Kamala Harris is ready for her comeback!
That’s right, the candidate who has shown no particular talent for winning national presidential elections, or even achieving the nomination of her own party via democratic means, is very likely going to run again, in 2028. She said as much in a recent interview with the BBC.
If Harris were giving up on her quest for the presidency, she would have ruled it out explicitly by now. She’s clearly leaving the door open, because she’s going to walk through it. My question is, why? Why on earth would she put herself through this again?
What was true in the last election cycle, and in 2019, remains true now: Kamala Harris is a very, very weak candidate for the Democratic Party. When she pursued the presidency in 2019, her campaign faltered badly from the start: she demonstrated no real ability to connect with some significant constituency of the Democratic Party, and dropped out before the primaries really got underway. And in 2024, the only reason she became the candidate is because Joe Biden dropped out and handpicked her as his replacement, and then Democratic elites coalesced around her.
If we lived under a system where a small number of wealthy, influential liberal power brokers selected the next president, then yes, Harris would be an obvious front-runner. Unfortunately for her, ultimately the American people decide. And we’ve already decided that Harris is not very appealing.
Don’t take my word for it. Here was Bernie Sanders recently lamenting the failures of the Harris campaign to offer an agenda that was attractive to working-class people:
“You have a choice to make: either you work with people like Mark Cuban, a multi-billionaire … or you stand up and say ‘I am prepared to take on Big Money. I am prepared to stand with the working class.’ … I think it’s very hard to say that Kamala Harris ran a campaign that spoke to the needs of the working class.”
On the other hand, Sen. Rueben Gallego, who is seen as more of a moderate Dem, does not want to be on the record straightforwardly opposing Harris in 2028. Here’s his view on her potential candidacy: “I thought she was a strong candidate in 2024. I think there are a lot of strong candidates in 2028. I think she would be a strong candidate also in 2028.”
And I would expect most of the Democratic establishment to sound a similar note, because, aside from Bernie, they are not too keen to say no to a bad idea. But who is out there clamoring for Kamala, and will be profoundly disappointed if she does not run?
The truth is that the best thing for the Democratic Party would be if someone could persuade Harris to sit this one out. Her best chance of becoming president was the brief period of time immediately following Biden dropping out, at which point her poll numbers were markedly better than Biden’s. But then, the more she campaigned, the more she revealed her views on policy — the more she talked at all — voters liked less and less of what they saw and what they heard.
A big part of campaigning, and also of serving in office, is being an effective communicator. Harris does not excel at this: She is often quite boring to listen to, and gives long, rambling, disjointed and painfully slow answers to questions. Here she was in that recent BBC interview, describing her views on Biden’s fitness:
“There is a very serious difference between capacity to be president of the United States and the capacity to run for president of the United States. And it is on that latter piece that I talk about in the book, about my concern about his ability, the level of endurance, the energy that it requires, especially running against, now the current president.”
Does anybody else find that difficult to listen to, or is it just me? She endlessly stretches the very simple point she was making, which wasn’t even a very good point: Obviously, if Biden was not fit to campaign, he was not fit to serve as president. Campaigning is a strenuous job, but it’s not more strenuous than being president, which requires constant and skillful, complex negotiations with other political leaders both foreign and domestic.
Mark my words, if leading voices within the Democratic Party do not encourage Harris to think very, very carefully about whether she is really the right person to go up against JD Vance, in all likelihood, in 2028, they are going to regret it, for their own electoral sakes.
Robby Soave is co-host of The Hill’s commentary show “Rising” and a senior editor for Reason Magazine. This column is an edited transcription of his daily commentary.
