A top aide to Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign revealed a surprising truth. Internal polls never showed Harris defeating Donald Trump. Yet, high-dollar donors were led to believe otherwise.
"That's not what we were told," said Lindy Li, a Harris campaign fundraiser, speaking to Fox News Digital. Li, also a DNC National Finance Committee member, added, "We were told definitely that she had a shot at winning – it wasn’t even a shot. I was even told that Pennsylvania was looking good, that we would win 3-4 swing states."
Li also recalled the optimism on election night. "We were told that we were going to win Iowa," she said. But the results told a different story.
On "Pod Save America," Harris senior adviser David Plouffe painted a starkly different picture. "We didn’t get the breaks we needed on Election Day," he shared. Plouffe explained that internal data never matched the optimistic public polls from September and October. "I think it surprised people because there were these public polls... showing us with leads that we never saw."
Plouffe wasn’t alone in analyzing the loss. Top Harris aides, including Jen O'Malley Dillon, Stephanie Cutter, and Quentin Fulks, joined the podcast. They discussed the campaign’s challenges and reasons for the defeat.
Yet, this discrepancy between internal data and donor messaging left fundraisers like Li frustrated. "It’s absolutely not normal for a campaign to obscure this type of information," Li said.
She expressed concern about the impact on donors. "Donors’ trust will need to be gained back," she stated. "For some casual donors, they're going to be like, no f---ing way."
Li emphasized the unexpected scale of the defeat. "It’s not that he’d beat her that’s a shock. It’s the extent to which he beat her. It wasn’t even close. It was a decisive defeat."
Plouffe acknowledged that public polls had once placed Harris ahead of Trump. But behind closed doors, the campaign’s reality was far less encouraging. The contrast left many questioning the campaign’s transparency and strategies.