“Where has this Kamala Harris been all along?” That was the question
Time magazine posed three weeks after the vice president replaced
President Joe Biden as the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee.
Harris, author Charlotte Alter noted, had been “underestimated” by her
party as vice president; stories about her lackluster performance, often
borne aloft on the strength of anonymous Democratic “insiders” with
quotes at the ready, had been a mainstay during her time as Biden’s
veep. As the Democratic nominee, however, there was nary a discouraging
word. Instead, Harris found herself riding a wave of enthusiasm and
seemed made for the moment: “A former prosecutor running against a
convicted felon, a defender of abortion rights running against the man
who helped overturn Roe v. Wade, a next-generation Democrat running
against a 78-year-old Republican.”

Time was hardly the only outlet that noticed a transformation: This was
not the same politician whose presidential bid crashed and burned five
years ago. The Financial Times’s Edward Luce noted “a metamorphosis from
indifferent vice-president to the source of Obama-scale enthusiasm” that
had “caught almost everyone unawares,” marveling that a
“once-in-a-generation” natural had been hiding behind the scenes. The
New York Times charted her rapid evolution from sidelined vice president
to arena-packing presidential candidate. A consensus quickly emerged:
Harris had, without anyone noticing, become a force to be reckoned with,
if not a generational politician.

Three months into her presidential campaign, a more nuanced portrait has
emerged. Harris has, in most respects, defied skeptics (myself included)
and quieted concerns about her appeal. The doubts about her ability to
lead a presidential ticket were clearly unfounded: Harris is a strong
candidate (and even better debater) who can win the election in
November—all things that could not have been said about Joe Biden.

It is also increasingly evident that Harris is not a significantly
different politician than she was five years ago. During her first
presidential campaign, Harris struggled to articulate a larger thesis
for her candidacy and largely failed to support her thin premises with a
coherent policy program; she adopted and shed positions seemingly at
random; she struggled when speaking to the media. She has since improved
in most of those areas, but weaknesses remain. More than anything else,
Harris has benefited from a change in context rather than some
self-driven alteration: She is undoubtedly better suited to run a
general election campaign than she was to run in a primary.

......

Her message—or lack thereof—was the problem. Harris continued to pitch
herself as a unity candidate, but her reluctance to take clear policy
stances resulted in muddled, seemingly improvised rhetoric. By the end
of the year, she found herself in what Vox’s Christian Paz described as
a “‘no person’s land’ to the left of the centrists and to the right of
the leftists,” a unity candidate who ultimately didn’t really appeal to
anybody. On December 3, 2019, she suspended her campaign, two months
before a single ballot was cast.

https://newrepublic.com/series/53/kamala-harris-making-mistakes-made-2019