going to be In good stead,
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: they're going to have everything they need. They continue to
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: have a lot of money that they put out to
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: state parties all across the country as part of the
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: commitment that President Biden and Vice President Harris made when
• 43:21
  Speaker 2: they came into office. So that work continues. It doesn't
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: just stop when there's a campaign. They have more raising
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: and more work to do. But we are going to
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: be in a good space across the board, across all
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: of our entities without debt that carries forward.
• 43:33
  Speaker 4: Having been through this, you know, some time ago, but
• 43:38
  Speaker 4: then witnessing again this time, We have to stop playing
• 43:41
  Speaker 4: a different game as it relates to super PACs than
• 43:43
  Speaker 4: the Republicans. Love our democratic lawyers. I'm tired of it.
• 43:47
  Speaker 5: Okay.
• 43:47
  Speaker 4: They coordinate more than we do. I think amongst themselves,
• 43:51
  Speaker 4: I think with the presidential campaign, like I'm just sick
• 43:54
  Speaker 4: and tired of it. Okay. So we cannot be at
• 43:57
  Speaker 4: a disadvantage. Number one, number two, to Jen's point, I
• 43:59
  Speaker 4: think you don't want duplication, but I think having multiple
• 44:02
  Speaker 4: players on the field, as long as they're well-coordinated is great.
• 44:04
  Speaker 4: Like back in 20, You know, I spent a bunch
• 44:07
  Speaker 4: of time with Tara McGowan, who now runs Courier with Acronym.
• 44:10
  Speaker 4: And all we did, I think, was 80 or 90
• 44:11
  Speaker 4: million dollars, which was which was great. We only did
• 44:15
  Speaker 4: digital low information voters.
• 44:16
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 44:17
  Speaker 4: So whatever Future Forward was doing, we were very focused
• 44:20
  Speaker 4: on that, particularly low information voters of color. So I
• 44:24
  Speaker 4: think to have an ecosystem where whether it's on issues
• 44:28
  Speaker 4: like reproductive health or climate or, you know, manufacturing or
• 44:33
  Speaker 4: health care or a specific population. lane that you're focused
• 44:37
  Speaker 4: on in terms of messaging. I think that's really, really important.
• 44:41
  Speaker 4: I think that they tend to have more entities that are,
• 44:46
  Speaker 4: to Stephanie's point, clearly it is not legal what they're doing,
• 44:50
  Speaker 4: but we are at a disadvantage when our folks are
• 44:53
  Speaker 4: playing by a different set of rules than they are.
• 44:55
  Speaker 4: I mean, I remember going back to 2012. You guys
• 44:59
  Speaker 4: might remember this. Mitt Romney is running around the country
• 45:02
  Speaker 4: asking for specific dollar amounts at Super PAC events. And
• 45:06
  Speaker 4: we were told that Barack Obama couldn't even attend them.
• 45:09
  Speaker 6: He had to leave the room.
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: The one event, I think, right?
• 45:13
  Speaker 4: Right. So I just think at the end of the day,
• 45:15
  Speaker 4: this is important. Again, this is not at the top
• 45:18
  Speaker 4: of the reasons that we had a different outcome here. But,
• 45:22
  Speaker 4: you know, to win close races, you kind of want
• 45:24
  Speaker 4: to be maximizing every piece of the arsenal. And so
• 45:28
  Speaker 4: I think this is something we really have to reflect
• 45:31
  Speaker 4: on and make some adjustments going forward.
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: Did you need more cavalry at the end? Can you
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: talk a little bit about that?
• 45:37
  Speaker 2: I think we needed more cavalry early. Look, I think
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: there's a lot of really important discussions I know you're
• 45:43
  Speaker 2: having and we'll all have about the path forward. I
• 45:46
  Speaker 2: think our side was completely mismatched when it came to
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: the ecosystem of Trump and his super PACs and ours. And,
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: you know, That's not like just a head-to-head comparison on
• 46:00
  Speaker 2: points spent. It is just how we have to think
• 46:03
  Speaker 2: about our voters and what they need. And we had
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: a super PAC that was helpful, very important and necessary
• 46:12
  Speaker 2: for the work that they did because they were the
• 46:14
  Speaker 2: kind of central focus. recipient of a lot of the
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: funding on our side. And, you know, they staked a
• 46:22
  Speaker 2: strategy and a plan and we clearly could see it
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: and we knew what it was to spend late. But
• 46:27
  Speaker 2: we did not have the ability to have people come
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: in with us early. And so every ounce of advertising,
• 46:35
  Speaker 2: every ounce of carrying these strategic imperatives of defining the
• 46:39
  Speaker 2: vice president and trying to bring down Trump's numbers all
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: sat with us as a campaign. And because we had
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: the strength of our list and because of the grassroots
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: donors who were the heart and soul of this and
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: our major donors too, at a level we have never
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: seen in politics before, we needed every cent of that
• 46:55
  Speaker 2: because we carried like 90% of the bulk of it.
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: And we needed to put North Carolina in play. We
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: needed to make sure we're running this big map. We
• 47:05
  Speaker 2: had a lot of work to do and we didn't
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: really have partners to call on in that early window.
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: At the same time, There are really important groups out
• 47:13
  Speaker 2: there that do important work that are targeting key coalitions.
• 47:16
  Speaker 2: When we're talking about how we needed to reach young
• 47:19
  Speaker 2: people and African-Americans and Latinos, the voices and the strength
• 47:23
  Speaker 2: of organizations that are not this campaign, that are not political,
• 47:27
  Speaker 2: that have a history and a foundation of doing this work,
• 47:30
  Speaker 2: that have credibility with different communities is really important for us.
• 47:34
  Speaker 2: And I don't know that those entities got funded early enough.
• 47:38
  Speaker 3: So I think this is just a big.
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: Can I ask a question on this?
• 47:40
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 47:41
  Speaker 7: In.
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: In the history of all of the presidential elections posted
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: since United, the Democrats have had a designated super PAC.
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: I don't know what the legal term is, but there's
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: been one singular entity that was the recipient of all
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: the super PAC dollars. It was Priorities USA in 12
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: and 16, and then it's been Future Forward in 20
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: and 24. Going forward, would your recommendation be that there be,
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: like the Republicans, multiple entities that are all sort of
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: viewed as important places for people looking to donate to
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: go to?
• 48:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, my personal opinion is that there are
• 48:19
  Speaker 2: a lot of really important groups that do shit really well,
• 48:22
  Speaker 2: and they need the resources to go do that. We
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: don't need to recreate the wheel, and we certainly don't
• 48:26
  Speaker 2: need to funnel everything through one place. We need to
• 48:29
  Speaker 2: have groups that have the ability to reach these very
• 48:34
  Speaker 2: difficult-to-reach voters in ways that can be compelling and long-lasting,
• 48:39
  Speaker 2: have the funding that they need to go do that.
