The veteran Democratic strategist David Axelrod weighed in Thursday on what President-elect Donald Trump‘s campaign did well in the 2024 election against Vice President Kamala Harris.
“Give Trump’s team credit,” Axelrod wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “They set out from the start to define her as the status quo by tying her to an unpopular president on economy/border issues, and they succeeded.”
Axelrod, who served as Barack Obama‘s chief strategist during the 2008 and 2012 elections, also weighed in on the pros and cons of Harris’ candidacy and campaign.
Alex Brandon/AP
He wrote that the vice president faced “tremendous headwinds” heading into the race, including voters’ concerns about rising inflation, the economy, immigration and border security, and President Joe Biden‘s low approval rating.
“The most unseemly thing about elections you lose is that everyone has theories about what you could/should have done,” he wrote on X. “The Harris campaign wasn’t perfect but it, and she, did a lot of things well—debate; convention and more.”
But the “reality is, they were facing tremendous headwinds—28% right track number; two-thirds negative on economy;@POTUS approval, just 40 percent,” he wrote. “No incumbent party has ever overcome such numbers.”
Indeed, Harris’ defenders have pointed out in recent days that her loss to Trump is the latest in a growing trend of incumbents around the globe losing their reelection campaigns.
They’ve also noted that the vice president jumped into the race at the end of July, giving her less than four months to build a campaign apparatus, accumulate Democratic support heading into the party’s national convention, and develop a coherent messaging strategy before Election Day.
Harris replaced Biden after Biden decided to drop out of the race following a widely criticized first debate performance against Trump in June.
Axelrod was among a chorus of Democrats who called for the president to drop out to give Democrats a better chance of keeping the White House. Biden dropped out of the race at the end of July.
Axelrod later criticized Harris when he said she was evasive when asked questions about topics like immigration and foreign policy.
“She would acknowledge no concerns about any of the administration’s policies,” he said after Harris’ CNN town hall late last month. “And that’s a mistake. Sometimes you have to concede things, and she didn’t concede much.”
Trump sailed to victory earlier this week, when he notched 295 votes in the Electoral College, putting him well over the 270-vote threshold candidates need to clear to win the presidency. The Associated Press called the race for Trump early Wednesday morning when he won the battleground state of Wisconsin and officially cleared 270 electoral votes.
The president-elect also won the critical swing states of Georgia, North Carolina, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, and as of Thursday evening, he leads Harris in Arizona and Nevada.