Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign chair, Jen O’Malley Dillon, released a memo on Wednesday claiming Harris has “multiple pathways to 270 electoral votes” without actually laying out a specific pathway to that number.
The four-page memo, which claims Harris is “going to win,” also cherry-picks figures from an assortment of polls — dating back to 2022 — and hypes abortion and January 6 as top issues in the race. It comes just days after Democrats succeeded in a behind-the-scenes pressure campaign to oust President Joe Biden from the top of the ticket over worries he would not only lose the presidency but also imperil down-ballot Democrats.
Per the document, which Politico first reported, O’Malley Dillon writes on the first page:
With a popular message, a strong record on the issues that matter most to swing voters, multiple pathways to 270 electoral voters, and unprecedented enthusiasm on her side, the Vice President is in a strong position to take on Donald Trump and win in 104 days.
In the next three pages, she fails to lay out a specific “pathway” to victory, though page three vaguely points to the typical general election swing states and how they will offer “multiple pathways” to victory:
We continue to focus on the Blue Wall states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania — and the Sun Belt states of North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada, where the Vice President’s advantages with young voters, Black voters, and Latino voters will be important to our multiple pathways to 270 electoral votes.
Furthermore, O’Malley Dillon spotlights numbers favorable to Harris in certain polls while burying figures in those same polls showing she has major issues. For example, the first poll cited in the memo is a Quinnipiac University poll that shows former President Donald Trump leading Harris 49 percent to 47 percent among registered voters.
Harris’s campaign used that poll to prop up her overall approval rating and favorability among women, but it buried the topline showing Trump’s overall edge and hid the fact that it shows he is crushing her among young voters.
In the Quinnipiac poll, Trump leads with voters aged 18-34 by a steep 58 percent to 39 percent margin. He also leads with those between the ages of 35 and 49 by ten percentage points.
Yet, Harris’s team does not cite this poll under the “Young voters” subheading immediately after the “Women voters” subheading. Instead, the campaign points to a Yahoo News/YouGov poll that shows a wildly different story than the Quinnipiac poll, with Harris up 25 points with voters aged 18-29.
Furthermore, on the issue front, O’Malley Dillon works to hype abortion and January 6 as the leading issues in the race and fails to mention other issues, such as inflation, the economy, the southern border, immigration, crime, or national security.
In fact, the memo cites a poll from nearly two years ago — ahead of the midterm elections — about abortion to make the case that it is a top issue for voters in 2024.
“Voters identified reproductive rights as a top issue influencing their vote in the 2022 midterm elections,” O’Malley Dillon writes. “In CNN’s 2022 pre-election poll, nearly three quarters of voters called abortion very important to their vote, and a majority of voters called it extremely important.”
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.