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Kamala wanted to run the country. In the end, she couldn't even run her own campaign.
Apparently, the Harris campaign is $20 million in debt despite spending at least $1 billion over the last 3 months. On the other hand, the Trump campaign was frugal - spending only about 1/3 or 1/2 as much as Kamala (quibble about the exact numbers all you want). Staffing in particular seems to have been a major difference with Harris spending perhaps an order of magnitude more than Trump. Harris hired high paid consultants while Trump relied on free labor from passionate supporters.
It gets worse.
The Harris campaign has been accused of paying celebrities for exposure. Surely, already rich celebrities like Beyoncé and Oprah would be happy to support their favored candidate for free. Right? Apparently not. Fox News has reported that the Harris campaign paid Oprah a million dollars to interview her. Lizzo and Cardi B have also been singled out as receiving payments.
Is it any wonder that these celebrity endorsements don't work when they are so fake?
Contra Scott's too much money in dark almonds piece, I think the reason that political campaign donations are relatively low is that it's really hard to buy an election. Bloomberg tried to back in 2020 and his campaign went nowhere. Money does matter, but the candidate matters a lot more. $1 to Trump makes a bigger difference than $3 to Harris. And Trump appearing on Rogan might have been worth $100 million, but he didn't have to pay a cent.
It's funny because the day after the election I was overhearing my colleagues talking, and somehow, the impression they had was that Trump winning is the proof that rich people can just buy elections in the US. I don't expect that canadians would know much about american campaign finances, but still.
I listened to Pod Save America after the election and they were saying this election shows us that we need to get money out of politics. I immediately thought they were talking nonsense since they are the side that spends the most by far. These are smart, informed, experienced Democratic operatives mindlessly parroting "money in politics" talking points when the exact opposite is clearly true.
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