Harris Campaign Still Fundraising 3 Weeks After Loss

Vice President Kamala Harris' 2024 presidential campaign is still asking for donations after the election, according to the New York Post.

"With [President-elect Donald] Trump nominating MAGA loyalists left and right, there is nothing more important than making sure we can fight back and hold him accountable. That's why we need you to step up today. Yes, today," one email sent from the Harris campaign read three weeks after the election.

"Our records show that you haven't pitched in to support our Harris Fight Fund program yet. We know the election didn't turn out as we'd hoped, but we're not backing down."

In the span of 15 weeks, Harris spent a record-breaking $1.5 billion on her campaign and ended $20 million in the hole, insiders told Politico.

It's left Democrats with a poor image: begging for more money after such a resounding loss, Democratic Party operatives said.

"Getting fundraising requests after any candidate has lost, when they admit that they are still millions of dollars in debt, having blown through over a billion dollars ... is especially galling," Democrat strategist Jon Reinish said. "When I got yet another request from the Harris campaign for me to pony up, quite frankly, I thought it was insulting."

The issue of bang for buck could be a central concern for the incoming party chair. The next election for the Democratic National Committee's leader is Feb. 1. The leading candidates, according to the Post, include Ken Martin, chair of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, and Martin O'Malley, a former governor of Maryland and past Democratic presidential candidate.

According to the Post, longtime Democrat insider James Carville said the next chair must put a full Kamala campaign autopsy at the top of the agenda.

"The fundraisers are burnt out; they're really p***** now. And the damage the 2024 campaign has done, the damage this decade has done to the Democratic brand is almost unfathomable. Almost unfathomable," Carville said on his "Politicon" podcast last week.

"So I have people that are contacting me to run for DNC chair. I promise you, I'm not going to get in the middle of that.

"But anybody — and I don't have a vote, or they don't have an opinion, no one cares — but I would say the policy, number one, is we're going to audit everything. We're going to audit the campaign, we're going to audit Future Forward, we're going to audit the DNC, so people can know."

Carville added that between the Harris campaign raising "we think" $1.5 billion and the Democrat super PAC Future Forward holding in its coffers "900 million," "that's two and a half freaking billion dollars."

"Do you have any idea where that money went?" Carville asked. "Does anybody have any idea where that money went? I mean, I have some places I'd start looking. ... I promise you this: The amount of money and the amount of lobbyists that were involved in this campaign is staggering. It's staggering."

• Nate Silver: Harris Campaign Folks Are 'Nonplayer Characters'
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