• 48:42
  Speaker 3: And that, to me, means.
• 48:44
  Speaker 2: You are talking about a number of groups. Of course,
• 48:46
  Speaker 2: you want them on the outside to coordinate well. And
• 48:49
  Speaker 2: you don't want duplication. We've certainly seen in previous presidentials
• 48:52
  Speaker 2: where everyone was stepping on everyone else and spending money
• 48:55
  Speaker 2: in duplication.
• 48:55
  Speaker 3: You don't want that either.
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: But I think we have very sophisticated groups. They do
• 48:59
  Speaker 2: it on the Senate cycle after cycle. And we have
• 49:02
  Speaker 2: the benefit of learning and growing from that. And I
• 49:05
  Speaker 2: also think that we should let people do what they
• 49:07
  Speaker 2: do well and help support them in that and just
• 49:10
  Speaker 2: have some coordination.
• 49:11
  Speaker 3: So that would be my recommendation going forward.
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: Stephanie, one of the, I believe, to be the more
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: tedious post-election debates is about should Kamala Harris have gone
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: on Rogan? Can you just, not to be tedious about it,
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: could you talk a little bit about how close she
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: came to doing it, why it didn't happen?
• 49:27
  Speaker 6: Yeah, there's a lot of intrigue around this, a lot
• 49:31
  Speaker 6: of theories. It's pretty simple. We wanted to do it.
• 49:35
  Speaker 6: I hate to repeat this over and over, but it
• 49:37
  Speaker 6: was a very short race with a limited number of days.
• 49:41
  Speaker 6: And for a candidate to leave the battleground to go
• 49:45
  Speaker 6: to Houston, which is a day off the playing field
• 49:50
  Speaker 6: in the battleground, getting that timing right is really important.
• 49:55
  Speaker 6: So we had discussions with Joe Rogan's team.
• 49:59
  Speaker 3: They were great.
• 50:00
  Speaker 6: They wanted us to come on. We wanted to come on.
• 50:02
  Speaker 6: We tried to get a date to make it work.
• 50:05
  Speaker 6: And ultimately, we just weren't able to find a date.
• 50:07
  Speaker 6: We did go to Houston. And she gave a great
• 50:11
  Speaker 6: speech at an amazing event.
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: The Beyonce event.
• 50:14
  Speaker 7: Yes.
• 50:14
  Speaker 6: Well, I'm going to call it reproductive freedom because Texas
• 50:18
  Speaker 6: is ground zero for the impact of these Trump abortion bans.
• 50:22
  Speaker 6: There's a story out today, in fact, of another young
• 50:25
  Speaker 6: woman who lost her life because of it. And we
• 50:27
  Speaker 6: were hoping to be able to fit it in around
• 50:29
  Speaker 6: that and ultimately weren't able to do it. As it
• 50:32
  Speaker 6: turns out, that was the day that Trump was taping
• 50:34
  Speaker 6: his Joe Rogan, which they had never confirmed to us.
• 50:38
  Speaker 6: We kind of figured that out in the lead up
• 50:41
  Speaker 6: to it. She was ready, willing to go on Joe Rogan.
• 50:45
  Speaker 6: Would it have changed anything? You know, it would have
• 50:50
  Speaker 6: broken through, not because of the conversation with Joe Rogan,
• 50:53
  Speaker 6: but because the fact that she was doing it. And
• 50:56
  Speaker 6: that was really the benefit of it. Will she do
• 50:58
  Speaker 6: it sometime in the future? Maybe. Who knows? But it,
• 51:03
  Speaker 6: you know, didn't ultimately impact the outcome one way or
• 51:06
  Speaker 6: the other. But she was willing to do whatever it takes.
• 51:10
  Speaker 4: Yeah, Dan. So what's clear is we offer to do
• 51:12
  Speaker 4: it in Austin. People should know that didn't work out.
• 51:15
  Speaker 4: I think, you know, maybe they leveraged that to get
• 51:17
  Speaker 4: Trump in studio. I don't know. And then, you know,
• 51:19
  Speaker 4: we were obviously not going to be back in Texas, uh,
• 51:22
  Speaker 4: but offer to do it on the road.
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: And he wouldn't travel.
• 51:24
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 51:24
  Speaker 7: Right.
• 51:25
  Speaker 4: Yeah. I agree with Stephanie. Like, I don't know at
• 51:27
  Speaker 4: the end of the day, um, how much it would
• 51:29
  Speaker 4: have driven vote, but listen, the reason that we, uh,
• 51:33
  Speaker 4: the night of the first debate, um, challenged Trump to
• 51:37
  Speaker 4: a second debate. We were going to do that whether
• 51:39
  Speaker 4: that first debate went good, bad, or indifferent. We needed
• 51:41
  Speaker 4: big moments. We were behind in the race with a
• 51:43
  Speaker 4: candidate who was not fully defined. So that's why I
• 51:48
  Speaker 4: think why we would have done Rogan.
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: Trump did a ton of podcasts. Like, let's put Rogan aside, right?
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: As I said, you don't win or lose. It would
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: have been a big moment. You don't win or lose
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: the campaign on one podcast. That was the core of
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: Trump's media strategy was to do a bunch of these podcasts.
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: They were not political podcasts per se. They were probably
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: political adjacent, right adjacent. It's my understanding that you guys
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: wanted to do a bunch of the larger, more popular,
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: not specifically political podcasts. Can you talk a little about
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: why that may not have happened? Like, I'll give you,
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: for example, it's Hot Ones, right?
• 52:22
  Speaker 4: Oh, yeah.
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: Hot Ones. It's an example where, like, never in time
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: has there been a candidate better suited for a podcast
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: than Kamala Harris on Hot Ones, so.
• 52:31
  Speaker 6: I think if I remember correctly on Hot Ones that
• 52:33
  Speaker 6: they didn't want to delve into politics.
• 52:35
  Speaker 3: And that's across the board, right?
• 52:37
  Speaker 6: But some of them did.
• 52:39
  Speaker 2: We had, I think, real opportunity for some core podcasts
• 52:44
  Speaker 2: that hit key constituencies, All in the Smoke, Club Shay Shay.
• 52:49
  Speaker 3: Everywhere we could, we did it.
• 52:51
  Speaker 2: But I do think we had a lot of support
• 52:54
  Speaker 2: in a number of athletes and others that were just
• 52:59
  Speaker 2: not super interested in getting their brand caught up in
• 53:03
  Speaker 2: the politics of this campaign. And I don't think he
• 53:06
  Speaker 2: had the same problem. Now, he wasn't talking to the
• 53:09
  Speaker 2: kind of folks, you know, that we were trying to get.
