<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nThe finger-pointing was in full force Wednesday. Many Democrats blamed Biden for not dropping out sooner, while acknowledging that it was the party all along that enabled his ability to seek a second term, essentially clearing the primary for him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Harris, they said, inherited a campaign where the fundamental negatives of a nation on the wrong track were baked in. Some blamed the influence of the Obama-era consultants and strategists who play an outsize role in messaging and who, according to one longtime Democrat close to the Biden team, were \u201cstuck in 2009.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
One Harris ally said Democrats as a party will need to reckon with creating a \u201cmartyr\u201d out of Trump by impeaching him twice, bringing a number of state and federal prosecutions against him, and creating a Jan. 6 House Select Committee that spent weeks attacking him on prime-time television. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cPeople needed to pick who was going to go after him,\u201d the Harris ally said of prosecutors and Democrats. \u201cThere can\u2019t be eight cases against him. That\u2019s just not strategic because you\u2019re going to make him a martyr. And guess what? You made him a martyr. Everybody is suing him. Every attorney general is investigating him. Every Democrat that has the authority to investigate, is investigating Trump. We made ourselves look like a joke.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Some of what went wrong can be traced to the dismantling of the coalition that ushered Biden into office in 2020, said a person close to Biden. The president claimed victory over Trump after beating out an expansive primary field that had moved too far to the left. But once Biden moved into the Oval Office, top aides pushed him toward policies that drifted from that moderate persona, like issuing wide-scale student debt relief, loosening restrictions at the border and pulling the permit to the Keystone Pipeline. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Many Democrats were also calling for a clearing out of the old guard operatives who have run the last several campaigns. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe team that\u2019s there, it\u2019s time for them to retire. We need a whole different strategy,\u201d said one Democrat who was part of the re-election effort. \u201cThe day of Obama and his geniuses are over. They\u2019ve been left behind. They are out of touch with the American people. The Democratic Party is out of touch.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Campaign aides and allies directed much of the angst at the campaign\u2019s chair, Jen O\u2019Malley Dillon, whom they complained ran a shop with the hand of an autocrat. According to three senior campaign officials, they saw her as loyal to Biden, never allowing Harris to truly make the break from him that she needed to win. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
O\u2019Malley Dillon, they said, siloed off information with just a tight circle of advisers, keeping other senior officials off email chains and updates. That sidelined many of the aides who knew Harris the longest \u2014 and the best, they said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It led to what some felt were grave mistakes, like Harris\u2019 remark on “The View.” In the interview, she was asked what she would do differently than Biden. Harris said she couldn\u2019t think of anything. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The message was in direct conflict with what they thought was a crucial message that the vice president would be a change agent. Republicans jumped on the remark and ran it in ads. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the officials said longtime Harris aides weren\u2019t included in prepping Harris before that interview. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
“She makes that mistake on ‘The View.’ And she makes that mistake on ‘The View’ because they told her, \u2018be loyal,\u2019\u201d a senior campaign official said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
A source with knowledge of campaign dynamics pushed back on the notion that O’Malley Dillon brushed aside any of Harris’ team members, saying that throughout the contest, O\u2019Malley Dillon held daily meetings with Harris\u2019 two chiefs of staff, Lorraine Voles and Sheila Nix.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One Harris aide called for more diversity among decision-makers, pointing to a far too-white leadership makeup of Harris\u2019 campaign and Biden\u2019s former campaign. The campaign did have campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez and former Rep. Cedric Richmond as a senior adviser, among others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThere was a huge gap in leadership of color, up and down the system that I think played to some of these blind spots,\u201d the person said. \u201cI just want to see more honesty and a little less whiteness … I think that if we are able to kind of look within ourselves and see the talent that is already there, then there can be a new generation of leadership. But it\u2019s going to be tough. This feels like a decade loss. This is really bad, and we have to decide where we\u2019re going to go from here. We have to restructure the whole thing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The aide believed Democrats would still have lost if Biden was the candidate and that the party should have worked to ensure Biden didn\u2019t run for re-election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHow the hell did we not deal with this problem? He\u2019s 80 years old. He was supposed to be a one-termer. The man could barely speak and actually be coherent,\u201d the person said. \u201cIt was too late, and we knew we had a Biden problem this time last year. The party knew it and people truly were not honest about how out of touch he was and how his age was really playing with America.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ultimately, a Democratic lawmaker said, the party needs to reassess its leadership both in office and behind the scenes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“There needs to be a real reckoning for the establishment about what went wrong,” the lawmaker said. “Longtime operatives and older leaders frankly need to step aside and allow for new ideas and a rebuilding of the Democratic Party with much more vision, substance and inspiration.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Vermont Sen. Peter Welch, the first Democratic senator to call on Biden to bow out \u2014 who said he doesn’t regret it \u2014 said there is a mandate that Democrats work with Republicans right now. But he didn’t have an answer for who in the party would be the next leader.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cTo be determined, I couldn\u2019t point to anyone,” Welch said. “It\u2019s a vacuum. Bring back James Carville.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n