Vice President Harris’ second failed presidential bid mirrors elements of her first trek on the marketing campaign path in 2019, proving to be short-lived and unfocused on key points essential to American voters, consultants say.
“Each began with nice promise,” Tevi Troy, a presidential historian and former senior official within the George W. Bush administration, informed Fox Information Digital in an interview.Â
“There’s the sense that she’s the savior of the brand new taste, the following era for Democrats, and each type of failed spectacularly,” he mentioned.
HARRIS NOW THE SECOND DEM CANDIDATE TO LOSE TO TRUMP AND NOT SPEAK TO SUPPORTERS ON ELECTION NIGHT
Vice President Harris delivers her concession speech, Nov. 6, 2024, at Howard College in Washington, D.C. ((AP Photograph/Stephanie Scarbrough)
In December 2019, then-Sen. Harris suspended her bid for the presidency 11 months after getting into the race, citing an absence of marketing campaign funds and a lag within the polls. It wasn’t lengthy earlier than staffers uncovered the disarray in her marketing campaign.
However earlier than she was one of many extra distinguished early dropouts among the many subject of Democrat contenders, Harris’ marketing campaign began off with important momentum, marked by her sturdy launch that drew a big crowd in Oakland, California. She was initially seen as a top-tier candidate.
Nonetheless, because the marketing campaign progressed, her marketing campaign’s messaging turned unclear and confronted robust opposition from then-candidate Joe Biden in addition to Elizabeth Warren, Tulsi Gabbard and Bernie Sanders.
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Vice President Harris delivers her concession deal with at Howard College in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 6, 2024. (Fox Information/Caroline McKee)
“Each [campaigns] ran aground on the identical two issues. No. 1 is her incapability to speak even the most straightforward thought to the American folks. And it isn’t as a result of she’s not intellectually able to doing it, it is as a result of she is in a field,” Troy mentioned of Harris.
“She’s trapped,” he added. “On the one hand, her inclinations and her voters are on the left, and however, she desires to win the final election, and to attraction to folks within the normal election, she has to resign the extra woke insurance policies that she’s espoused all through her life.”
However to do this, Troy mentioned, would value her excited progressive large donors.
Harris turned the Democrat frontrunner after President Biden suspended his bid for re-election in July amid experiences of his declining psychological acuity within the wake of a poor debate efficiency towards Republican former President Trump in June. Biden shortly endorsed Harris, who made “reproductive rights” a high concern on the marketing campaign path, a method that may in the end not win over sufficient swing state voters. Harris was the Democrat nominee for less than about 4 months.
“I do not assume voters felt like abortion rights have been in danger,” one other GOP strategist informed Fox Information Digital. “They largely agreed that the voters ought to determine, which was President Trump’s message that it must be despatched to the states for voters themselves to determine.”
“I feel our largest energy was Kamala’s personal phrases that she had so many far-left San Francisco liberal coverage proposals that have been all defined by her on digicam in the course of the 2020 marketing campaign that we have been in a position to deploy actually successfully and goal into districts the place folks have actually damaging views of these,” the Republican skilled mentioned.Â
And voters might have needed extra substance from Harris in the case of the economic system and the border. Preliminary knowledge from the Fox Information Voter Evaluation, a survey of greater than 110,000 voters nationwide, offers an early take a look at the temper of voters as they forged their ballots.
Voters say the economic system is way and away the highest concern dealing with the nation, adopted distantly by immigration and abortion. In an indication of inflation’s financial toll, roughly thrice as many citizens really feel they have been falling behind financially as those that really feel they have been getting forward.
DEMOCRAT ADAM SCHIFF WINS DIANNE FEINSTEIN’S FORMER SENATE SEAT
Supporters react to early election outcomes throughout Democrat presidential nominee Kamala Harris’ election evening rally at Howard College in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 5, 2024. (Reuters/Daniel Cole)
Harris additionally confronted the problem of decoupling herself from Biden however in any other case ran an “expertly run marketing campaign,” based on Philadelphia-based Democrat strategist Mustafa Rashed.
“It was going to be exhausting to distance herself from the sitting president; she could not use him as a surrogate as a result of he was simply not an efficient surrogate,” Rashed informed Fox Information Digital. “He is not nice on the marketing campaign path, and he isn’t widespread sufficient to outweigh the downsides of getting him as your associate.”
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Harris conceded to Trump over the telephone on Wednesday morning after he clinched a majority of the electoral vote in a single day. She gave her concession speech later within the day at her alma mater, Howard College.
“The end result of this election is just not what we hoped, not what we fought, not what we voted for,” Harris mentioned. “However hear once I say … the sunshine of America’s promise will all the time burn shiny so long as we by no means quit and so long as we hold combating.”
Get the newest updates from the 2024 marketing campaign path, unique interviews and extra at our Fox Information Digital election hub.
Fox Information Digital’s Polling Unit contributed to this report.
