Vice President Kamala Harris tried to buck up the spirits of dejected staffers in a post-election call this week — but it left many angry and even further disillusioned.
Axios reported the call with team members came after Harris delivered a powerful concession speech Wednesday, emphasizing her commitment to the peaceful transition of power in contrast to the January 6 plot four years previously.
“Yeah, this sucks,” she reportedly told her campaign troops. “We all just speak truth, why don’t we, right? There’s also so much good that has come of this.” Campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon tearfully told them, “You are great people who have done a great thing, and you came really close.”
But many of the staffers felt like this was an inadequate sendoff for an election in which they were constantly told at stake was democracy itself.
“It was detached from the reality of what happened,” a staffer said to Axios. “We are told the fate of democracy is at stake, and then the message was, ‘We’ll get them next time.’”
Others demanded answers about why the campaign, which believed until the end that it was a margin-of-error race only to lose every battleground state and become the first Democratic campaign in 20 years to lose the popular vote, was so caught off guard by the result.
“How did you spend $1 billion and not win? What the f—?” one Biden staffer said.
All of this comes amid reporting that despite the record-shattering fundraising, Harris’ campaign ended with $20 million in debt that will now have to be settled.