WASHINGTON, Nov 07 (BBC): Nearly a month ago, Kamala Harris appeared on ABC's The View in what was expected to be a friendly interview aimed at pitching herself to Americans who wanted to know more about her.
But the sit-down was quickly overshadowed by her response to a question on what she would have done differently from incumbent president, Joe Biden: "Not a thing comes to mind."
Harris's answer - which became a Republican attack ad on loop - underscored the political headwinds that her jumpstart campaign failed to overcome in her decisive loss to Donald Trump on Tuesday.
Publicly, she conceded the race late on Wednesday afternoon, telling supporters "do not despair".
But soul-searching over where she went wrong and what else she could have done will likely take longer as Democrats begin finger-pointing and raising questions about the future of the party.
Harris campaign officials were silent in the early Wednesday hours while some aides expressed tearful shock over what they had expected to be a much closer race.
"Losing is unfathomably painful. It is hard," Harris campaign manager Jen O'Malley Dillon said in an email to staff on Wednesday. "This will take a long time to process."
As the sitting vice-president, Harris was unable to untether herself from an unpopular president and convince voters that she could offer the change they were seeking amid widespread economic anxiety.
After Biden dropped out of the race following a disastrous debate performance, Harris was anointed to the top of the ticket, bypassing the scrutiny of a primary without a single vote being cast.
She began her 100-day campaign promising a "new generation of leadership", rallying women around abortion rights and vowing to win back working-class voters by focusing on economic issues including rising costs and housing affordability.
With just three months until election day, she generated a wave of initial momentum, which included a flurry of memes on social media, a star-studded endorsement list that included Taylor Swift and a record-setting donation windfall. But Harris couldn't shake the anti-Biden sentiment that permeated much of the electorate.
The president's approval rating has consistently hovered in the low 40s throughout his four years in office, while some two-thirds of voters say they believe the US is on the wrong track.
Some allies have privately questioned whether Harris remained too loyal to Biden in her bid to replace him. But Jamal Simmons, the vice-president's former communication director, called it a "trap", arguing any distance would have only handed Republicans another attack line for being disloyal.
"You can't really run away from the president who chooses you," he said. Harris tried to walk the fine line of addressing the administration's record without casting shade on her boss, showing a reluctance to break with any of Biden's policies while also not outwardly promoting them on the campaign trail.
But she then failed to deliver a convincing argument about why she should lead the country, and how she would handle economic frustrations as well as widespread concerns over immigration.
About 3 in 10 voters said their family's financial situation was falling behind, an increase from about 2 in 10 four years ago, according to data from AP VoteCast, a survey of more than 120,000 US voters conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago.
Nine in 10 voters were very or somewhat concerned about the price of groceries. The same survey found that 4 in 10 voters said immigrants living in the US illegally should be deported to their country of origin, up from around 3 in 10 who said the same in 2020.
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