Untertitel (287)
0:00At 1:46 pm on Sunday, July 21st, the Biden for
President campaign ended. This had never happened
0:08before—a major-party candidate dropping
out three months from the election. Thus,
0:12Harris was immediately thrust into the final
months of one of the world’s most expensive,
0:17most complex political exercises—a phase
typically preceded by over a year of careful,
0:23mounting, methodical campaign construction.
Presidential campaigns are sprawling, complex
0:28organizations. While not exactly analogous, the
Harris campaign brought in $500 million across
0:35its first month—that’s more than the company Lyft
brought in in revenue that month. So the campaign
0:40needs to organize to a similar level of a major
corporation like Lyft, but only for a few months,
0:45then it disappears in an instant come
November 6th. This is no easy feat.
0:52Of course Vice President Harris was gifted a
major shortcut just minutes later—the President
0:57endorsed her, functionally guaranteeing that
she’d be the party’s nominee, and therefore
1:01guaranteeing the full 108 days to run against
Trump, rather than the 75 or so that’d be left
1:07had the party conducted a shortened primary
process leading up to its national convention.
1:12And an even bigger shortcut came at 4:51 pm. You
see, an American Presidential campaign is not
1:18just a concept or a collection of people, it’s a
specific legal entity, strictly regulated by the
1:24Federal Election Commission. And at that hour,
the Biden for President campaign filed FEC form
1:301805326, amending its name to Harris
for President, and amending its
1:35URL to KamalaHarris.org. That’s to say: the
short answer for how the Harris campaign was
1:38able to start so quickly was that it didn’t—rather
than starting from nothing and having to hire a
1:43campaign manager, set up payroll, lease office
space, build an IT department, find lawyers,
1:48do all the tiny, intricate details of setting
up a new organization of this scale, they rather
1:53just took the existing Biden for President
campaign and transformed it to Harris for
1:56President—something believed to only be legally
possible given her unique status as Biden’s VP.
2:03This was an enormous shortcut—it quite literally
might not have been possible for another candidate
2:08to mobilize a campaign competing in scale to
Trump’s—but the adaptation process still was
2:12not easy. Despite their similarities, Harris and
Biden had some fundamental differences that the
2:17campaign had to adapt to.
To start, their names
were different. As of 4:51 pm, the campaign’s new,
2:25legally-registered URL didn’t even have a website
attached to it—it simply redirected to the Biden
2:31for President website. To capture an enormous wave
of inbound support, a new redirect was quickly set
2:37up towards Act Blue—the campaign’s fundraising
platform of choice—customized to include a
2:42quote from Biden’s endorsement of Harris.
But work simultaneously went on to get
2:46to a full website. Across Sunday evening, the
campaign’s in-house graphic design team prepared
2:5148 options for a temporary logo, and leadership
quickly landed on this—a simple, uncontroversial
2:58option that would serve the purpose until they
had a name to put under Harris’. With that,
3:02the website design team was able to wrap up
their work in creating a full website off of
3:06the template previously used by Biden, which
the URL was once again switched to direct to.
3:12The suddenness of the transition from Biden to
Harris meant that there was no grand campaign
3:16kick-off scheduled to mark Harris’ first day,
but rather just a normal Washington work-day. So,
3:22the following morning, the Vice President’s
motorcade emerged from her DC residence at
3:26the US Naval Observatory to make the short journey
down to the White House. With Biden still stuck at
3:31home in Delaware with COVID, she had previously
committed to taking his place at a celebration
3:35event of NCAA champion athletes, and therefore
this largely inconsequential event was quickly
3:40transformed into a media circus as it would
represent the first public appearance of the
3:44Democratic Party’s new presumptive nominee. She
didn’t directly address the elephant in the room,
3:49but rather did so indirectly by spending her
first two minutes of public appearance since
3:54Biden’s announcement praising his legacy, before
moving on to more event-focused remarks. But with
3:59this out of the way, Harris could turn her
focus more firmly onto the campaign and made
4:03her way to Maryland’s Andrews Air Force Base.
There, she boarded Air Force Two and took off
4:08at 3:23 pm for the quick, thirty-minute flight up
to Wilmington, Delaware to visit her new campaign
4:14headquarters. But the office was familiar—after
all, 1000 North West Street was previously the
4:19Biden campaign headquarters up until 26 hours
prior, and the Harris campaign decided not to
4:24relocate. This was all down to practicality. While
the Wilmington location was ultimately picked due
4:29to Biden’s influence—Delaware’s his home state
and where he often spends his weekends—it’s not
4:34tremendously different from where the campaign
might have picked otherwise. Normally, the
4:38philosophy is to not put the campaign headquarters
in DC—it’s too much of a bubble, has high cost of
4:44living, and is too full of distractions. So in
2020, the Biden campaign headquartered nearby in
4:49Philadelphia, which featured easy access to both
DC and the crucial swing-state of Pennsylvania.
