Latest 2024 Post‑Mortem Book Actually Does Provide Some New, Behind‑the‑Scenes Revelations

Latest 2024 Post‑Mortem Book Actually Does Provide Some New, Behind‑the‑Scenes Revelations

After the blizzard of post-2024 election autopsies, it’s hard to imagine we haven’t heard it all by now. But in their newly released book, 2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America, veteran journalists Josh Dawsey (The Wall Street Journal), Tyler Pager (The New York Times), and Isaac Arnsdorf (The Washington Post), actually manage to provide readers with some fascinating new details about what went on behind the scenes.

Drawing on information gleaned from over 350 interviews, the book reveals private campaign memos, inside debates about former President Joe Biden’s health, media strategies, and even some amusing anecdotes from the campaign trail.

[Note: I haven’t read the book myself; I’m relying on reports and analyses from those who have.]

Fox News highlighted a rather colorful episode from the book. The week after Biden’s disastrous debate  against then-candidate Donald Trump last June, the White House invited a group of Democratic governors whose confidence in Biden had been shaken by his performance. Vice President Kamala Harris told governors who were on the fence about continuing to support Biden, “This is about saving our f—ing democracy.”

Following the meeting, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz spoke to reporters to declare their unwavering support for Biden.

The other governors, including California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer Hochul, skipped the impromptu press conference. But that didn’t stop Hochul from saying that “all of the governors pledged [their] support” for Biden. It wasn’t true.

According to the book, “Many of the governors were deeply skeptical that Biden could continue his campaign, and they were furious with Hochul for suggesting otherwise.”

Fox also reported on a leaked memo from the Biden campaign which encouraged him to hold an early debate which “would allow him to act from a position of strength.”

Note the liberal use of capital letters to let Biden know that “YOU” meant him. The memo read:

By holding the first debate in the spring, YOU will be able to reach the widest audience possible, before we are deep in the summer months with the conventions, Olympics and family vacations taking precedence… In addition, the earlier YOU are able to debate the better, so that the American people can see YOU standing next to Trump and showing the strength of YOUR leadership, compared to Trump’s weakness and chaos.

According to Politico, the book also contains four leaked memos written by Republican political strategist Maria Comella, to Jen O’Malley Dillon, who was Harris’s campaign manager. [Comella has worked for Democratic candidates before including former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.]

In October, Comella informed O’Malley Dillon that “their strategy was not working” The campaign was not “providing voters with a ‘reason’ to cast a ballot” for Harris. Still, they refused to “course correct.”

Comella panned the campaign’s inclusion of Republicans like Liz Cheney. “The reality is that Josh Shapiro in PA has earned more GOP votes in PA than either Liz Cheney or Adam Kinzinger. More importantly, this audience does not want to be lectured to and told who to vote for. Celebrities and never-Trump supporters have the opposite effect with these audiences.”

In another memo, Comella suggested that Harris should admit “the Biden administration was too late when it came to action on the border. … It turns out it is okay to acknowledge mistakes and failures. Pretending they don’t exist is the bigger problem.”

Comella also advised Harris to acknowledge how Democrats had missed “the mark” on several issues:

• Create clear daylight/differentiation between a Harris and Biden administration.
• Acknowledge where the Democratic Party hasn’t gotten it right – a willingness to not just work
  with the other side, but call out your own party when necessary.
• Meet the moment by contrasting the stakes on the issues.

Needless to say, Harris ignored this advice. It would have meant admitting the administration was wrong on nearly every issue.

Instead, during an October 2024 interview on ABC’s “The View,” co-host Sunny Hostin asked Harris if there was anything she would have done differently in the Biden administration. She replied, “There is not a thing that comes to mind. I’ve been a part of most of the decisions that have had impact.” 

That soundbite was played on a continuous loop by the conservative media.

Comella highly recommended that Harris agree to an interview with podcaster Joe Rogan. She advised:

Be prepared to play. While he won’t be aggressive, he will be looking for authenticity and it’s an opportunity to differentiate in style.

Don’t follow him down rabbit holes. Get out of topics or areas of disagreement with a broader messaging pivot.

Ahead of Harris’s much-vaunted closing argument speech at the Ellipse, she suggested the vice president keep from blaming Trump for the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. Harris rejected that advice too.

A book review by The New York Times cited some “moments of levity.”

We hear that when an aide delivered a message from the Democratic convention production team to the second gentleman, Doug Emhoff, asking him to smile more, he replied that he’d just gotten off the phone with his wife, who called from backstage to admonish him for laughing and talking too much! (Poor Doug.)

We also learn that an internal Trump strategy memo, designed with the candidate’s sensitivities (and delusions) in mind, referred to his defeat in the 2020 election as “our reported raw vote shortage.”

Then there’s the story, passed along by aides, that Trump decided against offering the veep spot to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. because he was, in Trump’s words, “too crazy.”

The book review notes that in the weeks after the debate,  Biden hoped that “progressives, with whom he had collaborated on domestic policy, would save his campaign.”

A little over a week after the debate, the authors write, Biden made a personal appeal to the New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, calling her from his home in Wilmington, Del. A.O.C. and other progressives stuck with Biden in the days ahead as his political stock sank — apparently calculating that by buying Biden low, they could win his support for their policy goals. In “2024,”

Bernie Sanders, for his part, repeatedly advises Biden to change his position on Gaza to shore up support from young Democrats.

The Times described one episode in the book where “Democratic aides, desperate to convince Biden to face the music, schemed to have the political talk show host Joe Scarborough deliver the tough love.”

According to the book, “Staffers believed Biden would see the information if it came from ‘Morning Joe.'”

During an interview for the book, Mike Donilon, whom the Times describes as  “a longtime adviser who is something like Biden’s id,” claimed that forcing Joe out of the race “was an act of insanity by the Democratic leadership.”

I would argue that allowing him to run for reelection in the first place was an act of insanity.

And, in case anyone was wondering what Trump said to former President Barack Obama to make him laugh at Jimmy Carter’s funeral in January, according to the book, Trump asked the former president to play golf with him, “enticing him with descriptions” of his courses around the world.

Finally, the book includes something Trump reportedly told Biden after the election: “In another life, we would be friends and go golfing.”

Elizabeth writes commentary for Legal Insurrection and The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.

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