Less than a month before the 2024 presidential election, campaign strategists Kellyanne Conway and Donna Brazile came to Dartmouth to debate politics and their favored candidates for president. But they also came as friends.
Despite being on opposite sides of the political aisle, the two have maintained a friendship over the years, and at the Dartmouth Political Union forum Thursday evening they suggested that engaging with people you disagree with can bridge some of the divide in today’s politics.
“We should talk to each other,” said Brazile, who managed Al Gore’s 2000 presidential campaign and chaired the Democratic National Committee. “We should try to learn. We should try to agree to disagree.”
Conway, who ran Donald Trump’s 2016 Republican campaign for president and went on to serve as a senior counselor during his administration, said: “Our politics can’t just align with our friendships, and vice versa.”
The two spoke in Filene Auditorium in front of a full house of more than 200 people, plus those watching via livestream. By Friday morning, more than 1,400 people had watched online.
The DPU event, The Press and the 2024 Election: An Expert Debate, was organized in partnership with Dartmouth Dialogues. DPU is a nonpartisan, student-run group with a mission to foster debate and conversation on campus.
The moderator, DPU Vice President of Advancement Kavya Nivarthy ’25, began by asking Brazile if she continued to have concerns about the primary system after critiquing Hilary Clinton’s primary campaign against Bernie Sanders in 2016.
Brazile explained that the Democratic Party establishment had unfairly “shut down” the primary after Clinton had a majority of the delegates but had not yet secured the nomination.
“(The Clinton campaign) began to essentially write the checks for the Democratic Party,” Brazile said. “That was not fair, and I said so.”
“It was a very close election,” she said, adding that they should have continued to have debates, town hall meetings, and conversations with voters.
Conway agreed with Brazile, noting that a healthy primary process helps make candidates stronger. “I think it’s incredibly important to welcome competition in our politics,” she said.
Conway said that for years the Republican Party had worried too much about electability and not enough about who the primary voters actually wanted.
She pointed out that if party leaders, instead of primary voters, got to pick candidates, we might not have had presidents Jimmy Carter, Barack Obama—or Donald Trump, a candidate many establishment figures in the Republican Party had said in 2016 was unelectable.
“Donald Trump turned that on its head,” Conway said.
Conway pivoted to talk about how vast amounts of money in presidential campaigns can make it hard to spend wisely. She recalled that Trump’s 2020 campaign had $1.6 billion, “and they pissed a lot of it away.”
She’s heard from friends inside Kamala Harris’ campaign that they have so much money, they don’t know how to spend it. “That’s a problem,” she said.
As an example, Conway pointed to the constant political ads on TV and online. The first few times you see an ad can deliver a message, but if you see the same ad 50 times? It creates a backlash against the messenger.
Conway suggested that this was part of the reason she thought if the election were held today, Trump would beat Harris. “She’s got the money,” Conway said. “He’s got the momentum. You’d rather be him.”
Brazile predicted voters would pick Harris over Trump, but she agreed with Conway about seeing too many TV ads—especially during her football games and HGTV shows. Brazile urged campaigns to meet voters in union halls and grocery stores and college campuses, and not just online.
“That’s how you win elections,” she said.
Nivarthy, the moderator, asked Conway whether the news media was treating Trump fairly, to which she had a clear answer.
“It’s overwhelmingly negative stories about Trump, overwhelmingly positive stories about Harris,” Conway said. “I don’t think that serves the public.”
Conway suggested that many news outlets had lost credibility because they were packaging opinion as news, driving people to only seek out news that agrees with their views.
“I think the best way to get past this for everybody in the room is to seek someone you trust who disagrees with you,” she said. “That’s your best source. You will learn some news. You will learn something different.”
Conway pointed to her friendship with Brazile as an example. Even though they support different candidates, they have many things in common that they can talk about.
Brazile lamented the misinformation hampering hurricane relief efforts, including a suggestion that people can control the weather. As someone who grew up in New Orleans, part of “Hurricane Alley,” Brazile said: “I’m very sensitive when I see and hear people making misleading statements about what’s happening. It hurts. It hurts.”
Brazile contrasted Gore conceding the 2000 election after a court battle to Trump continuing to deny his 2020 loss. She hopes both candidates will accept the results of the upcoming election.
Audience members were invited to ask questions toward the end of the night, and one person expressed concern about political violence, citing Charlottesville, January 6, and the recent assassination attempts on Trump.
Brazile suggested that conversations like the DPU’s could help lower tensions, and that we need to focus more on solving problems for the American people and less on winning political contests.
Conway was quick to agree with Brazile, and she went on to talk about how Trump does not feel safe despite all his Secret Service protection. Conway argued that being shot shouldn’t be an occupational hazard when running for president.
She wondered if heated rhetoric online had contributed to the violence, and she urged the audience to think before liking or sharing posts that simply disparage one candidate or the other.
“We have a real problem in this country that we used to only see in other countries,” she said.
After the debate, DPU President Malcolm Mahoney ’26 called the evening “amazing” and said it reinforced the group’s mission. He’d come away hopeful that the problems in our current political climate could be solved by open and respectful discussion of the issues.
“And that’s what we’re all about here,” he said.
