'Rotting Fish Around Our Necks': Harris Operative Gives Inside View of Gaza's Impact on 2024 Loss

With the Democratic National Committee rejecting demands to release its autopsy of the 2024 presidential election, one Democratic Party insider has gone public with his own take on what went wrong.

In a lengthy analysis published by The Bulwark on Thursday, Rob Flaherty, former deputy campaign manager for Kamala Harris' 2024 presidential campaign, revealed what he told DNC officials when they interviewed him for their post-election report.

Flaherty identified multiple problems with the Democrats' 2024 effort, one of them being President Joe Biden's support for Israel's assault on Gaza that has killed at least 72,000 Palestinians.

While Flaherty didn't say Gaza single-handedly cost Harris the election, he said it cast a dark shadow over the entire campaign.

"For many voters watching the horrific, painful footage out of Gaza, it became a moral question—one we didn’t have a good answer for," Flaherty said. "In ways that may not be reflected in a poll, it meaningfully reduced enthusiasm."

The Democratic insider then quoted another campaign official who told him that Biden's Gaza policy was "a giant, rotting fish around our necks" throughout the entire election.

Flaherty put the blame for this squarely on Biden, whom he said "misread the nation’s support for Israel as an endless, fixed object, and missed how much the ongoing visuals were seeping into the public consciousness."

He also predicted that Israeli brutality in the Gaza assault would permanently change the Democratic Party's stance toward Israel, even among traditionally pro-Israel Democrats.

"Senators who would never have considered it in years past are now signing on to the [Sen. Bernie] Sanders (I-Vt.) resolution to block offensive military aid to Israel," Flaherty noted. "Rahm Emanuel of all people is raising doubts about funding the Iron Dome. But we were seeing this emerge on the ground during the campaign. My hot take is that the eventual Democratic nominee in 2028 will support conditions on aid to Israel in one way or another."

While Gaza certainly cost Democrats in 2024, Flaherty argued an even bigger issue was the party's economic message, as voters simply did not believe that Harris would deliver meaningful change from the status quo overseen by Biden.

"In a country fervently pissed off at the status quo and with Biden’s numbers being what they were," he contended, "anyone from the Biden administration would have lost."

In contrast, Flaherty said, "Trump’s message was much clearer: 'The economy feels bad and Harris says it’s good,'" which he noted was "tough to argue with."