• 53:12
  Speaker 2: And these are big names that their reputations would be
• 53:14
  Speaker 2: tied into it. But I think certainly was able to
• 53:18
  Speaker 2: tap into some cultural elements in ways that we couldn't.
• 53:22
  Speaker 2: And I think that that had an impact on us,
• 53:24
  Speaker 2: that there were places that we knew we had support,
• 53:26
  Speaker 2: that we desperately wanted to go and have conversation that
• 53:29
  Speaker 2: we thought would be interesting and relevant and fun. And
• 53:32
  Speaker 2: we couldn't get there. But we did get to a
• 53:34
  Speaker 2: number of places that I think were really impactful for
• 53:37
  Speaker 2: us hitting men, African-American men, Latino men. We had a
• 53:41
  Speaker 2: number of opportunities there that I think when we could
• 53:43
  Speaker 2: do it, we absolutely did it. And it was a
• 53:45
  Speaker 2: top priority for us.
• 53:46
  Speaker 6: And the truth is, when Trump would go on these podcasts,
• 53:49
  Speaker 6: the conversation wasn't political. And we saw that. And we
• 53:54
  Speaker 6: did lots of outreach to many of the same podcasts
• 53:57
  Speaker 6: that he went on. Ultimately, You know, as we said
• 54:01
  Speaker 6: with everything in this campaign, we had to pick and
• 54:03
  Speaker 6: choose because of the limitations on time. But I do
• 54:06
  Speaker 6: also want to say that Tim Walz was a huge
• 54:09
  Speaker 6: podcaster and was on podcasts all the time. In the
• 54:12
  Speaker 6: politics adjacent space that you were talking about, sports, hunting, fishing, running,
• 54:19
  Speaker 6: football generally, he went on smart lists, a whole host
• 54:22
  Speaker 6: of them. So we definitely see the value in this strategy.
• 54:27
  Speaker 6: I guess the thing that was different about our campaign
• 54:30
  Speaker 6: versus Trump's are a couple of things. One, all of
• 54:35
  Speaker 6: his podcasts were reaching the audience that we were struggling
• 54:42
  Speaker 6: to pull in.
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: Young men.
• 54:45
  Speaker 6: Young men. And we saw that. We knew that. And
• 54:49
  Speaker 6: number two, in addition to doing podcasts, we were also
• 54:52
  Speaker 6: doing earned media. And he was doing a little bit
• 54:55
  Speaker 6: of that, but it was mostly right-wing media. Anything mainstream,
• 55:00
  Speaker 6: he would book it, and then they would cancel it. So,
• 55:03
  Speaker 6: you know, how people viewed our campaign, doing the earned media,
• 55:06
  Speaker 6: in addition to the podcast, the podcast kind of got
• 55:08
  Speaker 6: lost in that conversation.
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: I'm sort of fascinated by the fact that, you know,
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: four years ago, the idea that it would be more
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: politically problematic to have on the Kamala Harris, the sitting
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: vice president of the United States, than... Donald Trump, a
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: man who's been convicted of a crime and tried to
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: violently overthrow the election. Do you have any theories as
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: to why that is? Is it specific about the people
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: he was talking to? Is it establishment versus anti-establishment? Politics
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: versus not politics? Why people would be, some folks would
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: feel more comfortable for their brand to have a convicted
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: criminal on than the sitting vice president.
• 55:44
  Speaker 6: It was never a choice, like we'll have him, but
• 55:46
  Speaker 6: we're not going to have you. Anybody that took him
• 55:48
  Speaker 6: would take us. It was more some of the, like
• 55:52
  Speaker 6: Hot Ones, which is a great show. They didn't want
• 55:55
  Speaker 6: to do any politics, so they weren't going to take
• 55:57
  Speaker 6: us or him. So that was the issue. But we,
• 56:01
  Speaker 6: you know, we got on plenty of them. And, you know,
• 56:04
  Speaker 6: the bottom line is she was willing to do just
• 56:06
  Speaker 6: about anything and have a conversation with anybody, regardless of
• 56:10
  Speaker 6: where they sat.
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: Do you have, like she did more traditional media than
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: Trump did, as you point out, did basically none. Like,
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: literally none.
• 56:19
  Speaker 3: And got no shit for that.
• 56:21
  Speaker 6: Got shit from the interested party, you know, the media
• 56:24
  Speaker 6: that wasn't getting their interview. But voters don't give a shit.
• 56:27
  Speaker 3: Wait, Trump got shit for that? That's what I'm saying.
• 56:30
  Speaker 3: We got shit. I'm saying Trump got no shit.
• 56:33
  Speaker 6: We got tons of shit that she wasn't doing enough media.
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: He got no shit.
• 56:36
  Speaker 6: You know, not, you know, yeah. Like, don't even get
• 56:40
  Speaker 6: me going on that.
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: Now that the campaign's over and you sort of identified
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: who sort of the voters were who moved at the end,
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: how do you feel about the utility of some of
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: that earned media stuff? Is it now feel a little
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: bit like we're just sort of talking to our own
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: people all the time?
• 57:08
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 57:09
  Speaker 6: And not even the– well, in terms of who the
• 57:14
  Speaker 6: targets were, the persuadable voters, which were largely young men,
• 57:18
  Speaker 6: they're not watching the evening news. They're not watching cable.
• 57:21
  Speaker 6: They don't. definitely do not watch 60 Minutes. So older voters,
• 57:26
  Speaker 6: you know, maybe that's why Vice President did a little
• 57:28
  Speaker 6: bit better with senior citizens. Look, our background is doing
• 57:32
  Speaker 6: lots of earned media through the course of our careers.
• 57:35
  Speaker 6: Does it help in where we stand now? You know,
• 57:38
  Speaker 6: if you're a candidate with a limited amount of time
• 57:40
  Speaker 6: to get your voice out there and define yourself, you
• 57:43
  Speaker 6: kind of have to do everything. But did it screw
• 57:46
  Speaker 6: with our narrative? Not just in getting shit for not
• 57:49
  Speaker 6: doing enough earned media, but getting questions that we knew
• 57:53
  Speaker 6: voters weren't going to care about. And, you know, their
• 57:56
  Speaker 6: myopic mindset on certain issues was not what the race
• 58:00
  Speaker 6: was going to be about. So at a certain point,
• 58:03
  Speaker 6: we had to decide, is this helping us or hurting us? And,
• 58:06
  Speaker 6: you know.
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: What did you decide? You can say it.
• 58:11
  Speaker 2: I would say, I mean, look, I am not a
• 58:16
  Speaker 2: media hater by any measure. And I think that, you know,
• 58:20
  Speaker 2: We women don't get far in life talking about double standards.
