A bombshell new book just dropped — 2024: How Trump Retook the White House and Democrats Lost America — and it’s pulling back the curtain on just how chaotic and mismanaged Kamala Harris’s campaign really was.
According to documents obtained by Politico Playbook and first reported by Townhall, a batch of confidential memos from Democratic insider Maria Comella spelled out a last-ditch strategy for Harris to salvage her flailing run. The memos were brutally honest — and as it turns out, eerily prophetic. The Harris team was advised to change course, connect with disaffected Republicans, and admit where Democrats had gotten it wrong. But Harris didn’t listen. Or worse, she couldn’t execute.
Here’s what the memos said, plain and simple: The campaign wasn’t working. “It doesn’t give reason to vote for Harris,” Comella warned in one memo sent to campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon. She urged Harris to break with Biden on key issues like border security, electric vehicles, and urban crime — and to stop pretending everything was fine.
The advice? Show you’re not just a Biden clone. Admit the party missed the mark. Get out of the D.C. bubble. Go on Joe Rogan’s podcast. Talk to the people — not at them. Specifically, one memo laid it out:
“Looking back it’s clear that…the Biden administration was too slow to recognize and get ahead of the problem. We should have been focused on the border from day one.”
Instead? Harris doubled down on the very same tired talking points. She chose to spotlight Jan. 6 with a closing speech at the Ellipse — exactly what the memo said not to do. And while the memo warned against celebrity endorsements and Never Trumpers, she ended up rubbing shoulders with Liz Cheney and Beyoncé. Hard to imagine a better way to alienate swing voters.
She never got specific about the economy. Never articulated a plan. Never admitted the obvious about the administration’s failures. And she never showed up to Rogan — arguably the biggest open mic for reaching independents in America. Why? Likely because she knew she couldn’t handle it. As the report noted, even in controlled settings she struggled to enunciate basic policy. A freewheeling Rogan interview? That would’ve been a disaster.
In the end, the strategy was there. The roadmap existed. But as Townhall’s Matt Vespa put it: “You can give her good ideas, but if she can’t pull it off, they’re not going to help. She’s just going to sound like a struggling robot.”
