CNN
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A short campaign that emerged in a political firestorm weeks before the party’s national convention. A news outlet that held Kamala Harris to a higher standard than Donald Trump. A hurricane that “screwed up” two weeks of campaigning.

Leaders of Harris’ presidential campaign defended their decisions in an interview published Tuesday, blaming various external factors for the Democrats’ defeat three weeks ago.

“There was a price to be paid for the short campaign,” said David Plouffe, a senior adviser to Harris who became the Democratic presidential nominee in the summer after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race.

Three weeks after the election, Plouffe and three other Harris advisers spoke out for the first time on the liberal podcast Pod Save America. They said a 107-day campaign gave Harris no time to distance himself from Biden and craft a message that could fuel a cold political climate for Democrats. Harris’ top aides expressed no significant regret and suggested that the vice president might have fared better with more time.

“In a 107-day race, it was difficult to do what we needed to do,” said Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, the campaign manager, pushing back against critics’ claims that they had spent too much time on Trump to attack and warn voters about what his second term might bring, and not enough to represent Harris positively.

“This idea that people have a well-constructed, already entrenched idea of ​​Trump and don’t need to learn anything more,” Dillon said, “is a complete fallacy.”

None of the campaign leaders mentioned Biden by name, but they repeatedly pointed to political “headwinds” and emphasized how much Harris will have to fight back just to make the race competitive.

“Every time she spoke to a voter, every time she was on the ballot, she was truly committed to her own vision. But the headwinds were tough,” Dillon said. “Where she campaigned, we did much better than the rest of the country.”

Harris himself also spoke about the race during a phone call with grassroots fans on Tuesday. Although she seemed less inclined to pass on the blame, the vice president also suggested that the short campaign had hurt her chances.

“The result of this election is obviously not what we wanted. It’s not what we worked so hard for, but I’m proud of the race we ran and your role in that was crucial,” Harris said. “What we accomplished in 107 days was unprecedented.”

On “Pod Save America,” campaign officials also dismissed suggestions that they should have responded directly to Trump’s scathing attack ad on transgender rights, which ended with the memorable line: “Kamala is for she/her. President Trump is for you.” The spot used Harris’ own words and emphasized support for taxpayer-funded gender reassignment surgeries for transgender inmates.

“If we were convinced that if we had just responded to these trans ads with national and huge ads on the battlefield, we would have won,” Plouffe said. “I don’t think that’s true.”

Quentin Fulks, deputy campaign manager, acknowledged the ad’s utility for Trump.

“Obviously it ended up being a very effective advertisement,” Fulks said. “I think that caused her to lose touch.”

But the architects of the Harris campaign rejected claims made by some Democrats since the election that failure to respond to the ad played a major role in Harris’ defeat. The consultants said they tested several response ads, but none were found to be particularly effective in focus groups.

“We took it very seriously,” Plouffe said, adding that it did not determine the election. “That didn’t influence voter behavior the way the economy did.”

In a wide-ranging conversation with podcast host Dan Pfeiffer, a former adviser to Barack Obama, the Harris aides defended the strategic decisions they made during the campaign, including extensive outreach to moderate Republicans in the final weeks of the race.

“You obviously want to maximize your base. And that was a place where we invested a tremendous amount of time and a lot of resources. That’s crucial,” Plouffe said. “You have to combine that with dominance in the middle. Don’t just win a little. We must dominate the moderate vote.”

Stephanie Cutter, another senior adviser to Harris, said the vice president was “ready and willing to address Joe Rogan,” the popular podcast on which Trump eventually appeared and which received the host’s support. She said they couldn’t agree on the date.

“Would it have changed anything?” said Cutter. “The breakthrough wouldn’t have come from talking to Joe Rogan, but from the fact that she did it.”

Cutter and Dillon also criticized the “traditional media” for not putting more pressure on Trump to sit down for a serious political interview.

“Trump didn’t do any of that,” Cutter said. “Literally none,” Pfeiffer added.

Dillon finished the thought, “And I have no idea why.”

“We got a lot of crap about her not doing enough media,” Cutter said.

They also criticized reporters for asking Harris what they called lazy or incoherent questions during her few big-ticket interviews.

“We did an interview and for Stephanie the questions were small and procedural,” Dillon said.

“Stupid,” Cutter said. “Just stupid.”

“They didn’t inform a voter who wanted to listen, to learn more or to understand,” Dillon said.

CNN’s Ebony Davis contributed to this report.