4:56While clearly not in Pennsylvania, Wilmington
boasted more or less the same benefits, the
5:00office was already set up, and staff was already
settled in the city. So in the afternoon of the
5:04first full day of her campaign, Harris walked
in, shook hands, took photos, fired up the staff,
5:10then descended into meetings to start to plot days
three through 108 of her bid for presidency. And
5:16perhaps the most looming question of all was who’s
name should go below hers on the signs—who would
5:22the Vice President pick as Vice President?
Now, for this, there’s traditionally no
5:29hard and fast timeline. But as precedent since
1984, Democratic candidates have announced their
5:34running mates before the convention, thus giving
the newfound Harris campaign all of 30 days to
5:39complete what is typically a months-long process.
The decision of who to pick as a running mate is
5:44perhaps the biggest single decision a candidate
makes—the one that has the most potential
5:49for either a positive or negative impact—so
making a confident, and ultimately correct,
5:54choice requires a lot of box checking.
The presidential nominee, for instance,
5:59needs to build a personal relationship and a sense
of trust with the potential VP; the campaign must
6:03develop confidence in the candidate’s ability
to balance the ticket and optimize the nominee’s
6:07chances of winning; for their part, the potential
VP must begin presenting themself to a national
6:12audience; and then the most concrete process
of the bunch: the candidate must successfully
6:16pass an extremely rigorous background check.
Unlike almost every other aspect of the campaign,
6:22there was no shortcut gained by borrowing the
work of the Biden campaign—clearly, they already
6:26had a VP—so to move this to-do list forward
in a fraction of the time normally allotted,
6:30the Harris campaign turned to some outside help
by some familiar names: Eric Holder, the former
6:35attorney general under Obama, Dana Remus, a long
time legal counsel for arms of the democratic
6:40party and notable democrats individually, and
their law firm, Covington and Burling. This move
6:45saved time—as these payments made to the then
Biden now Harris campaign provide, Covington
6:50and Burling was already deeply integrated in the
campaign effort, while Remus herself had worked
6:54as general counsel for the 2020 Biden campaign.
Rather than beginning the process with an extended
6:59list, the DC firm immediately initiated
the vetting process on just nine names.
7:05There’s no public guide as to how exactly
a potential vice president gets vetted and
7:09every campaign does it a bit differently, but
those familiar with the process describe it
7:13as incredibly intense. First there’s the issue
of what the politician has done publicly—their
7:19policies, their voting record, their sound bytes
from every single moment of their public career
7:23and life. Then there’s the questionnaire which has
garnered a host of creative similes and metaphors
7:28but can generally be understood as definitively
not fun. The goal of this is to unearth any dirt
7:35before it inevitably comes to light once they
enter the absurdly bright spotlight of the
7:40general election. The questions range from
how people in college would describe them,
7:44to whether they’ve had an extramarital affair
or pay for a subscription to a pornographic
7:48website. Because it will inevitably come out now
or later, there’s not much point in lying across
7:53the 200 or so deeply personal questions.
Beyond the questionnaire, there’s also
7:58background checks on personal finances, along with
extensive and exhaustive interviews with friends,
8:03family, coworkers, and even the vaguest of
acquaintances. It’s a massive, extraordinarily
8:09expensive process which, in the end, results
in a hundreds-of-pages-long report and,
8:13as was the case of Hillary Clinton’s campaign,
can involve the work of two hundred lawyers.
8:20But not much of the vetting process becomes
public—while anonymous sources stated that by
8:24the 23rd of July the process of vetting VPs
had begun, the public and the media didn’t
8:28know exactly who—so they speculated, which in
turn is another critical part of the process.
8:35Outside the campaign, and away from its control,
VP selection is also informed in part by who
8:40proactively starts building their own case. The
press presents potential options that would fit
8:45the campaign's needs—in the case of Harris,
the assumption being a white man from either
8:49the sun belt or rust belt—and then those names
mentioned suddenly have a platform from which to
8:53present themselves to an increasingly interested
national audience. In the final week of July,
8:58governors Roy Cooper of North Carolina, Andy
Beshear of Kentucky, Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania,
9:03along with representative Mark Kelly of
Arizona, and Department of Transportation
9:06head Pete Buttigieg were getting increasing
attention and questions about their viability
9:10as potential vice presidents. And some were
also beginning to mention the name Tim Walz, the
9:16governor of a blue, albeit midwestern Minnesota.
