NICOLE KIPRILOV: The Harris Campaign’s Top 6 Messaging Mistakes

An effective messaging strategy is a cornerstone of a successful political campaign. Unfortunately, Vice President Kamala Harris’ lack of an effective messaging strategy led to her defeat and there is now introspection from the Democratic Party on what happened.

Here are Harris’s six colossal mistakes:

1 — Harris failed to craft a unique message that separated her from President Joe Biden. From day one, Harris should have made it clear that she represents a new generation of leadership. Showing humility, she should have taken responsibility for some of Biden’s failures, while promising to do better. Instead, in one example, Harris refused to apologize to Alexis Nungaray, the mother of Jocelyn Nungaray, who was murdered by an illegal immigrant let into the country because of Harris’ border mismanagement. Naturally, this rubbed voters the wrong way.

While Democrat strategists are making excuses for Harris’ failure to distance herself from Biden, Harris could have leveraged the need to remain loyal to Biden as a strength. Her message should have been that she worked with Biden, understands how his generation of leadership operates, and therefore would be able to transition into a better vision for leadership. Instead, in what was perhaps one of the worst lows of Harris’ campaign, Harris stated that “not a single thing comes to mind” when asked what she would do differently than Biden. This conveyed to voters that Harris would be a continuation of the failed Biden administration.

2 — Harris did not put forth a compelling vision for the American people.

Americans typically vote for a vision. In 2008, Americans voted for Barack Obama based on the vision of: “Change we can believe in.” With this vision, Obama is often credited with revolutionizing political campaign marketing while using innovative marketing tactics. He became a household name through a vision for “hope and change” and “post-partisanship.” It was a vision that, while ultimately introducing a new type of divisiveness, captured the pulse of the public and met people where they were after Bush’s failures. Beyond the Obama era, Trump took political visionary marketing to a new level with his “Make America Great Again” movement, a vision that has endured for a decade.

3 — One of the Harris campaign’s major mistakes was inauthentically pandering to black and Hispanic voters. The strategy backfired, as Trump doubled his support among black men under 45, Trump’s share of the black vote rose by 5% points in battleground states, and Trump won 46% of the Hispanic vote.

In the days before Nov. 5, Harris launched her “Opportunity Agenda for Black Men” in a desperate attempt to win black voters using identity politics. The question following this unveiling, and that Harris failed to answer, is why she had not yet helped the black community as vice president for three-and-a-half years. Even if voters could somehow ignore that, the next question was: Why did Harris not announce this plan at the start of her campaign? Her support of black voters should have been a priority. Instead, what this pandering shows is that Harris was desperate for votes when she started tanking in the polls. She had no answers and no plan for black voters.

4 — Another unforced error by Harris was the use of rhetoric that alienated both men and women. There was an expectation that Harris would sweep the female vote. Instead, Harris actually did worse with women than Biden in 2020. Furthermore, white and suburban men overwhelmingly supported Trump, one-fifth of black men voted for Trump, and almost half of Hispanic men voted for Trump.

Trump’s gains here are unsurprising. There was a dissonance between the Democrats’ image of Harris as an accomplished, tough, smart woman with grit, and the real Harris, who was too weak to address men directly, outsourcing that to her surrogates. This resulted in former President Barack Obama on the campaign trail lecturing black men, calling them sexists, in an attempt to shame them into supporting Harris. This strategy obviously failed and showed how out-of-touch Harris is with male voters. In a cultural landscape where men have been repeatedly demeaned, Harris should have made substantive promises to better their lives.

The Harris campaign was also desperate to attract the female vote with women-oriented messaging focused on abortion, but most of that effort was fear-mongering, pushing women to believe that their rights would be taken away under Trump. In the lead-up to Election Day, the Harris campaign released an ad encouraging women to lie to their spouses and support Harris, sending the message that women are too weak to admit they can make their own voting decisions. The ad was meant to be empowering, but it instead came off as patronizing.

5 — The fifth messaging mistake the Harris campaign made was to use inflammatory language about Trump and his supporters. Harris called Trump a “fascist” and said that he is “dangerous” and “unfit to be President.” This has led to the alienation of independents, moderates, Left-of-center folks, and Democrats disenchanted with the extremism of the modern-day Democrat Party. Americans recognize this rhetoric as not only offensive, but also potentially violence-inducing, given the multiple assassination attempts on Trump.

6 — The Harris campaign’s sixth messaging mistake was their failure to establish Harris as a candidate of substance and a unique identity. For close to 100 days after Harris undemocratically became the nominee, she avoided interviews and the media. Harris did not do a single press conference during her entire campaign. Once there was the realization that the people wanted more answers from Harris, she was pushed to do interviews. As soon as that started, her polling numbers dropped. Harris’ interviews were sloppy, chaotic, deceiving, and left Americans confused. Come Election Day, voters still had no answers. Harris failed to identify herself and what she stood for. Even Americans who desperately wanted to like her had no choice but to interpret her candidacy as a continuation of her horrible record as vice president.

All in all, the Harris campaign made catastrophic messaging mistakes that alienated virtually every voting bloc — men, women, Christians, Catholics, Arabs, Jews, Hispanics, black and young voters. The results of this presidential election show that the people have spoken. They want authenticity and a promise for a better future.

That is exactly what the Democrat Party’s communications apparatus failed to provide.

Nicole Kiprilov is a Republican political strategist. Her background is in political and governmental press and communications, political consulting, campaign management and strategy, infrastructure-building and candidate development and coaching.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.