• 58:23
  Speaker 2: So that's not the point. But I do think a narrative,
• 58:26
  Speaker 2: 107 days, two weeks fucked up because of a hurricane,
• 58:31
  Speaker 2: two weeks talking about how she didn't do interviews, which,
• 58:34
  Speaker 2: you know, she was doing plenty, but we were doing
• 58:36
  Speaker 2: in our own way. We had to, you know, be
• 58:39
  Speaker 2: the nominee, had to find a running mate and do
• 58:41
  Speaker 2: a rollout. I mean, there was all these things that
• 58:44
  Speaker 2: you kind of want to factor in.
• 58:46
  Speaker 3: But real people heard that.
• 58:48
  Speaker 2: In some way that we were not going to have interviews,
• 58:52
  Speaker 2: which was both not true and also so counter to
• 58:56
  Speaker 2: any kind of standard that was put on Trump that
• 58:59
  Speaker 2: I think that was a problem. And then on top
• 59:00
  Speaker 2: of that, we would do an interview. And to Stephanie's point,
• 59:04
  Speaker 2: the questions were small and processy and about like, Dumb.
• 59:11
  Speaker 6: Just dumb.
• 59:11
  Speaker 2: They were not informing a voter who was trying to
• 59:14
  Speaker 2: listen to learn more or to understand. And I'm not
• 59:18
  Speaker 2: here to say that, you know, the whole system was
• 59:21
  Speaker 2: focused on us incorrectly. I'm just saying, like, again, of
• 59:24
  Speaker 2: the things we need to explore as we move forward
• 59:26
  Speaker 2: as a campaign and as a country— That does a
• 59:28
  Speaker 2: disservice to voters. And, you know, I think back and
• 59:32
  Speaker 2: think we should have signaled more of our strategy early
• 59:35
  Speaker 2: on about podcasts and who we were trying to reach.
• 59:38
  Speaker 2: But we had a limited amount of time to reach
• 59:40
  Speaker 2: the people we were trying to reach and we were
• 59:41
  Speaker 2: trying to go to them. But being up against a
• 59:44
  Speaker 2: narrative that we weren't doing anything or we were afraid
• 59:47
  Speaker 2: to have interviews is completely bullshit and also like took
• 59:50
  Speaker 2: hold a little bit. And we just gave us another
• 59:52
  Speaker 2: thing we had to fight back for that Trump never
• 59:55
  Speaker 2: had to worry about.
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: Plouffe, I want to talk a little bit about the
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: decisions towards the end around campaigning with the Cheneys, doing
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: the events with the Republicans, the pivot around the statement
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: you guys did after the John Kelly fascism comments. I
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: know at the end of every campaign, in a losing
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: campaign at least, everyone then looks at it, from the
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: outside looks at it and says, the reason our side
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: lost confirms whatever priors I had beforehand. But one of
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: the arguments, particularly some folks on the left are making,
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: is that doing this stuff with Cheney and Republicans suppressed
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: turnout among the base. Um, just talk a little bit
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: why you decided to do this stuff with Cheney and
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: whether you saw any blowback at all in your data.
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 4: Well, first of all, you know, like any organization, uh,
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 4: you know, that's, uh, got the resources in the private
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 4: sector or in this case in politics, you make as
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 4: many decisions as you can based on data by the marketplace. Okay. So, um,
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 4: You know, turnout was up in Milwaukee, was down a
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 4: little bit in Philadelphia and Detroit. But, you know, we'd
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 4: spent a lot of time with voters who we were
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 4: concerned weren't going to vote. And the fact that Liz
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 4: Cheney was supporting Kamala Harris was not an issue raised
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 4: by any of them. OK, so I'd say a couple
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 4: of things. We were in a challenging political environment where
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 4: to get to 50 percent of the vote in enough
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 4: states to win 270 electoral votes. We needed some percentage
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 4: of Republicans. But I think what people forget is. It's
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 4: more the independents who act like Republicans, where issues of democracy,
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 4: of how unhinged he is, Project 2025 mattered to them,
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 4: even to some conservative Democrats. Also, when you're being attacked
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 4: as being a crazy, out-of-touch California liberal, when you have
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 4: generals and former Republican elected officials saying, I'm for Kamala Harris,
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 4: that helps rebut that. In many respects, that'll be more
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 4: effective than what she would say herself. And then as
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 4: it relates to the comments about wanting generals like Hitler,
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 4: that bothered voters, okay? This is something that concerned them about, okay,
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 4: he seems like he's lost a step. He seems a
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 4: little more unhinged, unstable. The people who worked for him
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 4: last time are warning us. And now he says something
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 4: like this. So yeah, we could have decided to ignore
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 4: that and just say, let's talk about tax cuts today.
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 4: I don't think that would advance the ball. with the
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 4: people we needed to advance it with. And again, I
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 4: just want to, again, it can sound like making excuses.
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 4: This political environment sucked, okay? We were dealing with ferocious headwinds.
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 4: And I think people's instinct was to give the Republicans
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 4: and even Donald Trump another chance. So we had a
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 4: complicated puzzle to put together here in terms of the voters.
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 4: And it was going to take a little bit more
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 4: independent Republicans than we saw in 20, maybe a percent
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 4: more Republican voters for us. it was going to take
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 4: voters saying, even though I judged Trump's first turn favorably,
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 4: I'm more concerned about him this time. We had to
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 4: get more voters to say that. So, you know, and
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 4: if you look at how we closed, I think we
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 4: did one day with Liz Cheney in the last couple
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 4: of weeks. You look at the ads we ran, they
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 4: were heavily centered on the economy, on tax cuts, on
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 4: Trump being for the wealthy. So this notion that somehow
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 4: we weren't focused on the economy is That was the
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 4: driving motivation and message in our campaign. The closing speech, yes,
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 4: it took place at the Ellipse, was a huge contrast
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 4: on the economy and the people Donald Trump would fight
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 4: for and the people Kamala Harris would fight for. So
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 4: I think that mistakes, I think my concern about that
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 4: is just, again, we have to understand that what happened
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 4: in this election and what didn't. And I think at
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 4: the end of the day, We had to raise people's
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 4: concern and the threat level of a Trump second term.
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 4: I think if you look at our internal data, and
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 4: Quinn can speak to this, we did a lot of that.
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 4: We just didn't get it to the extent that we
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 4: needed to to win. But at the end of the day,
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 4: I think people, you know, it was the price of
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 4: eggs that drove a lot of the debate here. And
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 4: I think Trump's going to be in hot water because
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 4: he's going to do a lot of stuff starting January 20th.
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 4: That's not going to be about the price of eggs.