Where exactly Walz stood on the list of nine being
9:23vetted in warp speed by Remus and team as of
July 23rd is not known, but after an appearance
9:28that morning on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, his standing
began to rise. Not only does a vice presidential
9:34candidate have to pass a rigorous background
check, they have to build their own momentum,
9:38and for Walz, sitting in front of a fake backdrop
of Minneapolis somewhere else in Minneapolis,
9:43it began with this line: “…well it’s
true these guys are just weird…”
9:50Walz’s “weird” characterization stuck and
his national presence grew. Following MSNBC,
9:56Walz appeared on FOX, something
that caught the attention and the
9:59ire of Donald Trump. Momentum was building as
he then appeared on MSNBC again, then again,
10:05then CNN, then Pod Save America all within the
same week. Even the new presidential nominee, on
10:11the road making a public appearance in Wisconsin,
then Indiana, then returning to DC, then appearing
10:15in Houston, then western Massachusetts,
before eventually ending up in Atlanta,
10:19gave a nod to the moniker in her own speech.
That same day, another announcement from the
10:24Harris campaign: she’d be taking off on a
battleground state tour on August 6th, and by
10:29then, she’d be setting off with a running mate.
That gave the campaign just five more days, but
10:35by then the list had gotten shorter. From nine at
the beginning of the process, the vetting team and
10:40advisors narrowed the list down to six by the time
of completion on Thursday the first of August. Now
10:46interviews: Friday, all 6 candidates met over Zoom
with a screening team composed of Holder, Remus,
10:51and a three person committee of Cedric Richmond, a
former Louisiana congressman and Biden White House
10:56adviser; former Boston mayor and Labor Secretary
Marty Walsh; and Nevada Senator Catherine Cortez
11:01Masto. On Saturday, the list slimmed from
six to three after discussions between
11:05the screening team and vice president Harris
narrowed the list to Walz, Shapiro, and Kelly.
11:10Next: face-to-face meetings at the
Naval Observatory where Harris met
11:14with all three individually on Sunday
to hammer out the final front—who could
11:18best connect on a personal level to Harris.
While the decision was needed by Tuesday,
11:23Harris spent Monday mulling over the decision,
while the campaign, with no time to wait, sent
11:27advance teams to all three home locations of the
potential running mates to begin crafting speeches
11:32and rollout plans. The campaign even went so far
as to begin crafting the branding and imagery of
11:37the campaign signs for all three potential
pairings. Finally on Tuesday, Harris called
11:42all three, Kelly—no, Shapiro—no, Walz—yes.
In conjunction with making the VP selection, the
11:51campaign was also pushing to finalize the details
of the breathless seven-state campaign blitz.
11:56Campaigns are, at their core, resource-allocation
exercises—Harris only has so much time and money,
12:02so the question is where the deployment of these
resources would be most effective. For this week,
12:07the answer was here. All of these states can be
characterized as swing or potential swing states,
12:13as five flipped from red to blue in 2020, while
Nevada was a narrow win and North Carolina a
12:18narrow loss for Biden. Almost all of them also
hold claim to 10 or more electoral college votes,
12:24with the exception of Nevada. And what
crystallized the justification of each as
12:28campaign-stop worthy for a campaign so short
on time were the demographics of their voter
12:33bases. With these states within the rust belt,
investing time in each and debuting a running
12:38mate with a generally positive standing among
labor leaders would strengthen support within
12:42wavering union workers. While visiting these sun
belt states, more ethnically diverse than average
12:47America, the campaign hoped to leverage Harris’s
comparative youth and ethnic background to present
12:51a more relatable and in-touch candidate.
So with all the pieces together—a schedule for the
12:56week and a VP candidate to tag along—Harris was
back at Andrews Air Force Base Tuesday afternoon,
13:01this time boarding Air Force Two for a quick,
31-minute flight up to Philadelphia to introduce
13:06Walz in a packed evening rally. But while
Walz stayed overnight in Philadelphia,
13:10Harris flew back to DC and was back in her
own bed just hours after leaving the stage.
13:15But next morning it was more of the
same—back to Andrews Air Force Base,
13:19back on Air Force Two, taking off at 11:02 am
bound for Eau Claire, Wisconsin. After a quick
13:24four hours on the ground for another rally,
it was back in the air and over to Detroit.
13:30Now, this Wednesday night rally looked familiar.
That’s because it took place in an airport hangar,
13:35and for decades, these buildings—not traditionally
designed for events—have been some of the most
13:41popular settings for American political rallies.
