Harris Deputy Campaign Manager: DNC 2024 Autopsy Not Up To Snuff, Led By A Volunteer Outside His Consulting Hours
Rob Flaherty, deputy campaign manager of Kamala Harris’s 2024 presidential campaign, joined “Breaking Points” host Ryan Grim to discuss his article on the DNC autopsy, bad decisions the campaign made, the decision not to go on Joe Rogan’s podcast, and more. The autopsy was released Thursday morning and can be read here.
RYAN GRIM, ‘BREAKING POINTS’ HOST: The Democratic National Committee autopsy that they claim to have performed has yet to be published, but Rob Flaherty, a top official with both the 2020 Biden campaign, the 2024 Biden campaign, and then the 2024 Kamala Harris campaign, is with us here to discuss the kind of interview that he gave with the autopsy crew, and also how he would write it if he were the main author of this report. You can read his piece in The Bulwark. It’s titled, Here’s What I Told, the DNC Autopsy. I really do think it’s worth reading because, Rob, I think you tried hard to say, look, I don’t want to come off as being too defensive here. We lost. The goal is to win. We didn’t do that, so therefore we failed. Here are the decisions we made. Here’s why we made them. And take what you want from it because we need to learn lessons from that. What’s been the reaction, and then we’ll go through a bunch of different sections of it. What’s been the reaction from Democrats since this kind of went viral among the operative set? ROB FLAHERTY, KAMALA HARRIS 2024 DEPUTY CAMPAIGN MANAGER: Yeah, you know what? I have to be honest, and thanks for having me, by the way. It has been a surprisingly constructive conversation, which I think has been heartening. There have been folks who have disagreed with my takes. That is totally fair, and I think they’ve offered constructive feedback. It also, I think, speaks why I think the party can handle an autopsy discussion. People, I think, came to this in pretty good faith, which I appreciated. GRIM: No, that is a good point, and before we get into the thing, do you have a theory? So the theory that they’re kind of floating now for why we haven’t seen the autopsy is that it’s really poorly done, and it’s embarrassing, which is kind of funny as an excuse. It’s like, then do a better job, maybe? Hire somebody to, I don’t know, run it through ChatGPT and tell them to clean it up or something. I mean, it doesn’t sound credible to me as an excuse. What is your theory for why we have not seen this document, and how do I get my hands on it? FLAHERTY: How do you get your hands on it? So that is basically my understanding, is that the final product was not up to snuff. GRIM: Wasn’t it like a friend of [DNC Chairman] Ken Martin’s or something? FLAHERTY: More or less. The guy who was doing it, he was doing it as a volunteer sort of outside of his consulting hours. It was sort of done not at the quality you would expect. GRIM: Do we know how much Democrats spent on this too bad to release report? FLAHERTY: I don’t know. I don’t know how much was spent. GRIM: Get an audit of it. FLAHERTY: Yeah, seriously. I think that it is worth them taking the time to do it and do it well if that is the case. But to my understanding, that is what it was. Something I’d have, a ChatGPT summary is like what came out. GRIM: But anyway, I think they’re just trying to hold their breath and do well in November and hope everybody forgets about it.
