Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House

Trump responded to the chaos by finally firing Corey Lewandowski. Officially, Lewandowski was distanced from the campaign and put in charge of winning New Hampshire for Trump, while Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita remained in charge of the campaign. This represented a “commitment to running a more professional operation” (223) than the last two campaigns.

Harris’s campaign, meanwhile, found itself having to do persuasion and mobilization at the same time” (225) Convincing people to support a candidate while the candidate was actively stumping was a big challenge that required lots of data-driven analysis. Harris’s team decided to try to broaden her potential voter base by convincing voters with a low likelihood of voting for Harris, including Republicans. Given the radicalization and violent rhetoric of the Republican Party, some within the campaign worried that this strategy would constitute a danger to their volunteers going door-to-door. The authors argue that this strategy did not lead to more swing voters deciding for Harris, and in fact likely cost the Harris campaign crucial volunteers, who did not want to be shot while advocating for her at the front doors of violent white supremacists.

Biden stumped for Harris, but his penchant for connecting with voters in a somewhat Trump-like fashion actually distracted and muddled Harris’s campaign.