And there are good reasons for that. To start,
13:45there are practical benefits. One of a campaign’s
most scarce resources is a candidate's time,
13:51so the time saved by not having to motorcade in
and out of a city is well-worth it. Motorcades
13:56are also disruptive—the headlines about traffic
relating to a political rally can sour the mood
14:00around a visit, and airports are often far
removed enough from city centers that even
14:04the traffic created by attendees is of lesser
impact. The Secret Service also likes it:
14:09airports are controlled, secure environments,
so there are fewer variables that they have to
14:13account for in maintaining the candidate’s
safety. But perhaps the biggest benefit
14:17of all is not practical, but rather visual.
Incumbency in office is, at least on average,
14:24a benefit for candidates for President. Therefore,
Presidents and Vice Presidents typically make a
14:30big point in their campaigns to remind people
of their existing positions. So the ability to
14:35arrive to a rally on Air Force One or Two—some of
the most iconic symbols of the American executive
14:40branch—then use them as a backdrop for a speech
is a powerful, unmissable visual reminder to
14:45attendees and viewers that the candidate is, in
fact, the incumbent. Non-incumbent candidates
14:51certainly do schedule events at hangers,
especially in the case of Trump with his
14:54private 757, but it appears more common with the
incumbent.
In the case of this evening’s rally,
15:00Harris only arrived on Air Force Two yet left
by motorcade as she was bound for a hotel to
15:05finally get some sleep. The following morning
was unexpectedly leisurely as the scheduled stop
15:10in Raleigh, North Carolina was canceled due
to an impending tropical storm—an example of
15:14the tremendous logistical flexibility campaigns
need to maintain on these tightly-packed weeks.
15:18Instead, the campaign used Harris’ time to visit a
United Auto Workers union hall. This is indicative
15:24of a tried-and-tested strategy for Democratic
Presidential campaigns. In recent elections,
15:29Midwest states like Michigan have been the
most closely fought for, yet a group within
15:34these states that the party has been able to
consistently win over is union workers. But
15:38the Trump campaign has been going after them,
and for the first time ever, the President of
15:42the US’ largest labor union, the Teamsters, gave
a speech at the Republican National Convention,
15:47although stopped short of anything resembling an
endorsement. So the Harris campaign believed it
15:51was worth devoting some resources to shoring up
union support by demonstrating unique commitment
15:55to them through this smaller, more focused event.
But shortly after Harris was back on Air Force Two
16:01for an evening flight across the country to
Phoenix, Arizona, followed by a motorcade to
16:05the Sheraton Phoenix Downtown for her overnight.
The following morning was also unexpectedly open
16:10due to another tropical-storm rally cancellation,
this time in Savannah, Georgia, so she used the
16:15opportunity to visit one of her campaign field
offices in Phoenix. The campaign’s job is,
16:20of course, to motivate the public to vote
for their candidate, but the campaign itself
16:24doesn’t have nearly enough staff to do the
in-person work it takes to make this happen,
16:28so ultimately the direct job of campaign staff is
to collect and coordinate volunteers who actually
16:33knock on doors and make phone calls. These field
offices serve as the hubs of this activity—they
16:38are hurriedly opened in the months leading up to
the election, and only a few campaign staffers
16:42will coordinate hoards of volunteers to roam the
streets, deliver talking points, and hand out
16:47literature. So just as the United Auto Workers
visit was meant to act as a demonstration of
16:52unique appreciation for that group, this was the
same—Harris hoped to show her appreciation for
16:57the work of the volunteers through her time.
The Vice President’s next stop was a Mexican
17:02Restaurant called Cocina Adamex where she picked
up Tamales and took photos with the owners. These
17:07restaurant visit are another archetype of
political campaign appearances—candidates
17:11are typically seen giving speeches to
massive crowds, getting on private jets,
17:15and generally existing in a world inaccessible
to the public, so by thrusting the candidate
17:19out into the real world the campaign attempts to
portray the candidate as relatable, especially
17:24to the demographic that will most closely attach
to the restaurant of choice. The Harris campaign
17:29believes that hispanic voters are a key target
demographic in the crucial swing-state—after all,
17:34according to a recent poll, Harris leads
this group by 59 percent vs Trump’s 34,
17:39but 35 percent of this group have not completely
made up their minds and therefore on-the-ground
17:43action, like this, could make a difference.
