Kamala Harris’s campaign is still sending out fundraising requests.

The Harris campaign finished out the race with at least $20 million in debt

  • @jimmydoreisalefty
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    263 days ago

    The Harris campaign finished out the race with at least $20 million in debt, two sources familiar told Politico’s Christopher Cadelago, who wrote on X Wednesday night that of the $1 billion Harris had raised, only $118 million remained in cash as of October 16.

    “We spent money in stupid ways because we had a really bad strategy,” a former consultant to the DNC told Puck’s Tara Palmeri. He cited money sent to fund Representative Colin Allred’s failed challenge against Texas Senator Ted Cruz, as well as money directed to help in Iowa, a state Democrats never, ever win.

    Inside Harris’s crumbled campaign, some feel that they were misled about her chances, and led to believe it would be a margin-of-error race. In reality, Trump blew apart Harris’s play for the blue wall states and beat her by more than four million votes.

    Harris’s campaign budget was closely guarded by campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon, so it’s unclear exactly how funds were allocated. An official for the DNC said that the majority of campaign spending was toward major events, paid media, and Harris’s supposedly expansive ground game—one that ultimately didn’t drum up that many votes at all.

    What’s clear is that Harris ran a very expensive campaign, one that dwarfed Donald Trump’s efforts. The campaign spent an average of $7.5 million a day in August, in comparison to the $2.7 million that Trump spent. In September, the Harris campaign spent $152 million on advertising, more than double the $63 million that Trump shelled out.

    Unfortunately for Harris, dollars didn’t seem to translate into votes. And even after Harris lost, her campaign is still sending out slates of fundraising requests.

    • @Eatspancakes84
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      163 days ago

      I don’t think the issue was targeting the wrong states. There was simply so much money that it was impossible to spend it only on battleground states. The bigger issue is the continued focus on traditional media. To win an election you need an army of online trolls not an ad on tv.

      • @[email protected]
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        3 days ago

        They had a garbage new media strategy too, they spent a million dollars on a set for a podcast that didn’t break a million views (Joe Rogan’s Trump episode had 37M last I checked). They paid Oprah 6M for her appearance.

        God knows what the Cheneys were charging for their appearances.

        But in any case, the root of the problem was their platform; there is no way even the most talented campaign surrogate can dress up “We’re gonna close the border, be tougher on crime, and give tax breaks to small businesses. We will remain Israel’s closest ally” in a way that increases the democrat’s votes.

      • FlashMobOfOne
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        03 days ago

        Are people honestly still blaming troll farms for the loss?

        • @WhatAmLemmy
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          3 days ago

          Paid troll farms are not even remotely comparable to the average individual troll. The paid troll farms are more like advanced intelligence operations that use big data and analytics to coordinate and optimize the entire process end to end.

    • @Viking_Hippie
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      43 days ago

      because we had a really bad strategy

      Damn right they did! If only their army of apparatchiks would admit that too, instead of blaming those whose pleas and warnings were ignored…