I’ll rephrase and rewrite the full passage:
Kamala Harris reportedly experienced profound disbelief following her defeat by Donald Trump in the November 2024 presidential election.
The former vice president secured the Democratic presidential nomination just months before the election after then-president Joe Biden withdrew from the race.
Trump ultimately prevailed over Harris, gaining control of the White House, and the Democratic politician has maintained a low profile since then.
Recently, however, the former vice president addressed the Leading Women Defined Summit in California (April 3), where she emphasized the importance of courage despite fear and cautioned about potential challenges ahead under Trump’s leadership.
“To have the courage to say I feel fear, the courage to say what is happening is wrong, the courage to say that there is a way that we must chart to get through this. Understanding our power in the democracy that we still have if we hold on to it. Courage is contagious.”
The Hill correspondent Amie Parnes, co-author of FIGHT: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House – a book chronicling the 2024 election – has discussed how Harris’s team was left stunned as election results unfolded.
“She was completely shocked, and Tim Walz was shocked,” Parnes revealed on the Somebody’s Gotta Win with Tara Palmer podcast.
Parnes continued: “They thought that they were going to win. And so, you know, when they come back now and say, ‘Oh no, we didn’t really have a chance’. No, that’s not what they were thinking. They thought they were going to win.
“Kamala Harris was looking at her crowd size, and they felt like the vibe was strong and people were saying, ‘Oh, we have more boots on the ground. We’re doing better in fundraising’. And she bought all of that. She bought the hype, and so did a lot of people in the campaign.”
Jonathan Allen, who co-authored the book with Parnes, has stated that Barack Obama initially hesitated to endorse Harris as the Democratic nominee because he doubted her ability to defeat Trump.
“He didn’t think that she was the best choice for Democrats, and he worked really behind the scenes for a long time to try to have a mini-primary, or an open convention, or a mini-primary leading to an open convention, did not have faith in her ability to win the election,” the author recently commented on MSNBC.