But finally it was time for the main event:
17:49the 15,000-person Friday-night rally at the
Desert Diamond Arena—reportedly, her largest
17:55to date. This was followed by another overnight
at her downtown hotel, then another flight the
17:59next day on Air Force Two over to Las Vegas for
another packed arena rally. While that was the
18:04last of Harris asking for votes that week, she
still needed to ask for something else. After all,
18:10she can’t ask for votes unless she has money. So,
following the Vegas rally, Harris took an evening
18:15flight over to her home state of California,
landing in San Francisco well past dark.
18:21Roughly 700 attendees paid between $3,300
and $500,000 for a seat at Harris’ Sunday
18:27morning fundraiser at the Fairmont San Francisco.
Following an introduction by Nancy Pelosi, Harris
18:32took to the stage, thanked the attendees for their
support, took photos with the highest-contributing
18:36few, and walked out an hour or so later having
amassed $12 million additional dollars. Finally,
18:42after passing through eight states in
just six days, Harris’ work-week was over,
18:47and it was back to DC on Air Force Two,
and back to her day-job as Vice President.
18:52Now, one aspect of this week might stand
out to the American taxpayer—the thousands
18:57of miles racked up on Air Force Two as it
jetted from state to state not to facilitate
19:01Harris serving as Vice President, but rather
to facilitate her quest for electoral college
19:06votes. But the taxpayer doesn’t pay for this,
the campaign does—at least, sort of. You see,
19:12the Federal Election Commission more or less
requires that campaigns pay for their own travel,
19:17and that includes for incumbent office holders
who must use Air Force One or Two for their
19:21travels for security purposes. Both aircraft are
far larger and more capable than what campaigns
19:26normally use to shuttle candidates—notwithstanding
Trump—and therefore it’s considered unfair to
19:30make them pay more for the aircraft they’re
required to use. Therefore, the FEC doesn’t
19:35require campaigns compensate for the actual cost
to operate these government aircraft, but rather
19:40for what would be the cost of operating the likely
aircraft they’d use if they were not the President
19:44or Vice President. Details are murky, but it’s
reported that the FEC’s reimbursement guidelines
19:50index this to the charter cost of a 737, like
that being used by Republican vice-presidential
19:54candidate JD Vance. And even then, the campaign
doesn’t reimburse for the full operating cost, but
20:00rather for the proportion of the aircraft filled
by campaign staff, while excluding non-campaign
20:04personnel like that of the secret service.
But we are able to get some sense of the numbers.
20:10That’s because the FEC requires effectively full
transparency on how campaigns spend their money,
20:15all published in sprawling spreadsheets. Through
the end of May 2024, the Biden/Harris campaign
20:19sent some $4.1 million over to the accounts
of the Democratic National Committee Travel
20:24Escrow Political Action Committee, which
handles the bureaucracy of reimbursement for
20:28travel expenses. Political Action Committees
are also required to report their expenses,
20:32so we’re also able to see that this PAC reimbursed
the White House a total of half a million dollars
20:37through June 2024, when the campaign was still
in its early stages—clearly a minuscule fraction
20:42of the actual operating cost of Air Force
One, estimated around $200,00 per hour.
20:48But these spreadsheets also provide a fascinating
insight into the other expenses that go into
20:53the day-to-day operations of a campaign. For
example, on June 25th, an unremarkable Tuesday,
20:59what was then Biden For President spent a
total of $327,418.67. Many of the filings
21:06were rather mundane—postage for shipping, fees
for their expensing software, a subscription
21:11to perhaps Photoshop, mileage reimbursement
for work-related driving done by a staffer.
21:15Getting into the highest-dollar expenses, most
are reimbursing companies for their work—three
21:20payments of $9,500 plus another of $13,500 to a
video production company, for example. Or there’s
21:27this $10,000 payment to a political strategy firm
led by Jorge Neri, who previously worked in the
21:31Obama administration and, based on his history,
was likely helping to craft a strategy to target
21:36latino voters in Nevada. There’s also one massive
lump-sum payment to fund the DNC Travel Escrow
21:42account that pays for campaign-related travel.
But the rest of the high-value payments largely
21:47went to events and their associated costs—$6,000
for site rental in Wisconsin, $9,000 for equipment
21:52rental in Maryland, $35,000 to an event production
company in New York, or a colossal $160,000 to an
21:59event production company based in Maryland.
More broadly, these payments act as an answer
22:04to how these campaigns are able to handle such
massive, temporary mobilization all across the
22:09country—it’s that, for the most part, they
don’t. They pay others to do so. The campaign
22:15organization, itself, is really just a central
node connecting together the work of event
22:19planning companies, political strategy firms,
video production companies, marketing agencies,
22:24social media consultants, and more—companies that
always exist, yet step into their campaign-related
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