Two Plutocrats Shifted Harris’ Earned Media Message. It Didn’t End Well.

A statement from Revolving Door Project founder and Executive Director Jeff Hauser:

“In October, billionaire Mark Cuban bragged about his role in exiling a Harris surrogate and former Elizabeth Warren staffer for the sin of supporting a wealth tax during a television appearance. This claim was bolstered this month by reporting in The Atlantic that suggests that Uber General Counsel (and VP Harris’ brother-in-law) Tony West convinced Vice President Harris to ratchet down her populist messaging lest it upset the Silicon Valley and Wall Street elites he was courting on her behalf.

On November 5th, Harris ran far stronger in the states that she saturated with television ads than the ones she did not. Those tv ads were, as Semafor’s David Weigel observed, “grinding on this economic message (anti-price gouging, Medicare covering home care, etc).”

It’s impossible to know whether the additional 2 points or less needed by Harris in the pivotal states would have been secured by basing her public “earned media” and social media messaging on the same populist economic platform which informed her television ads. However, it is clear that the more successful paid media message was more populist and less informed by plutocrats like Cuban and West. Further, it seems exceedingly likely that downballot Democrats outside the swing states would have benefitted from an ecosystem featuring the type of messaging we heard at the Democratic Convention.

In a populist moment in which the candidates were battling for the mantle of change, the sitting Vice President had to be identified as clearly against some powerful institutions. Her campaign showed early signs of an aggressive message, arguing that her record as California Attorney General included taking on crooked big banks and shady student loan servicers. While VP Harris stuck to a comparably anti-plutocratic message in her television ads, she did not in her interviews and public appearances. This divergence appears to have been based on the advice of plutocrats.

Hopefully future candidates will learn from this, and oppose plutocrats consistently.”