I am curious what the general overall opinion of this board of Kamala Harris vs previous Democratic presidential candidates. Here are some of the main points I have seen used against her.
Her 2020 election campaign for president was pretty poor. She ended up dropping out before a single vote was cast. I remember there being lots of reports of internal division and backbiting among her campaign staff. (I would argue that running as a former prosecutor in 2020 is also a textbook case of epicly bad timing, considering how big an issue George Floyd was in the democratic primary that year so I am not sure how much stock I put into this point.)
She only served a single term as Senator from a deep blue state. IIRC She generally underperformed vs a generic democratic canidate in each of her 2010, 2014, and 2016 elections, with the 2010 one in particular standing out as bad as she almost lost to a Republican in a deep blue region.
I remember numerous news articles while she was vice president, criticizing her. There was supposedly lots of tension between her and Biden’s team.
Obviously, losing to Donald Trump has to go on this list. In particular, she lost every swing state, lost the popular vote, and lost despite massively outspending Trump.
This last point I haven’t heard anyone else argue but it is a point that I believe. Starting her campaign with only 107 days left wasn’t a disadvantage; it was an advantage. She didn’t have to compete in a Democratic Primary against other candidates and be forced to disclose policy positions and then be held to those positions in the general election.
Hmm, this feels like I am trying to tear her down, and that is not my intention. I was trying to decide how much her loss will affect how electable a female or minority candidate in the next election cycle is.
I blame the voters for this. Harris did all the right things and said all the right things. More than half of the voters preferred Trump, to their everlasting shame.
Her CV was very thin, as the OP mentions. The problem was that she was virtually crowned without any selection process beyond her being VP and the default choice of the current office holder. I don’t see how we can avoid blaming Biden for that. Democrats were enthusiastic enough, but there was nothing to draw in independents except not being Trump.
What did she “do” outside of serving as VP? As for saying all the right things, it really takes more than that. Talk is cheap.
IMO, she was placed in an unenviable (maybe untenable) position: she had to differentiate herself from Biden, and yet, not tear her boss and his policies down in the process.
And, she was being forced to run on an inflationary economy, even if yes, logically, neither Biden, nor much less her, was directly responsible for most of that. Most people don’t vote logically, and if they feel like they can’t afford things, they are going to blame whoever is currently in charge.
As a liberal, I thought that her performance at the DNC was very good, but clearly didn’t carry over into strong momentum for the rest of the race.
As I was filling out my sample ballot in (I think) 2010, voting for all democrats seemed a little wrong. I went down the list looking for a token republican. Tough on crime seemed like a reasonable characteristic for an attorney general. I didn’t give it a lot more thought but voted against Kamala that year. She barely squeaked it out but, it was okay with me.
Her biggest problem in 2024 was the way she got the nomination. There wasn’t time for primaries and a convention. It just didn’t seem right.
If you look at recent history, vice presidents always struggle as candidates. They are chosen to balance the ticket, to be different from the president. As vice president, they need to put their own opinions aside and support the president. Once they are running for president, the people want to hear what they actually want to do. It gets awkward.
Look at polling. People tell us these things directly.
And what they have said is they wouldn’t have voted for Trump if they hadn’t thought or assumed he would go after their own identity groups or people they know, i.e. only go after the “bad” guys, whoever that was supposed to be. And they assumed he would do something about the economy in short order and think that should be a higher priority right now.
Basically, what we know from our vantage in 2026 is that people in hindsight are directly telling us their 2024 vote was a combination of “it’s the economy, stupid” and “I didn’t think the Leopards would eat MY face”. Neither of those things would have been significantly different for any other Dem candidate over Harris.
No, she was pretty good in terms of her merits alone. The main reason she lost was because 1) Biden kneecapped her by waiting all the way til summer to drop out, thus denying her a long-enough runway to take off and 2) she didn’t hammer the issue of economics hard enough, particularly inflation and people’s budget suffering.
I don’t think we ever had a chance to see her merits, such as they might have been. She was bland and inoffensive, and that is never enough against a demagogue.
I agree with both of your numbered points, but she did have a tough row to hoe with inflation, which was being blamed on Biden’s and Democrats’ policies.
Agreed on both points. If she had really leaned into (a) “I get it, prices are tough, and you’re worried,” in combination with (b) “here is exactly what we are going to do about it,” she might have done a bit better. Instead, people were reacting to Trump saying (paraphrasing), “I will bring the price of eggs down on Day 1.”
Strictly, Harris was never running for President at any point in the year 2020. Her campaign for the 2020 Democratic nomination ended in December 2019 and she was never on any state’s 2020 Democratic primary ballot. Her withdrawal from the primary was several months before George Floyd’s murder.
My preference for a president would be to complete at least one term as a governor or senator first. Someone who gets reelected has demonstrated success at that job.
After working in the local county and federal district attorney’s offices, she was elected:
SF City atty; then
SF district atty; then
Cal AG; then
US Sen 4 yrs; then served as
VP
Compare that to the CV of another recent president:
Work as civil rights atty/community organizer; then
Law school prof; then
IL state senator for 8 yrs; then
IL senator 4 yrs.
Not sure I would call either CV particularly thin, or either clearly thinner than the other.
I never questioned that Kamala was well qualified - both in terms of job experience and personal attributes. Instead, my biggest issue with her was what I perceived as a tendency to not speak clearly. Something one often encounters in lawyers and politicians. She often impressed me as trying overly to hedge her bets and appeal to all sides, rather than taking firm stands - whether popular or not.
Apologies if I’m not expressing this well, but I started off with a quite favorable opinion of her - based largely on her considerable experience as well as my preference for more officials who are not white males. My impression lessened the more I heard and saw her.
As a liberal, I thought that her performance at the DNC was very good, but clearly didn’t carry over into strong momentum for the rest of the race.
To some extent, that is also part of what I am asking. I know I hate Trump so much I would vote for a head of decaying lettuce before I would vote for him, so I don’t entirely trust how good of a public speaker Harris was as that clouds my perceptions so much. That and I am more of logic and policy nerd so I don’t think I am good at identifying who is an excellent public speaker vs merely good or average.
This is why I feel a VP wasn’t a good idea. If Democrats had selected a totally unrelated candidate who’d never been in Biden’s cabinet or government, then that new Democrat could credibly present himself as a much fresher-face outsider alternative to Biden.
What was pointed out a lot, at that time, was only Harris – because she was already on the ticket as the presumptive VP nominee – would have been able to easily gain access to Biden’s established campaign war chest. Even if support from everyone had coalesced around a different candidate, fundraising in a very short time window would have been a steep challenge.
But it’s hard to present the argument that you’ll do something different that you aren’t already doing as part of the current administration.
AND, people are dumb. They’d rather hear “I’ll bring down the price of eggs on Day 1” rather than “here’s a comprehensive (read: boring) plan that doesn’t have any quippable soundbites”. I’m not sure how you get around an electorate that goes with its gut instincts and stereotypes rather than studying the positions and individuals.
I don’t think there is much to learn from the 2024 election. I disagree that her CV was particularly weak; certainly she was more qualified than Trump, or even GWB. The democrats were ‘stuck’ with Harris because there was no way to skip over the VP, especially considering she happened to black and a woman. If Biden had dropped out early enough to have an open primary, she probably would not have been the candidate. So quite the unique situation.
Maybe the biggest issue with her candidacy was the good old relatability and charisma quandary. She was lacking in both, and it matters in U.S. presidential elections.