The 3 missed phone calls that will now decide the 2024 presidential election

“Most people never pick up the phone and call. Most people never ask, and that’s what separates the people who do things from the people who just dream about them.”

–Steve Jobs

Election Day is now just hours away, and one of the most heated presidential campaigns in modern history is entering its final get-out-the-vote phase. When a winner is declared, supporters of one of the two candidates – Kamala Harris or Donald Trump – will emerge angry and indignant. 

Supporters of the losing candidate will be bitter – and they’ll want a scapegoat (or two). I can help point you in the right direction. There are specific missed phone calls to blame for the soon-to-be failed campaign. Without wading into the heated political divide, let’s discuss the three pivotal missed calls. No, these were not phone calls that the candidates failed to answer – but calls (and decisions) they failed to make. As Steve Jobs suggests, even in the age of texting, picking up the phone and calling is great advice in key situations in both business and in politics. For one of the presidential candidates, not doing so will cost them the election. 

Missed Call #1: Donald Trump Failing to Call Nikki Haley

Former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley got more primary votes than any other Trump challenger, garnering 19.7% of the Republican primary vote, including 16% or more in the swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Arizona. Although she has said she’s voting for Trump and released her delegates for him at the Republican National Convention, the question is: was Haley asked or not to campaign formally with Trump for the campaign. 

In the meantime, in October, a political group entitled Haley Voters For Harris launched to help organize and support Kamala with significant funding in key swing states, including Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.

They All Hated Each Other

Yes, Haley served as Trump’s U.S. ambassador to the United Nations for the first half of his administration. But based on their heated rhetoric toward each other during the primary season, it is clear Trump and Haley do not like each other. Doesn’t matter. There are countless examples of presidents who did not get along – and actually detested – each other, but they came together for political expediency. Andrew Jackson-John C. Calhoun. FDR-John Nance Garner. Do you think JFK really liked LBJ? Did Nixon ever respect Spiro Agnew? They all hated each other.

So, Trump could’ve missed an opportunity to bury the hatchet with Haley more aggressively and proactively. Instead, Haley told Bret Baier she hadn’t heard from Trump since June. When asked why she had not been deployed, Haley said, “We're on standby. They know that we would be there to help. I've helped with some fundraising letters and text messages and those types of things so we've done that but…it is their campaign's decision on what he needs.”

If FDR and Nixon could stomach dealing with Garner and Agnew respectively for two winning presidential elections apiece as actual running mates, then perhaps Trump could’ve done more to enlist Haley for more than a few campaign text messages and last-minute WSJ op-ed piece from her. Indeed, this morning, on the day before Election Day, Dan Turrentine (co-host of The Morning Meeting with Mark Halperin) reported that the National Republican Senatorial Committee has seen erosion in support from Nikki Haley voters.

Let’s concede that Trump and Haley detest each other. If Trump wins, then this oversight will be largely forgotten. But if Trump ends up losing, his campaign will regret not making this call. Note: you can always go back to hating each other after Election Day.

Missed Call #2: Joe Biden Failing to Call Elon Musk

Elon Musk – co-founder and leader of Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink and The Boring Company – has not historically been a Republican supporter. The current owner of X (formerly Twitter) and recent creator of the pro-Trump PAC America was historically aligned with Democrats and a more independent, laissez-faire philosophy. In 2004, he contributed to both John Kerry and George W. Bush’s presidential campaigns. He also donated to California Democrats in many races in the mid-2000s. 

In 2008, he contributed to both Obama’s and Hillary’s campaigns. In 2015, he said, “I get involved in politics as little as possible.” 

Also, when Trump entered the 2016 race, Elon was decidedly not a Trump supporter. 

In 2021, he said he voted for Biden in 2020 and had voted solely for Democrats up until that time. He also had 65 million Twitter followers then, many of which are younger men that the Democrats are now desperate to try to persuade. So, how did the Democrats fumble this semi-positive relationship with the richest and perhaps most powerful man in the world in just three years?

Why Biden Snubbed Elon and Tesla

According to the Wall Street Journal, it started with Biden’s snub of Elon. Despite the Biden-Harris administration’s efforts to support electric vehicles, they actually rebuffed attempts by Tesla to be included in White House efforts even though the company accounted for 2/3ds of all EVs on U.S. roads. 

The reason? The Biden-Harris administration bowed to pressure from the United Auto Workers to distance themselves from Musk. With all due respect to the power of the UAW, why would the administration be that shortsighted so as to alienate the country’s greatest living entrepreneur? If politics is indeed “the art of the possible,” then Biden needed to pick up the phone and call Elon. 

Talk to him. Start a dialogue. Hold multiple events – feature Elon at one of them and then GM CEO Mary Barra (and the UAW auto companies) at another. Be creative.   

“Yes, but he’s controversial. Unpredictable,” many Democrats say. They add: “And some of us really don’t like him.” 

Who cares? Almost everybody hates almost everybody else in politics, remember. You don’t have to be Elon’s best friend – just start a discussion with him, like you do with dozens of other business leaders you don’t really love. The art of the possible, remember?

How much wealth has Elon created for others? How many current and future jobs have his companies created? How much have his companies helped and inspired Americans, including SpaceX with NASA, the Defense Department and other government agencies? Pick up the damn phone. Hell, they should’ve created a Bat Phone hotline from the Oval Office to the future trillionaire’s cell phone that glows red whenever Elon has a midnight question for the White House. But at least start a simple ongoing dialogue with him. 

