How Kamala Harris’ failed 2024 presidential run mirrors her ill-fated 2020 campaign

Vice President Harris’ second failed presidential bid mirrors aspects of her first trek on the campaign trail in 2019, proving to be short-lived and unfocused on key issues important to American voters, experts say.

“Both started with great promise,” Tevi Troy, a presidential historian and former senior official in the George W. Bush administration, told Fox News Digital in an interview. 

“There’s the sense that she’s the savior of the new flavor, the next generation for Democrats, and both kind of failed spectacularly,” he said.

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Vice President Harris delivers her concession speech, Nov. 6, 2024, at Howard University in Washington, D.C. ((AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)

In December 2019, then-Sen. Harris suspended her bid for the presidency 11 months after entering the race, citing a lack of campaign funds and a lag in the polls. It wasn’t long before staffers exposed the disarray in her campaign.

But before she was one of the more prominent early dropouts among the field of Democrat contenders, Harris’ campaign started off with significant momentum, marked by her strong launch that drew a large crowd in Oakland, California. She was initially seen as a top-tier candidate.

However, as the campaign progressed, her campaign’s messaging became unclear and faced tough opposition from then-candidate Joe Biden as well as Elizabeth Warren, Tulsi Gabbard and Bernie Sanders.

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Vice President Harris delivers her concession address at Howard University in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 6, 2024. (Fox News/Caroline McKee)

“Both [campaigns] ran aground on the same two things. No. 1 is her inability to communicate even the most simple idea to the American people. And it’s not because she’s not intellectually capable of doing it, it’s because she is in a box,” Troy said of Harris.

“She’s trapped,” he added. “On the one hand, her inclinations and her voters are on the left, and on the other hand, she wants to win the general election, and to appeal to people in the general election, she has to renounce the more woke policies that she’s espoused throughout her life.”

But to do that, Troy said, would cost her excited progressive big donors.

Harris became the Democrat frontrunner after President Biden suspended his bid for re-election in July amid reports of his declining mental acuity in the wake of a poor debate performance against Republican former President Trump in June. Biden quickly endorsed Harris, who made “reproductive rights” a top issue on the campaign trail, a strategy that would ultimately not win over enough swing state voters. Harris was the Democrat nominee for only about four months.

“I don’t think voters felt like abortion rights were at risk,” another GOP strategist told Fox News Digital. “They largely agreed that the voters should decide, which was President Trump’s message that it should be sent to the states for voters themselves to decide.”

“I think our biggest strength was Kamala’s own words that she had so many far-left San Francisco liberal policy proposals that were all explained by her on camera during the 2020 campaign that we were able to deploy really effectively and target into districts where people have really negative views of those,” the Republican expert said. 

And voters may have wanted more substance from Harris when it comes to the economy and the border. Preliminary data from the Fox News Voter Analysis, a survey of more than 110,000 voters nationwide, provides an early look at the mood of voters as they cast their ballots.

Voters say the economy is far and away the top issue facing the country, followed distantly by immigration and abortion. In a sign of inflation’s economic toll, roughly three times as many voters feel they were falling behind financially as those who feel they were getting ahead.

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Supporters react to early election results during Democrat presidential nominee Kamala Harris’ election night rally at Howard University in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 5, 2024. (Reuters/Daniel Cole)

Harris also faced the challenge of decoupling herself from Biden but otherwise ran an “expertly run campaign,” according to Philadelphia-based Democrat strategist Mustafa Rashed.

“It was going to be hard to distance herself from the sitting president; she couldn’t use him as a surrogate because he was just not an effective surrogate,” Rashed told Fox News Digital. “He’s not great on the campaign trail, and he’s not popular enough to outweigh the downsides of having him as your partner.”

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Harris conceded to Trump over the phone on Wednesday morning after he clinched a majority of the electoral vote overnight. She gave her concession speech later in the day at her alma mater, Howard University.

“The outcome of this election is not what we hoped, not what we fought, not what we voted for,” Harris said. “But hear when I say … the light of America’s promise will always burn bright as long as we never give up and as long as we keep fighting.”

Get the latest updates from the 2024 campaign trail, exclusive interviews and more at our Fox News Digital election hub.

Fox News Digital’s Polling Unit contributed to this report.