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 4: It's going to be about sort of the MAGA ideological
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 4: pursuits that he and his base will insist happen, whether
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 4: that's pardoning January 6th rioters or some of the other
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 4: things around health care and immigration. But I think, Dan,
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 4: that it is important. We spent a lot of time
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 4: with voters in the aftermath of those comments from Milley
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 4: and about desiring generals like Hitler, and it bothered voters.
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 4: So again, that wasn't the core of our campaign. The
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 4: core of our campaign was an economic contrast in these
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 4: battleground states, but it was an important element of it.
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: Quinn, can you talk a little bit about, you know,
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: at the end, you know, there was a, you know,
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: I'd be curious in your data, how many, what percent
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: of people in the last week were undecided or movable
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: and sort of who those voters were? And I know
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: that a lot of folks on the campaign were said that,
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: you know, in that last week where it seemed like
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: the vice president not seem like was clearly closing very strongly.
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: And Trump, uh, was sort of in, seemed to be
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: imploding everywhere. Um, just were you guys, were the fight,
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: were the last voters moving in your direction? There just
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: wasn't enough time or did Trump, you know, win those
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: late deciders?
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 5: I mean, it's hard. Look, you won the election. So it's,
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 5: it's hard to say that they, they broke our way,
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 5: but look, we saw a shrinking pool of undecided voters, um, uh,
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 5: all the way until the end. Um, and as Jen mentioned,
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 5: Republicans were turning out early to vote. And we were
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 5: looking at it to see if it was mode shifting,
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 5: meaning were these people who would normally vote on Election
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 5: Day as Republicans just voting early? And that was the case.
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 5: And then so we sort of knew this wasn't some
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 5: surge of Republican voters turning out. And ultimately, not enough
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 5: of them broke our way. These are those voters that
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 5: were in that margin that we were counting on to
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 5: get us over that hump. To your previous question that
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 5: you just asked and that Plouffe answered, I think that
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 5: there's a lot of things to learn in this election.
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 5: But I think overlearning some of them is a danger
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 5: as well. There's a number of states that will be
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 5: on the board, including in 26 that are Senate races
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 5: that will be very hard to win without getting some
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 5: of those voters that we were talking to. And I
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 5: think that those Republican leaning voters, I mean, and if
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 5: you look at it, and again, this probably sounds, I
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 5: hope it doesn't sound defensive to the people listening because
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 5: it's really not. But if you look at 22 and
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 5: you look at 20, that's how Democrats won these races.
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 5: And I mean, 9% of Republican voters voted for Raphael
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 5: Warnock in Georgia in 2020.
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: And you managed his race.
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 5: Yeah. And there is no Democratic majority without the state
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 5: of Georgia. And so when you're looking at some of
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 5: these states, North Carolina, Sherry Beasley almost got there in 22.
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 5: She didn't. But if she had gotten a little bit
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 5: more of those Republican voters, and of course, look, if
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 5: you can turn out more of your base voters, that
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 5: is good. But especially as we head into a midterm,
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 5: and we also saw these voters beginning that trend of
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 5: coming to Democrats in 2020 from the Biden race was
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 5: the first time they did it. In 2022, we said,
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 5: can we hold these voters? We ran strategies to try
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 5: to do that. We were successful at doing it. So
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 5: these voters had given us indication that they were, you know,
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 5: willing to be open to Democrats. And we spoke to
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 5: them and we kept trying to speak to them. Now
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 5: we saw some of them going back in Trump's favorability
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 5: to that piece. And so a lot of this was
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 5: getting that down. And you could either have a Democrat
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 5: trying to give that message or you can have generals
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 5: and people who worked for Trump delivering that message.
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: And your net data said those probably had more credibility
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: to do that than a Democrat?
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 5: 100%. And so I just think that, you know, at
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 5: the end of the day, there's obviously work that needs
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 5: to be done on both sides. But I would caution
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 5: just trying to say that you should just throw that
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 5: to the wind, especially, you know, and maybe it maybe
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 5: it doesn't with Trump. But, you know, to the point
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 5: of how we got here and the voters that allowed
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 5: us to get to this point, I think a lot
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 5: of those voters and I think that that was a
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 5: big part of it. And I don't I think it's
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 5: a false choice to say it has to be one
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 5: or the other. I think that that is a mistake.
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 5: I think we just have to do everything and we
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 5: have to do it better. But I don't think that
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 5: this is saying that by trying to win those voters
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 5: who have shown you in the past two cycles that
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 5: they are open to Democrats, you are abandoning the base.
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 2: Well, and I would just add, I agree with this
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 2: so much. And I think to win, you need to
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 2: have moderate Republicans and progressives of all ages. We cannot
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 2: win without these core elements. We don't have the luxury
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 2: of choosing one group of voter or another. But In
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 2: the battleground states, we were heavily focused on suburbs. We
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 2: knew they were very important in 22. Obviously, we're very
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 2: focused on women in particular, but moderates, independents. And the
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 2: vice president actually did better in the wow counties in
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 2: Wisconsin than Joe Biden did. And while the rest of
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 2: the country moved five points to the right in the suburbs,
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 2: we moved a point to the right. So That isn't
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 2: enough to win, but just a reminder that we understood
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 2: the work we had to do. And when your opponent
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 2: is trying to make you more... extreme— and to make
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 2: you dangerously liberal, the ways you can push back on that,
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 2: you know, we talked about the trans ad earlier, is
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 2: by having people stand with you that don't agree with
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 2: you on everything, but do see in you, it wasn't
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 2: just that the Republicans that stood with us were saying
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 2: they were against Trump. They were also saying they were
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 2: for the vice president and why. And I think that
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 2: had real impact. Not enough, but it definitely was an
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 2: important calculus to the broader framing that Trump was trying
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 2: to drive people to us and to also just by
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 2: having these folks stand with us at the volume that
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 2: they were standing for any reason they were with us.
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 3: It wasn't just about democracy. It wasn't just about January 6th.
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 2: That really showed to people who didn't know her that well,
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 2: that if those Republicans would stand with her, well, she
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 2: couldn't be so extreme and dangerously liberal as Trump was
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 2: trying to frame because these folks won't be with her,
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 2: you know, as a baseline.
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: When you look at the.
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 4: Let me just stand. So just, it's always worth reminding
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 4: people It's really hard for Democrats to win battleground states.
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 5: Okay.
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 4: Let's look at Pennsylvania. 25% of the electorate is liberal, roughly.
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 4: 34% is conservative. By the way, in most battleground states,
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 4: that conservative number is over 40. So in every battleground state,
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 4: there's more conservative than liberals. So in Pennsylvania, if that's
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 4: such a belief, Trump won conservatives 91-8, Harris won liberals 93-6. Moderates,
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 4: Harris won 56-43, but you kind of got to win
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 4: 60% of them, right? So for Democrats to win battleground states,
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 4: to Quentin and Jen's point, it is a false choice.
