Former Vice President Kamala Harris was reportedly caught off guard by her 2024 election defeat to President Donald Trump and “bought the hype” that she was on track to win, according to a new book. “She was completely shocked, and [Harris’ running mate] Tim Walz was shocked,” The Hill reporter Amie Parnes said on the podcast “Somebody’s Gotta Win with Tara Palmeri,” released Thursday.
Parnes shared insights from her new book, Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House, co-authored with NBC reporter Jonathan Allen. The book delves into the turbulent 2024 presidential campaign, chronicling the upheaval that followed former President Biden’s decision to step aside and Kamala Harris’s sudden rise to lead the Democratic ticket. During the discussion about the confusion within the Harris campaign on election night, Parnes mentioned that Walz was sitting in his hotel room, looking stunned.
“He has no words. And people are kind of explaining to him, same thing with her. And she’s like, are you sure? Have we done a recount? Should we do a recount?” Parnes said on the podcast, recounting how Walz and Harris reportedly reacted to their defeat. “They thought that they were going to win. And so, you know, when they come back now and say, ‘Oh, no, we didn’t really have a chance.’ No, that’s not what they were thinking. They thought they were going to win.”
According to Parnes, Harris campaign staffers said they felt “gaslit” by senior leadership, having been repeatedly assured that “things were looking good” for the candidate heading into the election. Parnes also noted that Harris herself “bought the hype” and believed she was performing better than she actually was. “Kamala Harris was looking at her crowd size, and they felt like the vibe was strong and people were saying, ‘Oh, we have more boots on the ground. We’re doing better in fundraising,’” Parnes continued. “And she bought all of that. She bought the hype, and so did a lot of people in the campaign.”
After her defeat, Harris allegedly told friends that with more time and without Biden running for re-election, she could have won the election. “She could have won, she told friends, if only the election were later in the calendar — or she got in earlier. In other words, Joe Biden was to blame,” the authors wrote. Friends of Harris stated she believed Biden’s unpopularity and her late entry into the race hurt her campaign.
However, not all of Harris’s friends believed that time would help, according to the book. “That is f—ing bonkers,” one Harris friend reportedly said. “If Election Day was October first, we might have actually somehow pulled it off. Shorter was actually better, not longer.” But one Harris advisor said the candidate’s problem was “substance,” not a lack of campaign time. “I don’t think we needed more time… We needed more substance. And she did not have more substance,” the advisor is quoted as saying.