While President Biden is battling Democratic doubts about whether he can defeat Donald Trump following scathing debate criticism and a string of Trump's legal and political victories, Harris, who is now vice president, is again seen as the party's favorite to succeed him.
Harris, who would be the first Black, Asian American and female vice president if she becomes the Democratic nominee, will be answering questions about her last presidential campaign, which fizzled before a vote was even cast. Critics say she squandered great potential by running a misguided 2020 campaign, struggled to project authenticity and stumbled as a candidate.
“She was always our dream of being the next Obama, but her terrible campaign prevented her from fulfilling that dream,” said a Democratic strategist who spoke about 2019 on the condition of anonymity.
Five years later, supporters argue, Harris has grown both as a politician and a businesswoman. They say her 3 1/2 years as Biden's No. 2 will help her quickly adapt if she rises to the top. They say Democrats no longer need to worry about her early missteps because she has improved her communication skills and changed perceptions of herself.
Her defenders say she's a bright light at a dark time for the Democratic Party.
“She's getting more and more comfortable with being vice president,” said Bakari Sellers, a former South Carolina congressman who has long supported Harris and championed Biden as the nominee, “and now she has a team that's making her stronger. And the story coming out of Washington is changing. The narrative has changed.”
The article is based on interviews with nearly a dozen veteran Harris supporters and aides, who argue that evidence is that any bitterness left over from her presidential campaign is fading, with a growing number of Democrats now viewing her as a viable Plan B. Once Biden leaves office. Some advocates spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to speak candidly at a critical moment.
Ms. Harris, through a spokeswoman, declined to be interviewed. She defended Biden from debate night onward, repeatedly declaring him the nominee and her as his running mate and urging others to “fight for him.”
If Biden leaves office, there is no guarantee that Harris will have an easy transition to the presidency. Some Democratic leaders have discussed an “open convention” to choose a presidential nominee straight away, meaning Harris would face an onslaught from an already aggressive Republican Party if she were declared the nominee after the convention.
But even with those hurdles, she is probably closer to winning the presidency than she was in 2019.
“Impossible standards”
Harris' missteps began almost immediately after she announced she was running for the White House.
In April 2019, Ms. Harris expressed regret over a policy she promoted that prosecutors used to prosecute parents of children who didn't attend school. Prosecutors had taken parents around the state to court, some of whom were jailed, but Ms. Harris had never done so directly. The incident highlighted concerns among some Democrats that Ms. Harris was a product of an unfair criminal justice system.
By June, as her primary opponents, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), were articulating positions on a wide range of economic and social policies, Harris struggled to articulate what her administration would look like, instead sticking to long-held (and largely safe) mainstream Democratic positions.
At a debate that month, Ms Harris was one of two to raise her hand when the moderator asked which candidate would abolish private health insurance. She changed her answer the next day, saying she had misheard the question.
In July, her campaign deployed 35 additional staffers to Iowa and 25 to New Hampshire after months of criticism that she had not prioritized the two early voting states. Two months later, as she trailed other candidates in the polls, she adopted an Iowa-first strategy, hiring an additional 60 staffers in the state.
By November, her funds had dried up, forcing her to withdraw just when her campaign advisers expected her to be gaining momentum, and by the following month, her presidential bid was over.
Still, supporters say she showed her potential as a campaigner and her ability to energize a young, diverse party powered by women. Biden picked Harris as his running mate in August 2020, fulfilling a pledge to field a woman. In doing so, he nominated her as the future of his party.
Biden-Harris Administration
From the start, Biden called his administration the “Biden-Harris” administration, rather than just using his own name as previous presidents have done, a vote of confidence in his vice president, who is decades his junior.
Still, Harris struggled to communicate at times during her first year in the White House, such as when she interviewed Lester Holt from Guatemala, where she was deployed to address the root causes of migration. During the interview, she promised to eventually go to the southern border, fueling Republican efforts to link her to migrant crossings.