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 4: You want to maximize your base, of course. And that
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 4: was a place where we spent enormous time, a lot
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 4: of resources. That's critical. And obviously, I think in Milwaukee,
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 4: just to use that as an example, we hit our
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 4: turnout targets, fell a little bit short in Philly and Detroit.
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 4: So that's not good. That's part of the equation. You've
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 4: got to couple that with dominating in the the moderate vote.
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 4: And I think as we look ahead to 26 and 28,
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 4: particularly where you have seen drift amongst non-college voters generally,
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 4: particularly those of color specifically, you know, we obviously have
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 4: to get some of that back. We can't afford any
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 4: more erosion there. The math just doesn't fucking work, okay?
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 4: But I don't think this is a permanent realignment, but
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 4: the point here is to win battleground states. Yes, of
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 4: course you have to maximize your turnout and your vote
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 4: share amongst liberal voters if you're a Democrat. That was
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 4: a huge focus. You've got to win the center.
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: Speaking of realignment, right? Like, I think in a lot
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: of ways, it's fair to say this is an anomalous election.
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: Trump is a unique candidate, former incumbent president. There's obviously
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 1: global trends taking place here. But, you know, I think
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 1: what you guys all want to do, what I want
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: to take from this conversation is, like, how do we
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: project forward for the next races? And I think one
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 1: of the bigger concerns when you look at these numbers
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 1: for the future of the Democratic Party in national politics
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: is Latino voters, right? based on exits, which I know
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: are imprecise, but since 2012, they have moved 29 points
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: to the right. Like that is unsustainable and the map
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: becomes impossible. And the Senate, like a durable Senate majority
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: is impossible if you're losing Latino voters at that number.
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 1: What did you guys see with Latinos? Because yes, like
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 1: inflation is an issue here, but we also had a
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 1: pretty big shift from 16 to 20. So what were
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 1: you just seeing with Latino voters and any thoughts you
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: have on how we begin, if you have them yet,
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 1: on how we begin to move back?
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think this is super tough. You know, I
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 2: think we saw, as you're saying, this isn't just for 24.
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 2: You know, we saw it in 20 where, you know,
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 2: we spent so much time and resources. And I thought
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 2: even in 20 did a really good job from a
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 2: campaign standpoint to reach Latino voters in particular. And I
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 2: think we missed the mark then. And in that instance,
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 2: I think it was economic broadly, right? And that was
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 2: such a conversation about COVID and then the economy. I think,
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 2: you know, we really saw in hindsight, we should have
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 2: been far more on the economy and COVID kind of second. But,
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 2: you know, look, I think as you look at 24,
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 2: first of all, as you well know, Latino voters are
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 2: not a monolith. And in every battleground state, in every
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 2: state in the country that have a cohort of Latino
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 2: voters that make up the electorate, they're very different. And
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 2: I think certainly, The national numbers look particularly bad because
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 2: they incorporate Florida and in Texas. But we also saw
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 2: a shift in this trend, as you're saying, that we
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 2: have a lot of work to do. I think that
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 2: it's Latino men in particular. I do think, though, the
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 2: smaller shift right happened in Pennsylvania. And, you know, there's
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 2: a heavy Puerto Rican population. community there outside of Philly,
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 2: inside of Philly. And I think, you know, obviously that
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 2: was a big part of the close and where we
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 2: did see some movement to.
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 1: After the Trump-Madison Square Garden rally.
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 3: Exactly. Exactly.
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 2: So, you know, look, at the end of the day,
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 2: I think a lot of this is really baked into
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 2: the right track, wrong track and the economic concerns.
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 3: And I think you know, that's fundamental. I also don't.
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 2: Know that Latino voters are, you know, one, again, not
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 2: just monolithic, but maybe not an anomaly to other people
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 2: in their communities, and they're feeling the same concerns that
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 2: people have. But I think globally, with men, with Latino
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 2: men in particular, with, you know, obviously, we talked about
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 2: the work we did with African American men. I mean,
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 2: I would say African Americans have been on the same
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 2: trend line since 08, even, where we've seen decrease in
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 2: support cycle after cycle, which we were able to hold
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 2: off this time. So I think there is a lot
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 2: more work to do to kind of understand this more
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 2: and think about it. But I don't think it is
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 2: the work of just a 107-day campaign or even a
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 2: presidential campaign. And I think that's probably the biggest answer
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 2: of where do we go from here on all of this.
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 2: How do we ensure that people in this country are
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 2: see themselves in what we're selling and that we have
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 2: solutions that make sense to people and that we can
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 2: understand what they're going through and that they see themselves
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 2: reflected in those solutions. And I think there's just a
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 2: lot of work that, to me, it is never going
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 2: to be we have to make choices about one type
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 2: of voter versus another, but everyone has to see you know,
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 2: not just our brand as a party, but more importantly,
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 2: our candidates as people who are providing solutions and really
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 2: can make connections and that there's a path for that.
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 2: And I think the vice president, to her credit, was
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 2: exceptional at this at every turn during this campaign, very
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 2: clear on her vision, very clear on who she was.
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 2: very clear on the issues that she understood people cared
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 2: about and really how to do something about it. And
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 2: I think that really broke through. But I think these
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 2: younger voters in particular that, you know, fundamentally are hard
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 2: to reach to begin with. And part of our conversation earlier,
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 2: you have the same challenges with these different cohorts to
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 2: reach voters and have an impact and in a way
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 2: that they can feel connected to what we're doing, but
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 2: also just finding them to have that conversation, I think
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 2: was complicated.
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: Stephanie, it felt like one of the driving forces of
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 1: this campaign was that there was a segment of voters,
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 1: primarily young men, who were simply and seemed almost impossible
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: to reach with the traditional tools that Democrats have. Linear TV,
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 1: to some extent, certainly earned media, as you mentioned. It
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: appears that Trump had some ability to reach them. And,
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 1: you know, there is a argument I very much buy,
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 1: which is the difference between the national and the battleground
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: states was because you guys were in the battleground states campaigning.
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 1: But there's also an alarming version of that, which is
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 1: where we are not spending a billion dollars in field
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: and TV, the country is moving farther to the right
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 1: because organically some groups of voters are getting right-leaning messaging
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 1: or anti-democratic messaging. What did you guys sort of see
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 1: about that group of voters that are hard to reach
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 1: and any thoughts you have yet, and I would not
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 1: blame you for not having them yet, about how we
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 1: can reach those folks going forward?
