‘She totally blew it’: How Kamala Harris wasted a year to make her case

Kamala Harris has kept the door open to running for president again in 2028. What she failed to do over the past year, even onetime supporters and allies of the former vice president say, is give voters a reason to reconsider her if she does.

For Harris, according to interviews with nearly 20 Democratic Party donors and strategists in California and across the country, it was a missed opportunity to redefine herself — and ultimately a wasted year.

“She totally blew it,” said Doug Herman, who was a lead mail strategist for Barack Obama’s 2008 and 2012 campaigns. “She hasn’t gotten into the mix.”

Harris has offered voters almost nothing in the way of specifics about how she would remake a Democratic Party hungry for change after another term of Donald Trump. She hasn’t spoken to how she would expand her own appeal to the voters who rejected her, and she remains as reticent of media as ever, continuing to favor appearances before friendly audiences and at times drawing fire for limiting access to news organizations altogether. She has entirely sidestepped the ideological civil war consuming the Democrats and has acted more like a party elder at a time when voters and donors are demanding a break with the past.