Trump likely too popular to beat, Harris campaign admits



Several senior advisers of failed Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris have admitted that President-elect Donald Trump was likely too popular to beat in the 2024 election.

On Tuesday, the left-leaning show "Pod Save America" dropped an episode featuring Harris advisers David Plouffe, Jen O'Malley Dillon, Quentin Fulks, and Stephanie Cutter. The team did their best to spin the campaign and Harris' overall performance in a positive light, but even they had to admit Trump had the edge almost from the moment Joe Biden dropped out and Harris got the nod.

"She had a huge deficit in favorability because either people didn't know about her or what they did know about her was based off of negative media," Cutter claimed.

Even the lone presidential debate between Harris and Trump, which the media claims Harris won, did little to move the needle, Plouffe explained, estimating it may have given Harris only a half-point boost.

"Even post-debate, we still had ourselves down in the battleground states."

They also begrudgingly admitted that a larger share of the American electorate has warmed to Trump. Plouffe pointed out that this time around, Trump performed significantly better among voters without a college degree, especially those who are not white.

Others noted that voters look back on Trump's first term favorably, especially when compared with the Biden-Harris administration. Between COVID and high inflation, Americans "had been through hell" the past four years, Cutter claimed, and were therefore remembering Trump's time in office "much more fondly."

In fact, Trump nostalgia was so strong that the Harris campaign attempted to stoke fear about a second Trump term, Plouffe indicated, and harped on his perceived weaknesses such as abortion and Project 2025.

"Once you have a former president running where 48% to 51% of the people approve of his first term and people are dissatisfied with the direction of the country, you have to raise the stakes of what a second term would be like," Plouffe explained.

"So I think for us, we spent much more time trying to raise the stakes of a second term than re-arbitrating the first because voters just weren't open to that," he added.

"At the end of the day, the political atmosphere was pretty brutal."

'We got it to even, but the thing never moved.'

Another aspect of this "Pod Save America" episode that has garnered national attention was the discussion about the apparent disconnect between public polling numbers and the internal polling numbers, as Blaze News previously reported.

"We didn’t get the breaks we needed on Election Day," Plouffe said. "I think it surprised people because there was these public polls that came out in late September, early October, showing us with leads that we never saw."

Indeed, from about August 5 until October 23, the RealClearPolling average had Harris ahead of Trump, usually by about two points. Ipsos and Marist polls taken the first week of November likewise showed Harris with two-point and four-point national lead respectively.

Trump ended up winning the popular vote by about 1.6% and the Electoral College in a landslide, trouncing Harris 312 to just 226.

Nevertheless, in the weeks leading up to the election, the Harris team still viewed the race as "tight" and within "the margin of error," believing they needed only a few data points to bounce their way to a Harris victory. Those bounces never happened.

"We got it to even, but the thing never moved," Plouffe said.

O'Malley Dillon admitted that they knew heading into Election Day that Virginia would be "redder" than in the past two presidential elections, and by election night, they all had an inkling that the race would not go as hoped. As returns came in, Plouffe noted a "massive shift" to the right in traditionally blue states such as California, Connecticut, New Jersey, and New York, even as Harris still carried them.

"It ended up being a pretty strong tailwind for Donald Trump."

H/T: NewsWire

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'She was doing plenty'

MSNBC host interrupts top Biden official with reality check over economic narrative: 'They're not buying it'



MSNBC host Chris Jansing interrupted a White House official with a reality check Thursday for repeating the administration's trite narrative about the economy.

Speaking with deputy White House chief of staff Jen O'Malley Dillon, Jansing said Biden has repeatedly claimed the economy is working for Americans — but they aren't actually buying what he's selling.

"The White House argument has been the same all year long— for months, he’s been making this argument," Jansing noted.

"And yet our latest poll here at NBC shows only 16% believe the economy is excellent or good; 59% expect a recession within a year," she continued. "So why isn’t that argument working?"

O'Malley Dillon responded by claiming "it's not just an argument he’s making," before Jansing interjected with a reality check.

"He’s delivering for the American people —" O'Malley Dillion claimed.

"But they're not buying it," Jansing interjected.

\u201cMSNBC's Chris Jansing: "The White House argument has been the same all year long...only 16% believe the economy is excellent or good."\n\nWH official: "It\u2019s not just an argument he\u2019s making. He\u2019s delivering for the American people \u2014"\n\nJansing: "But they\u2019re not buying it."\u201d
— Washington Free Beacon (@Washington Free Beacon) 1666893596

The taste of reality, however, failed to deter O'Malley Dillon, who defended Biden and the actions he has apparently taken to alleviate the economic burden that Americans feel.

She went on to attack Republicans, highlighting their promise to overturn Biden's economic policies if they win control of Congress in the 2022 midterm elections.

But the truth is that Biden's major economic policies — the American Rescue Plan, his COVID-19 stimulus, and the Inflation Reduction Act — have not eased economic woes. In fact, economists generally agree that the American Rescue Plan exacerbated inflation and that the Inflation Reduction Act will not actually reduce inflation.

Moreover, Biden likes to claim he has created 10 million jobs as president and presided over record deficit reduction.

But according to the Congressional Budget Office, deficit reduction seen under Biden has been caused by waning pandemic-related spending.

The CBO has explained:

CBO projects that the federal budget deficit will shrink to $1.0 trillion in 2022 (it was $2.8 trillion last year) and that the annual shortfall would average $1.6 trillion from 2023 to 2032. The deficit continues to decrease as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) next year as spending related to the coronavirus pandemic wanes ...

And while the economy has acquired the number of jobs Biden touts, most of those are attributed to people returning to the labor force after the pandemic.

In fact, according to the latest jobs report, there are only 514,000 more jobs today than in February 2020 before the pandemic.

‘They’re Not Buying It’: MSNBC Host Cuts Off WH Official Claiming Biden Is ‘Delivering’ For Americans

'So why isn’t that argument working?'