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 6: Well, I would say a couple of things. Like you said,
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 6: this race was you know, a little different than most
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 6: anything else. Trump is a different kind of candidate. We
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 6: had a Democratic candidate get in 107 days out, part
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 6: of an administration, coming out of COVID, inflation, et cetera. Trump,
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 6: you know, obviously it's important to him that he portray
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 6: this very masculine, strong figure. And so how does that show.
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 5: Up for people?
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 6: It shows up at UFC fights. It shows up with
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 6: Dana- White speaking at the convention. It shows up with
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 6: the kind of podcasts that he's doing. It shows up
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 6: in his rhetoric. He's constantly picking a fight and showing
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 6: that he's going to take something on. I'm not saying
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 6: we mimic that. We don't want to mimic that. But
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 6: we have to pay attention to why people find that appealing.
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 6: And his use of TikTok and specifically reaching those younger men,
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 6: I can't tell you how many Friends of mine or
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 6: nieces and nephews would say to me, you know, I'm
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 6: getting these things from Trump all the time on TikTok.
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 6: And they're not political people. They weren't signing up for
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 6: that stuff. But Trump was reaching them. So there is
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 6: a lot for us to learn in that. But I
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 6: will also say a lot of that was very specific
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 6: to that candidate, you know, in his messaging. And while
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 6: people were open to that messaging, we can go really
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 6: deep into why. And we can go into a conversation
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 6: on people thinking that Democrats are squishy and, you know, are,
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 6: you know, the conversation we just had about transgender and
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 6: the conversation that Republicans in the House are trying to
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 6: make us have on bathrooms right now. Or we can
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 6: talk about how we're going to get people's wages up,
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 6: how we're going to, you can figure out how to
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 6: build their careers, about how we finally address the sandwich generations,
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 6: like the vice president was trying to have, of caring
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 6: for kids and being able to afford child care, but
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 6: also having to care for ailing parents. These are the
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 6: type of issues that aren't squishy or masculine, but they
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 6: are real life. And I think if there's one conversation
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 6: that we should have as Democrats, we got to get
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 6: back to those issues because those are our issues. We're
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 6: the ones that find the solutions to those. And, you know,
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 6: in my coming up in politics, we're the only ones
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 6: that cared about them. We have to get back to
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 6: those bread and butter type issues that change people's lives.
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 6: Even that 35-year-old man who finds the masculine rhetoric and
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 6: TikToks and YouTubers and appealing, he still has to pay
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 6: his kids' child care bills. So it's a choice that
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 6: we have to make.
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 5: Jen said earlier that this isn't the problem of a
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 5: 107-day campaign to solve. It's a party problem. Republicans don't
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 5: make Trump apologize. And as Stephanie said, we don't have
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 5: to mimic it. But I think that there are a
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 5: lot of times where if you're in the Democratic Party
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 5: and you step out of line, You get punished for it.
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 6: That's what I was trying to say.
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 1: Thank you for being more direct, Quinn.
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 5: You get punished for it by your own party. Republicans
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 5: do not do that.
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 6: Look at Kamala Harris's comments in the 2019 primary. The
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 6: reason why even that was being discussed is because of
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 6: interest-based politics.
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 5: I mean, we put out an ad with a cuss
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 5: word in it, and the amount of feedback that we
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 5: got was insane.
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 1: From people within the party?
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 5: From people within the party. And like Republicans are, and
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 5: it's like we have to, it's a thing, right? Where
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 5: we have to respond to that. Obviously, we take that
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 5: stuff seriously. We reach out to the people that have concerns.
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 5: That takes time from us. They're getting calls from people
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 5: like Jen, people like myself, apologizing for this so that
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 5: we're keeping our coalition together. Meanwhile, Trump is putting these
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 5: Republicans in the worst possible political or what would seem
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 5: to be, and they support it. Because at the end
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 5: of the day, they understand that it weakens Trump. And,
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 5: you know, this may sound like a shot across the bow,
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 5: but it should be. Democrats are eating our own to
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 5: a very high degree. And until that stops, we're not
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 5: going to be able to address a lot of the
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 5: things that just need to be said. And like for
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 5: the masculinity piece of it, men don't like people that apologize.
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 5: I don't know what age bracket, but it's called like
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 5: standing on business. If you say something, you mean it.
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 5: Trump does not apologize. If he says something, he means it.
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 5: And his party stands behind him. And they don't make
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 5: him backtrack it. And that type of infrastructure doesn't exist.
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 5: We're also getting creamed online. I think one of the
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 5: things about how even in the states that we're not
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 5: playing in, it bleeds over. The Republicans have a well-tuned, well-oiled,
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 5: well-invested echo chamber that exists beyond where they're campaigning. And
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 5: it's online. It reverberates through TikTok. It reverberates through the culture.
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 5: There is a cultural dynamic that's at play in politics today.
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 5: where it is converging like we've never seen.
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 1: And we're losing the culture war.
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 5: And we're losing the culture war. And whatever it is,
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 5: whatever word you want to use, I'm not, you know,
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 5: I leave that to anybody to define on whatever value,
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 5: but we are not aligned on where we can be
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 5: within that because there's always an opportunity. It may be
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 5: very different for you in your state where you are,
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 5: but at the end of the day, we're all Democrats.
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 5: And I think that people are very advantageous to throw
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 5: someone else under the bus, a fellow Democrat, if it
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 5: means that they can rise above it in their own state,
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 5: but we're missing the sort of forest for the trees.
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 5: And I think we have to be better about that.
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 1: Jen, this is the third campaign in a row where
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 1: Trump has not invested what appears to be not invested
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 1: significant money into a traditional field organization, and yet still
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 1: gotten incredibly high turnout. You guys invested a ton of
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 1: money and time in the field, particularly in this election,
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 1: and that obviously bore fruit, so I'm not suggesting it didn't.
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 1: But is there anything you take from this that makes
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 1: you question how we have traditionally done field in the
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 1: Democratic Party in terms of efficiency or efficacy?
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 6: Well.
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 1: I know this is a loaded question for you.
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 2: So first of all, I think against national headwinds, we
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 2: would not have come as close as we did without organizing.
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 3: And I think that part of what we... have to do.
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 2: As Democrats and on our side is, you know, do
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 2: the work of having the conversations and reaching people.
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 3: I just think that is.
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 2: A part of our party and a part of the
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 2: people lower propensity that we are trying to reach that
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 2: we can reach effectively through programs. At the same time,
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 2: I think that and I think Republicans generally have not
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 2: had that same challenge because for the most part, their
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 2: folks have kind of turned out pretty consistently. I think
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 2: Trump again, is an anomaly. So I would be careful
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 2: to put tactics to him that could work for someone
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 2: else because I'm not sure on his side that that's possible.