“Something that I personally found very offensive”

Social entrepreneur and longtime progressive-minded philanthropist Jeff Skoll put it this way:

For all the (mostly critical) media talk about Elon and his efforts to support Trump, the amazing part is that the Biden Administration went out of its way to alienate Elon, and Tesla more specifically, in its early days and onwards. Biden / Harris deliberately refused to recognize how much Elon has contributed to leadership and inspiration for entrepreneurs and dreamers all over the US (and the world in general). The real question should not be why Elon is supporting Trump, but why Biden / Harris pushed him from his longstanding neutrality in politics to becoming a very prominent promoter of Trump.

It is something that I personally found very offensive, especially when Biden called Mary Barra the “founder of the American EV industry” and refused to even utter the name “Tesla” for the longest time.  

Today, Elon has over 200 million followers on X. The Biden administration certainly came around to calling him eventually – e.g., getting SpaceX’s Starlink systems into Ukraine and, just a month ago, into hurricane-ravaged Western North Carolina. But this was a missed opportunity for the Biden-Harris administration in 2021 – he is now a sworn committed opponent of the Democrats. As his mother said to Neil Cavuto, “We (the Musk family) were all Democrats, and we’ve now all changed.” 

Biden reaching out to Elon when he took office – engaging with him, and even listening to the concerns of one of the smartest and most successful people in the world – would’ve been the right move. It ~might~ have changed Elon’s aggressive move to the Republican party, which has led to him providing invaluable ongoing campaign support to Trump and resulting in incalculable damage to the Democratic party.

Missed Call #3: Kamala Harris Failing to Call Joe Biden

On Sunday, July 21 – after untold amounts of behind-the-scenes pressure from Democrat party heavyweights – Joe Biden announced he was ending his re-election campaign and endorsed Kamala Harris. By mid-week, with masterful efficiency, the Vice President had locked up the delegate commitments to secure the Democratic nomination, despite some public and some private whisperings about alternate selection processes. Kudos to her.

The Democratic convention was August 19th. So, although Kamala needed a couple weeks to organize and sync with her new team, she needed to quickly decide on her overarching strategy, messaging and themes. With 2/3ds of the U.S. reporting that the country is on the wrong track (65%) vs. right track (28%) according to data at the time, it was clear that 2024 would be a Change election. 

The Partial Turn-the-Page Strategy 

Incumbents don’t typically win Change elections. This may have been a secondary reason the Democrat power-brokers forced Biden out. So, with Kamala, there was a small chance to at least partially – although not fully – turn the page. However, the key to this partial turn-the-page strategy was to ensure that the Vice President broke with Biden on 2-3 of the key issues that are most important to voters. There’s no mystery as to what the key issues requiring change are: the economy and immigration rank first and second respectively on the list of most important issues, according to Gallup. 

So, as Biden’s running mate and then Vice President for four years, if Kamala wanted to prove that she represents change, she needed to offer some meaningful differences on these key issues to win the support of swing voters. 

Granted, Kamala needed to balance not alienating her boss President Biden (and his loyalists). But she also needed to propose some concrete and meaningful changes going forward. Kamala should’ve picked up the phone and had a tougher set of conversations with Biden before the DNC convention – but at the very least, before the Presidential debate in September. Those two days would yield the largest and most captive swing voter audiences for the VP. In talking with Biden, she could’ve discussed the changes she wanted to propose, elicited input, and then crystallized a clearer strategy with clearer differences. 

When the votes are counted, it may turn out that Kamala relying primarily on her biography, age and identity for critical differences between Biden and Harris is not enough – not in a Change election. The last sitting VP to win a Presidential election was 36 years ago – George H.W. Bush in 1988 – and the wrong track (41%) vs. right track (54%) numbers were decidedly better than today.

This is not rocket science: swing voters in swing states are unhappy with the economy/inflation and immigration/border security. Kamala needed to propose more significant changes. Be more bold. 

In other words, pick up the phone and talk to Biden. Tell him what you want to do and sort it out. Also, don’t be afraid to admit you and the Administration could’ve done better on at least a couple key fronts, which would be more easily excused by swing voters than not admitting any mistakes.

“Not a thing that comes to mind”

This is a Change election. On October 8th, Kamala went on the left-leaning TV morning show The View. Sympathetic host Sunny Hostin asked her: “Would you have done something differently than President Biden during the last four years?” 

The VP’s response was:

“There is not a thing that comes to mind in terms of…,” Harris said. “And I’ve been a part of, of, of most of the decisions that have had impact.”

If Kamala ends up losing, she’ll regret this answer more than any other. 

She’ll regret not making the hard call to Biden. She should have broken with him more concretely on at least 2-3 key election issues – and done so much earlier in the campaign – to more effectively answer this question. She needed to reinforce the desired Change narrative in more substantial ways to persuade key swing voters.

This election will be historic for many reasons, and the winner can ignore these "make the call" lessons. For now. They will move on from their campaign bruises to the White House to lead this country. The loser, however, will lick their wounds for awhile -- and will wish they had picked up the damn phone.

ABOUT PHILIP LEVINSON

Philip Levinson is the CMO of Mobileforce, a venture-backed software company based in Silicon Valley. He previously served as VP & Head of Marketing at EdCast, the venture-backed software company where he helped scale the company 40X in 4.5 years until its acquisition by Cornerstone OnDemand in early 2022. Phil has published a number articles in the past ten years, including this one in the Orange County Register and this one in TechCrunch.