Kamala Harris 2028? Hard Pass.

Harris also failed to distance herself from what was unpopular about the Biden administration. The administration never took responsibility for inflation or put forth a convincing plan to curb high prices. Harris was part of that collective error. Even worse, she never distanced herself from Biden’s foreign policy, especially his indefensible enabling of the Israeli genocide in Gaza. (One postelection poll showed that anger over Gaza may have contributed to many Biden 2020 voters’ decision to stay home in 2024.)

Perhaps worst of all, Harris has shown no real leadership during the second Trump administration, when the Democratic Party has been sorely in need of it. These recent speeches at high-dollar benefits are the first anyone has heard from her in a while. (In April she attended a summit on Black women leadership at a Ritz-Carlton in Orange County, California, and in March an AI conference in Las Vegas.) Sure, it was heartening that, in her remarks at the Emerge gala, she praised the courage of figures like Representatives Maxwell Frost, Jasmine Crockett, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen—but why hasn’t she been among them?

The next party leader should not come from the social circles of the coastal superrich, especially not when there are others doing the important work of visibly talking to people in red states, like Bernie Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez; traveling to El Salvador to free the unjustly imprisoned, like Van Hollen and some members of Congress; disrupting business as usual, like Senator Cory Booker; or simply refusing to go into hiding after a crushing election defeat, like Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, Harris’s wrongly sidelined veep candidate, who has been speaking out against Trumpism for months.