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 2: But what is true and what I do think we
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 2: need the answer to is how do we reach people
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 2: in ways that isn't just about traditional field? And we
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 2: worked very hard at this, but I'm not sure we
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 2: sort of solved all of it. You know, there's the
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 2: door knocking, there's the phone calls, there's the texting, there's
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 2: the ways to reach people We do that effectively.
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 3: We know how to do it. We have volunteers.
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 2: We had extraordinary people that came from all over that
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 2: were part of the battleground states that did the work,
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 2: did the trainings. We did contrast at the doors and
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 2: on the calls. You don't typically do that. Our folks
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 2: were able to handle all of that, and it was
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 2: a testament to the overall organization, and the organization could
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 2: scale as we had just growing support, which is exactly
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 2: what you want to see. We spent a lot of
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 2: time Even earlier in the year when President Biden was
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 2: at the top of the ticket working on and I
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 2: hate fucking terms for field.
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 3: So I like relational organizing.
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 1: You invented most of them.
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 2: I just it's like all organizing or field.
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 3: I still say field. But anyway, whatever. Relational.
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 2: The bottom line is we know, especially in this environment
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 2: that we're talking about, where people are tuned out to politics,
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 2: they want to stay away from the chaos of Trump.
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 2: They don't trust institutions. They don't trust parties. How do
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 2: you reach them? You reach them by people they trust
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 2: in their own lives. So much of what we were
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 2: trying to do was to get to the young people,
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 2: not just to talk to them, but to give them
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 2: the tools and empower them to speak to other people
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 2: in their lives. And I think that we made some
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 2: progress here. I think there's lots of technical things that
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 2: help us do that. But at the end of the day,
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 2: there is no doubt that Donald Trump figured out how
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 2: to do that. And did that to young people, young
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 2: men in a way that he created some of this
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 2: coolness to folks. And most of the people that wouldn't
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 2: be harmed are the ones that felt like that he
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 2: was cool and they would respond in the podcast and
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 2: so on.
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 1: This is young men.
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 2: Young men in particular, yeah. Young white men in particular too.
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 2: But this isn't to say this is all just about
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 2: young white men. From a how you reach people, I
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 2: actually think we worked a lot on sharing content. We
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 2: worked on trying to talk not just to our own people, right,
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 2: which is one of the problems and the limitations of
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 2: platforms that you're just speaking to the chorus.
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 3: It's part of the challenge.
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 2: How do we try to get people to then be
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 2: inspired to speak to people in their own lives and
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 2: to do it in a way that is not political
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 2: and not partisan? And I think we had some hits
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 2: and misses, but we've got to solve this because you
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 2: cannot put enough money into social media and digital advertising
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 2: and paid programming. to have the impact that organic reach
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 2: has when people are empowered to speak in their own
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 2: lives and are willing to take that on. And we
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 2: saw that and we saw our people do it. It
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 2: just wasn't getting far enough and it wasn't actually infiltrating
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 2: at the level that we've been talking about. So there
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 2: are systemic issues here. There is also just elements that
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 2: we just got to figure out from a campaign standpoint.
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 2: It's easy to do door knock. Well, door knocking is hard,
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 2: but when you know how to track it and you
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 2: know how to be accountable to it, there are structural
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 2: challenges that we have to work on for sharing content
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 2: that that has as much power as it does doing
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 2: a door knock. And so there's things that we really
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 2: tried to implement this time, but I think we still.
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 3: Have work to do to understand. And there are groups
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 3: that do this, do this well.
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 2: You do not have to just be part of the
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 2: political campaign environment. We have to pull ideas from everywhere
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 2: because at its essence, it is figuring out how you
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 2: reach someone that doesn't really want to be reached about
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 2: topics maybe that they don't know that they really want
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 2: to engage on and that they retain it and carry
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 2: it forward to then be willing to take an action.
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 3: And that really is going.
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 2: To require more community, more inputs from different parts of
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 2: your life to ultimately get people to do that.
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 7: Okay.
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 1: I have tortured you guys probably long enough. But before
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 1: we go, I just want to ask, is there anything else,
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 1: any final lessons or thoughts that any of you want
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 1: to offer about what happened and what comes next?
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 3: Can I do one?
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 5: Of course.
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 7: Okay.
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 2: So we lost and that really sucks. And we came
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 2: really close and obviously we believe that we could pull
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 2: this off.
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 3: And that is something we all have to live with
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 3: and we'll have to live with for the next four years.
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 2: But that does not mean that the people that did
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 2: the work on the campaign as volunteers in these states
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 2: that that work didn't matter.
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 3: It was so important.
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 2: And if I spend the rest of my life just
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 2: doing this, I hope people here, especially people that listen
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 2: to your podcast and your audience, that there is so
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 2: much power in being involved in a campaign like this
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 2: and doing a job that you can believe in every
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 2: day and going to talk to regular people and make
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 2: your case for why you care about something and why
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 2: you hope they care about it too. That even though
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 2: we didn't get it over the finish line, we got
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 2: it closer because of those volunteers and because of those
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 2: young staff that moved to Wilmington, that moved to all
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 2: these places in the country that they didn't have to.
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 2: And during COVID, it was really hard. I think our industry,
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 2: a campaign industry, you know, we sort of lost some
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 2: of the pipeline of people that did this cycle after cycle.
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 2: I am only here today because I started a long
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 2: time ago doing campaigns and I have stayed with them
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 2: for a long time. But I just hope people don't
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 2: look at what happened and think, well, what I did
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 2: didn't matter or the campaign didn't matter or the vice
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 2: president wasn't exceptional because she was and because what they
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 2: did did matter. And that does not also mean that
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 2: you have to keep fighting every day. We are in
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 2: a long haul right now and we're going to have
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 2: to take care of ourselves and fight in the way
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 2: we can fight when the fighting needs to be done.
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 2: But I just like the people that stood with us
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 2: on this campaign are the ones that are going to
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 2: get us through this next hurdle. And they're the ones
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 2: that we're all going to follow behind because they are
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 2: that good and that exceptional and have learned so much.
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 3: And, are the future.
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 2: And I just want to make sure that every single person,
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 2: even if you did one text or one phone call,
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 2: you know that what you did really mattered and made
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 2: a difference here, even when the ultimate result wasn't what
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 2: we had hoped for.
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 1: That seems like a great place to end. And that's
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 1: also true for the four of you who did incredible
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 1: work under impossible circumstances. None of you had to do
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 1: this and you did it because it was important. And
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 1: so I'm very grateful to you. It was very, what
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 1: you did was very impressive. So thank you to Jen. Quentin, Stephanie,
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 1: and David. This was fascinating and illuminating.
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 4: Thanks, Dan.
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 7: Thanks.
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 5: Thank you.
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 4: Thanks, Dan.
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 1: That's our show for today. One final note. I'm going
• 1:30:45
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