Inside the Democratic Rupture That Undermined Kamala Harris's Presidential Hopes

[Celerity]

In the weeks before Election Day, it seemed like the candidate had two campaigns.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/06/future-forward-pac-kamala-harris/683154/

https://archive.ph/g9jP3



Kamala Harris’s campaign thought it knew exactly how to beat Donald Trump. With just weeks left before Election Day, it warned over and over that he was “unhinged, unstable, and unchecked.” But instead of amplifying that message, Future Forward—the $900 million super PAC that the campaign was counting on for a flood of ads—had a different plan. The campaign leader Jen O’Malley Dillon grumbled in private meetings that the group had gone rogue, threatening Harris’s chances of winning. O’Malley Dillon told her team that she had never seen anything else like this.

Usually super PACs follow the lead of the candidates they support, while taking on less savory tasks, such as viciously attacking their opponents. But Future Forward had built a bigger internal research program than the campaign had, and its leaders saw only one clear path to victory. Harris had to stay laser-focused on the economy. She had to present herself as a disrupter, not as a protector of the status quo.

The Harris team liked Future Forward’s economic ads, but they believed that Trump’s approval ratings were dangerously high. There needed to be a sustained, direct attack on him. They also argued that the super PAC had delayed its advertising for too long, had not targeted those ads enough to different groups of voters, and had failed to properly distribute money for get-out-the-vote efforts. So Harris’s team shifted strategy to do some of that themselves. Harris told reporters that she saw Trump as a fascist, and recruited some of his former advisers as her spokespeople.

Future Forward’s team scoffed. “People might not mind ‘unhinged’ if their fingers are caught in the door,” one Future Forward strategist started telling colleagues inside the organization. They did not believe that there was evidence in the voter data to justify a switch back to the politics of protecting democratic norms. Campaigns and groups such as super PACs are not allowed to directly coordinate on many ad-spending decisions, but there are legal ways for them to signal their desires. Future Forward began quietly raising alarms in private polling memos that it knew the campaign would read. O’Malley Dillon publicly suggested in September that top donors give to other groups in addition to Future Forward.

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