Kamala Could Have Won [View all]

by Stanley B. Greenberg May 14, 2025

Kamala Harris was poised to win the 2024 presidential election when her message included America getting control of its border and her championing economic and political change.

In her campaign launch addressing the economy and in her DNC acceptance speeches, she made the cost of living singularly important, showed empathy, and offered concrete policy solutions. She promised that Congress would enact the bipartisan border control bill. She embraced President Biden’s expanded Child Tax Credit and attacked Donald Trump’s tax cuts for billionaires. Her speeches made the election a battle for the middle class. She was laser-focused on the cost of living, while portraying—correctly, as we are seeing today—Trump tariffs as an inflationary tax on imports. She made that the principal fight of the campaign.

And after her debate against Trump, Harris moved into a three-point lead nationally and, critically, ahead in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. But it was not to be.

Two books, one by Chris Whipple, Uncharted: How Trump Beat Biden, Harris, and the Odds in the Wildest Campaign in History, and the other by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes, Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House, show the disastrous decisions that put Donald Trump in the White House. I will also describe my efforts with various participants to impact those decisions.
https://prospect.org/culture/books/2025-05-14-kamala-could-have-won-whipple-allen-parnes-review/

Significant work to learn from.