Plouffe on Harris’ path to 270
By
ELI STOKOLS,
BEN JOHANSEN and
LAUREN EGAN
09/03/2024 05:17 PM EDT
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Historically, Labor Day has marked a major milepost in the presidential campaign cycle, the start of the final general election sprint. This year, however, it comes as the dust is still settling.
As Eli and
ALEX ISENSTADT wrote Tuesday morning,
KAMALA HARRIS’ team believes she is the underdog in a race against
DONALD TRUMP, a former president seeking the office for a third straight time. But they also believe several dynamics in the revamped race are working in her favor.
DAVID PLOUFFE, the campaign manager on
BARACK OBAMA’s 2008 bid, is now Harris’ senior adviser for path to 270 and strategy. He spoke to West Wing Playbook about how he and the vice president’s team see the 63 days ahead. This conversation has been edited for clarity.
How do you see these final nine weeks setting up?
I think the most important thing in the pursuit of 270 electoral votes is that Kamala Harris has multiple credible pathways to win. She has shown growing strength, which is important. You see both candidates have a pretty high vote share, so there’s a small but important number of undecided voters, and this is a campaign that’s well positioned to reach them.
Because of the enthusiasm she’s generated?
Right now, I think more voters than not see her as kind of a breath of fresh air. She’s handled herself exceedingly well in this hot spotlight. You know, at the end of the day, I think we were convinced there’s enough voters in each battleground state that, all things being equal, would rather Donald Trump not return for a second time.
We have a market of voters out there who want to know more about her, who are open to voting for [her] and we’ve got, I think, a campaign and a candidate who can meet those voters where they are.
How does that enthusiasm translate to her campaign, operationally?
I can’t overstate it — it makes impossible things possible. So say we want to go talk to [several] thousand voters today in Pittsburgh’s Allegheny County or in [Wisconsin’s] Dane County, or in Wake County, down in North Carolina, and the campaign can do that. Some people give dollars, and that’s amazing. People will share social media content, and that’s super important, because it creates kind of an army of people out there sharing good content. Those people reach other voters.
The debate is coming up in a week. How critical is that, especially given that it’ll be her chance to make a first impression with so many people watching?
Presidential debates do matter. … I would assume that the audience for this will be larger than the one in June. You have a lot of people going to vote who may not watch the debate, but they’ll see clips, of course. It’s a big moment. It’s not the
only moment. I think a successful campaign does not over-rely on any one moment.
And don’t forget: No one in American history will have done more general election presidential debates than Donald Trump. This will be his seventh. Kamala Harris rightly says she’s an underdog in this race. I think she’ll be an underdog in this debate.
But if she does well, you see this is a real chance to solidify and expand her support?
Where the race stands today is there’s still a bunch of voters out there that want to know more about Kamala Harris, that will learn more about her, that are curious about her, and that’s a big advantage. I don’t think people pay enough attention to that, people who are watching this race: These candidates aren’t similar in terms of their ability to grow.
Campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon wrote a memo this weekend touting, among other advantages, your superior organization. How does that factor in at the end of the day?
Basically the presidential campaign is seven gubernatorial races and one congressional race. Yes, television ads are important. And yes, national coverage is important. But you’ve got to think about it that way, which is, you want to be in as many corners of the state as you can, communities large, medium and small.
You want surrogates in those places; you want as good a ground operation as a state-based candidate would have. I mean, to me, that’s the standard you need to set ... Can you run just an incredibly intensive presidential campaign as if you were running a dead heat battleground state governor’s campaign? And I think we can.
And you need to do that in these seven key states you’re talking about. That, essentially, is where this race will be won or lost.
Yes. You’ve got seven states and the congressional district in Nebraska. And you’ve got different ways to win them.
I mean, a month, 40 days ago, the Trump campaign was spending as much time talking about New Jersey and New Mexico as North Carolina. … That ridiculous notion that he was going to expand the map has now been laid to rest.
A groundswell would be half the country...
