Could Trump Win? Yes, and Some Dems Are Quietly Saying They Know Why

In fairness to Future Forward, the PAC went up with positive biographical ads about Harris six days after Biden’s exit. But to critics, that was five days too many. In their view, Future Forward spends too much time testing ads before running them, and here it cost the PAC crucial time at a critical moment.

This too centers on a principled, fundamental intraparty disagreement. Future Forward genuinely believes in deep testing of ads before airing them, because political operatives—who are partisans—are often bad judges of how swing voters will view ads. But critics fear that has rendered the PAC “slow to deploy resources,” as they put it.

Meanwhile, on the timing of ads there is also a fundamental intraparty disagreement. According to the Democrat familiar with Future Foward’s thinking, the PAC genuinely believed in the early days of Harris’s campaign that siphoning resources away from later spending would not have been a worthwhile tradeoff, because ads placed when voters are really tuned in get more for the money. But several critics noted that defining Trump early—as Democrats did successfully against Mitt Romney in 2012—is central to the role of Super PACs like Future Forward.