Going back to Hillary, I thought she had an incredibly nuanced understanding of foreign policy and relations. Similarly, I think Kamala has a great understanding of the inner workings of the judicial system, and gives very detailed and nuanced answers to questions dealing with these topics. I love listening to both of them talk about issues within their sphere of expertise. That said, I don't think anybody can compare either of them to Donald Trump, and criticize their ability to answer questions. Trump can't even answer a question without going completely off topic, lying through his teeth, or both. He has no relevant knowledge or experience on anything related to government, at all. So while I think Kamala could do a better job with answering certain questions, I think a lot of it is explained by her only formulating positions on issues in an incredibly short amount of time, due to an incredibly compressed campaign.
Yeah, but looking at Hillary Clinton, even 9-10 years ago, I said this to people I knew, something GOP supporters always hated to hear but it is true
Hillary was just about the most right-wing blue dog GOP-lite as a Democrat nominee could be. Sure, you might get a few Dems somehow more right-wing than her, but they could never lead the whole party as a presidential nominee. Hillary Clinton was completely a Wall Street-connected war-hawk, imperial interventionist, pro-Iraq war, pals with Netanyahu, every bit as much as George W Bush. Hillary's campaign against Obama invented the "birther" rumour mill to discredit him. Republicans hated someone who could easily have been one of them. The fact that she was a typical Dem on social issues does not explain it; they hated her in particular since the 1990's. If the devil could run against her, the GOP would sell their souls just to see her lose (and that is pretty much what happened).
Later when Obama beat her and won the presidency, he made her secretary of state, and then all Obama's intentions to repudiate the Bush era foreign policy somehow turned into a continuation of it as long as she was around. Then she leaves to become a NY Senator, sponsored by Wall Street oligarchs. 2016 primaries, she did Bernie Sanders dirty with the DNC rigging the contest, and when it got found out (rather, suspicions were confirmed), of course it turned off the grassroots idealists of the Democtratic party. Even after all that, she might have healed that breach and won anyway, if she had named Sanders for VP as a peace offering - but the elites did not want him, and she was too arrogant to think that she could lose against a guy like Trump (obnoxious, sketchy beliefs, zero political experience). Basically Hillary Clinton sabotaged her own chances; she was a liability to her party, not an asset. Even after the Dems lost, they doubled down on blaming anyone but her and the party's inner circle: blame Putin, blame Bernie's bros, blame Jill Stein just for existing.
Kamala Harris might not have had Clinton's long record of making enemies, but coming up as a primary candidate in 2020 she displayed a similar sort of haughty un-charisma and tendency to try fragging people on her own team. Harris' campaign got torpedoed in the aftermath of a sharp debate exchange with Tulsi Gabbard, after Harris had tried to paint Biden as some kind of tacit racist. Among the DNC elite, Harris was one of their favourites (along with others like Buttigieg and Beto O'Rourke). After the old warhorse Joe Biden won the 2020 primary, he inexplicably named Harris as his choice for VP (Was it for race & gender optics? I think it was because the DNC insiders wanted her all along, and he was too much of a "company man" to tell them no.)
Biden had to win in tough times then govern in tough times, and I think he will in the end get more credit for things he did while president than US voters credited him for this year. Trump's economic rhetoric will reap the benefit from the fact Biden already started putting the screws to China and already passed measures to reduce inflation. But in the here and now, US voters grew too frustrated waiting for things to get better. Maybe someone besides Harris might have kept them from straying into the false prophet's cult, but that would have required not just more time (i.e. Biden never trying to hang on for a second term), but a contest for new blood in which someone genuinely appealing rises up, as opposed to trying to pass off "meh" as "wonderful". The Democrats have counted 3 times now on the public just seeing self-evidently that Trump is a crook, a lecher, a fuck-up, and a wannabe dictator - and twice it has failed for them. The fact that all those accusations happen to be true is not saving them. Their problems all stem from the fact that inside their own house their supposedly savvy leaders seem to be hell-bent on dismissing good advice from their grassroots members and ignoring what "the street" wants or thinks. They need to be worthy of voting for, not just less fucked up than the goofs they are running against.