CNN panelists weren't happy with the excuses made for ' loss by top campaign staffers this week.
A who's who of the Harris campaign stopped by the podcast "Pod Save America" for an episode released on Tuesday that attempted to serve as a post-mortem of the election and an explanation of Harris' stunning loss. Commentator Bakari Sellers and national affairs correspondent Jeff Zeleny both came away from the talk feeling that Democratic Party strategists had no interest in taking the blame for their own decisions.
"It was disappointing at best, hearing their lack of self-awareness, their lack of self-reflection," Sellers said, laying into the staffers for a lack of clear messaging and for covering up flagging numbers. "[They showed an] inability to figure out a way in which you could win this race. Simply providing messaging and saying that we’re up whereby you don’t believe that in your heart of hearts to be true."
Zeleny was equally harsh in his critique of the campaign staffers' analysis.
"You can’t explain your way out of this loss," he said before laying into the campaign's lack of clear answers. "This did not answer a lot of the questions. They're right it was a short campaign, but was it a winnable one with Donald Trump as the opponent?"
The lack of soul-searching clearly rubbed CNN panelists the wrong way, as the Democratic Party's army of consultants appeared to be running away from their results before the ink dried on their checks. The Harris campaign raised more than a billion dollars and ended the campaign $20 million in debt. One critic called the Harris campaign's focus on paid media a "skim at every level” while speaking to Salon earlier this month.
President-elect Donald Trump gloated over how effectively Democratic Party insiders bled the campaign coffers, offering to pay the Harris campaign's outstanding bills on social media.
"Whatever we can do to help them during this difficult period, I would strongly recommend we, as a Party and for the sake of desperately needed UNITY, do,” Trump tweeted. “We have a lot of money left over in that our biggest asset in the campaign was 'Earned Media,' and that doesn’t cost very much. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!"
