Kamala Harris currently retains a very slight edge over Donald Trump in this election. But Trump could still very well win, and when Democrats privately discuss how they got to this moment—and how to avert catastrophe—they tend to focus on a few big dynamics. One is still fixable. The others may not be.
Some Democrats worry, for instance, that the party still isn’t doing enough to engage low-propensity Black and Latino voters, particularly young men. There is time to repair this. Democrats also wonder if they failed to define Trump early in the cycle, letting him slowly rehabilitate his favorability numbers. Still others fear they didn’t remind voters early on of the horrors of Trump’s first term, leaving them with rosy memories of his presidency—including blue-collar voters’ fond impressions of the Trump economy. Those latter two problems may not be repairable in time.
All this is why some Democrats are now second-guessing some of the moves made by the most powerful pro-Harris Super PAC, Future Forward. Last year, the group secured the blessing of President Biden and his senior advisers, making it the top repository for big contributions from the party’s wealthiest donors. The PAC—which has a budget of hundreds of millions of dollars—is a highly influential actor in setting national messaging against Trump, and in determining how an immense pool of party resources will be distributed to broadcast it.
But there is rising urgency about Future Forward’s strategy in the closing days of the race, according to numerous Democrats from other party-aligned organizations. They fear the PAC has still done too little to reach low-engagement nonwhite voters, both by failing to put enough resources into targeted digital advertising—as opposed to traditional TV and broadly focused digital ads—and by being slow to share resources with groups experienced in mobilizing these voters.
There is still time to fix this problem, many of these Democrats say, and the PAC’s resource sharing has improved in recent days. But time is running out.
“I am grateful that they have begun to disperse money to groups so we can help people mobilize and make plans to vote,” Tatenda Musapatike, CEO of the Voter Formation Project, which does outreach to Black and Latino voters, told me. “But Future Forward can do more in reaching less-engaged voters of color, particularly through digital programming.”
Last month, several Democratic........