Immediately following her election loss to Donald Trump, pundits started marveling over the fact that Kamala Harris had managed to blow through $1 Billion in campaign spending over the span of a truncated campaign, only to lose every battleground state, as well as the popular vote. It turns out that figure was off by several hundred million dollars. Per a report in the New York Times, Team Harris incinerated approximately $1.5 Billion over 15 short weeks, drawing a chorus of criticism and confusion, in retrospect. Astoundingly, the Harris campaign was running weekly expenditures of roughly $100,000,000.00. A hundred million bucks per week. Where on earth did all that cash go? Inquiring minds, especially those of donors would like to know.
The Times fills in some of those blanks, twisting the knife by noting that "despite her significant financial advantage, Ms. Harris became the first Democratic presidential candidate to lose the national popular vote in two decades, ceding every battleground state to Mr. Trump:"
Vice President Kamala Harris spent a remarkable $1.5 billion in her hyper-compressed 15-week presidential campaign. But in the days since losing to President-elect Donald J. Trump, her operation has faced questions internally and externally over where exactly all that cash went...Her cash-rich campaign spared no expense as it hunted for voters — paying for an avalanche of advertising, social-media influencers, a for-hire door-knocking operation, thousands of staff, pricey rallies, a splashy Oprah town hall, celebrity concerts and even drone shows. It was a spree that averaged roughly $100 million per week. The frenzied spending has led to second-guessing among some Democrats, including whether investing in celebrity-fueled events with stars such as Lady Gaga and Beyoncé was more ostentatious than effective...The biggest expense during the race was advertising. Between July 21 and Oct. 16, financial records show that the Harris campaign spent $494 million on producing and buying media, a category that includes both television and digital ads. The total sum through the election is said to be closer to $600 million.
Six hundred million US dollars on advertising alone. The marketing can be mighty expensive, but if the product is bad, that's an insurmountable problem. Voters clocked the defectiveness of the product despite a shortened, vacuous, hype-surrounded campaign, to their credit. More details from the article:
The ads were just one piece of a campaign that had enough cash to spend on seemingly everything. There was $2.5 million directed toward three digital agencies that work with online influencers, records show. The campaign spent around $900,000 to book advertising on the exterior of the Sphere venue in Las Vegas in the last week of the race, two officials said. There were drone shows in the sky before the debate in Philadelphia in September and at a Pittsburgh Steelers game in October...One particular Harris payment has drawn attention in the aftermath of the election: the $1 million paid to Oprah Winfrey’s production firm, Harpo Productions. In an Instagram post, Ms. Winfrey said the company was paid to stage a live-streamed town hall in Detroit, providing the set, lights, cameras, microphones, crew, producers and even the chairs...
“I did not take any personal fee,” Ms. Winfrey wrote. “However the people who worked on that production needed to be paid. And were. End of story.” The $1 million actually undercounts the full cost of the event, which ran closer to $2.5 million, according to two people briefed on the matter. Another pricey choice was holding swing-state rallies featuring star performers on the eve of the election, including Lady Gaga in Philadelphia, Jon Bon Jovi in Detroit, Christina Aguilera in Nevada, James Taylor in North Carolina and Katy Perry in Pittsburgh. The singers themselves were not compensated, officials said, but the support staff was. The overall bill for the election-eve rallies exceeded the planned budget and is said to have topped $10 million.
In the same vein was the six-figure price tag of building an entire set for a single podcast appearance. Lots of "influencers," lots of celebrities, not enough votes. Democrats like to hypocritically complain about the corrosive influence of money in politics, while enjoying their runaway status as the party of money in politics. They whine about major right-wing and pro-Republican donors, while happily taking even more from their own billionaire class (not to mention the massive sums of laundered taxpayer money they receive from partisan special interest groups like teachers unions). Republicans getting out-raised and out-spent very well could have had a negative impact on some important down-ballot races. The party would prefer not to make a habit of getting crushed in the money game. But at the presidential level -- especially with Donald Trump and his knack for earned media at the top of the ticket -- big money didn't determine the outcome. For all of their hand-wringing about dollars "buying elections," Biden and Harris raised roughly double what Trump and the GOP did, combined -- and still lost:
All told, the Biden and Harris campaigns collectively raised about $2.15 billion, two people said. It is not clear exactly how much Mr. Trump spent though it was far less. Mr. Trump and the Republican Party together raised $1.2 billion, one person with knowledge of the figure said.
Take a bow, Democrats. Also of note, the Times relays that despite the continued stream of fundraising missives being sent out under Harris' name, her reported campaign debt has been eliminated, so additional dollars will flow to the DNC:
Since her loss, the Harris operation has pressed supporters for more cash with desperate-sounding solicitations, stirring fears about post-election debts. “Is there anything we can say?” came one email asking for cash last Monday...Patrick Stauffer, the campaign’s chief financial officer, said in a statement that there had been no outstanding debts or overdue bills as of Election Day. He said that “there will be no debt” on the next Democratic National Committee and Harris for President campaign filings in December. Donations made after the election to the “Harris Fight Fund” are being funneled to the Democratic National Committee, officials said.
Finally, on the subject of the lackluster product all this money couldn't sell, it turns out that late deciding voters who swung to Trump (despite faulty and wishful media narratives, Trump carried final-week-deciders by double digits) understood that Harris believes a lot of extreme things:
Poll of swing voters who decided late said that Harris still believed a lot of unpopular things she said in 2019. She needed to explicitly disavow them and not just let staff say she changed position and move on. https://t.co/xiBNH0c5kK pic.twitter.com/RF2sqvGcGf
— Aaron Astor (@AstorAaron) November 17, 2024
She didn't disavow anything in a credible way, and didn't even try to explain virtually any of her flip-flops. This led key voters to conclude what was obvious: Kamala Harris is a radical leftist who should not be president. She didn't forcefully reject her own previous positions, statements and proposals because she believes them.
