Top Harris Adviser Rob Flaherty Says Democrats ‘Losing Hold Of Culture’

Kamala Harris’ deputy campaign manager said that Democrats had been “losing hold of culture” leading up to the 2024 election in an interview with Semafor published Dec. 15.

Rob Flaherty explained to the outlet that after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race and it became clear Harris would be the party’s nominee, the campaign looked to book the vice president on sports podcasts and shows. It was a move aimed at reaching people not “obsessed with politics” but many of the personalities and shows turned the campaign down, Flaherty told Semafor. The deputy campaign manager said that Harris’ struggle to break into the sports’ world reflects a bigger trend among the Democratic party. (RELATED: Sex Talk Podcast Host Calls Out Kamala’s Campaign For Spending $100,000 To Redo Interview Studio)

“When it’s not cool to talk about politics, you’re kind of afraid of the audience,” Flaherty told Semafor.

“Campaigns, in many ways, are last-mile marketers that exist on terrain that is set by culture, and the institutions by which Democrats have historically had the ability to influence culture are losing relevance,” he continued. “You don’t get a national eight-point shift to the right without losing hold of culture.”

Flaherty declined to say which podcasts turned Harris down. The vice president did make appearances on two sports podcasts, including NFL Hall-of-Famer Shannon Sharpe’s “Club Shay Shay” podcast and the basketball podcast, “All the Smoke.” (RELATED: ‘Witness Protection’: Media-Friendly Tim Walz Has Disappeared From Airwaves Since Joining Harris Ticket)

“Sports and culture have sort of merged together, and as sports and culture became more publicly and sort of natively associated with this Trump-conservative set of values, it got more complicated for athletes to come out in favor of us,” Flaherty explained to Semafor. “It got more complicated for sports personalities to take us on their shows because they didn’t want to ‘do politics.’”

“That’s not to say Steph Curry and Steve Kerr and LeBron [James] and all them coming out wasn’t impactful or important,” he continued. “It was more impactful because it had gotten so much harder. But certainly the culture that has been associated with heavy sports-watching has become associated with right-wing culture in a way that makes it harder for us to reach people.”

Democratic presidential candidate, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris and Democratic vice presidential candidate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz clasp hands onstage after the end of a campaign rally at the Fiserv Forum on August 20, 2024 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Later this week Harris will accept her party’s presidential nomination at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Illinois. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

While Harris was unable to crack into the sports world, the vice president kicked off a media blitz in October with mostly friendly outlets. As Democrats reportedly expressed panic that Harris was not doing enough media, the campaign lined up a series of interviews for the vice president, including Alex Cooper’s “Call Her Daddy” “60 Minutes,” “The View,” “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” and “The Howard Stern Show.”

The vice president was rumored to make an appearance on the Joe Rogan show, which her opponent President-elect Donald Trump and his running mate Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance both did, but she ultimately didn’t sit down with the popular talk show host.

“There’s just no value — with respect to my colleagues in the mainstream press — in a general election, to speaking to The New York Times or speaking to The Washington Post, because those [readers] are already with us,” Flaherty told Semafor of the campaign’s media strategy.

Harris’ first interview of her campaign went to CNN, where she sat with her running mate Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. The vice president later did her first solo national sit-down interview with MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle, who later defended Harris’s lack of “clear” and “direct” answers. (RELATED: Harris Fails To Explain Flip-Flops, Says She Has No Regrets About Biden In First Interview)

“It’s more than just young men. It’s a broader ecosystem,” Flaherty said of demographics that are breaking from the party. “Democrats have historically had these really close relationships with institutional media, institutional culture — Hollywood and the traditional press. There’s this entire cultural ecosystem that the Trump campaign did a really good job of cultivating over a long period of time.”