Ms. Harris' supporters say she faces greater scrutiny than most politicians who are little more than a footnote in presidential history, let alone most vice presidents. From the moment she took office, Ms. Harris made history as the first woman and the first Black and Asian person to be elected to national office.
“Every time she walked into a room, people expected her to make history,” one former staffer said, adding that many of the attacks seemed rooted in racism and misogyny. “It was an impossible standard.”
Major news outlets focused their coverage on the vice president. Her local newspaper, the Los Angeles Times, tracked her approval rating as vice president. But former staffers said she Eventually, I grew accustomed to the sometimes intense scrutiny.
“Part of it is getting used to having cameras on you all the time,” said one former aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to offer a candid analysis. “Even if you're at a stratospheric level, you have to learn how to get used to the fact that everything you say is going to be scrutinized. People have no tolerance for the hours you have events. You say something and all of a sudden you're under a really high level of scrutiny in terms of the number of cameras and the scope of them.”
That scrutiny may have been most intense at the end of Harris' first year in office, when several key figures resigned, including her chief press secretary, communications director and chief of staff, rekindling questions about why she is so keen to replace top Democratic officials — a problem that has dogged her for almost her entire tenure in public office.
As the embarrassing stories continued to pile up, some Democrats felt her tenure as vice president had been a disappointment, as she struggled to get on message and was at one point virtually unknown. Many wondered whether she had the power, charisma and ability to win the White House on her own, and some looked for alternatives to lead the party into the future.
Then the Supreme Court Roe v. Wade, And Ms. Harris's strategy and reputation have shifted. She has made dozens of visits to Democratic strongholds and battleground states to warn that the Supreme Court decision is an example of Republican overreach that will intensify unless voters send a message at the ballot box. And the Biden campaign has come to see her as a particularly important campaign resource for reaching younger voters and people of color whose enthusiasm for the president seems to be waning.
“Our Supreme Court, the Thurgood and RBG courts, have stripped the American people, the American women, of their constitutional rights. And now we egg “In the past tense,” she said at an event in the Georgia battleground state of Savannah in February.
An all-new Harris?
Her supporters argue that other weaknesses that limited Harris in the 2020 primary have also been addressed.
One of the attacks Biden used against Harris and other Democrats in 2020 was his personal relationships with a wide range of world leaders, frequently mentioning them in debates and campaigning. But since becoming vice president, Harris has delivered three keynote speeches at the Munich Security Conference and rallied continental Europe during Russia's invasion of Ukraine. She has strengthened allies in South Korea, Tokyo and Southeast Asia and worked to improve conditions in Northern Triangle countries, which are home to huge numbers of immigrants to the United States.
Biden has also revamped his team. The vice president has a new chief of staff, Lorraine Vowles, who served as communications director for then-Vice President Al Gore and former Sen. Hillary Clinton. There have also been changes to the staff involved in shaping the vice president's public image. Anita Dunn, one of Biden's closest political strategists, is now focusing more on the vice president's schedule and public events.
But supporters say Harris has improved her job performance. She is also benefiting from a shift in the political climate — one that is more favorable to her.
In 2019, Harris was one of 24 Democrats competing for the presidential nomination, competing for the campaign's talent, donations, and, above all, voter attention. Harris's record and role as one of the few black women to rise to the senate were powerful symbols. But she was virtually unknown nationally. Her campaign staff was made up of California politicians trying to make inroads in areas far removed from California, both culturally and geographically.
If Harris suddenly becomes the Democratic nominee in 2024, She will have the backing of the entire Democratic campaign corps desperate to beat Trump once again: She has the name recognition to rival any national politician, and the Biden-Harris campaign has already raised nearly $250 million to flow to her.
“The party and party organisations will all do the same to support her.” That's what a Democratic strategist said. “So this isn't really about her. She doesn't have time to decide what the campaign is going to look like. That's not going to happen. What's going to happen in the next five months of the campaign has already been decided.”
Chelsea Janes, Isaac Arnsdorf and Paul Kane contributed to this report.
