Kamala Harris’ first presidential campaign failed. Has she changed?

As President Biden grapples with Democrats’ doubts about his ability to defeat Donald Trump after a devastating debate and Trump’s string of legal and political victories, Harris — now vice president — is once again her party’s heir apparent.

If she becomes the Democratic presidential nominee, the first Black, Asian American and female vice president will have to answer questions about her last campaign for the top job, a bid that failed before a single vote was cast. Critics say Harris squandered her considerable potential by mismanaging her 2020 campaign, struggling to project authenticity and floundering as a candidate.

“She was always our dream, of the next phase after Obama, but she didn’t achieve it because she ran a terrible campaign,” said one Democratic strategist who asked not to be named, referring to 2019.

Five years later, Harris’ allies argue, she has improved as a politician and manager. Her supporters say her 3½ years as Biden’s No. 2 will help her quickly adjust to being at the top of the ticket, if she gets there. They say Democrats no longer need to worry about Harris’ early stumbling blocks because she has improved her communication and changed the way she is perceived.

Her defenders say she is now a bright spot in a dark time for Democrats.

“You can see her becoming more and more comfortable as vice president,” said Bakari Sellers, a former South Carolina state representative and longtime Harris supporter who also defended Biden as the nominee. “And she now has a team of people around her who have amplified her, and the stories coming out of D.C. are changing. The narrative has changed.”

This story is based on interviews with nearly a dozen longtime Harris supporters and advisers who say the sour taste in her presidential campaign has faded, as evidenced by the growing number of Democrats who see her as a viable Plan B. if Biden leaves office. A number of these sympathizers spoke anonymously in order to be able to speak candidly at a crucial moment.

Harris declined to be interviewed through a spokesperson. She has has supported Biden since the night of the debate, repeatedly stating that he is the nominee and she is his running mate, and encouraging others to “fight for him.”

If Biden steps down, an easy coronation for Harris is far from guaranteed. Some Democratic power brokers are considering an “open convention,” in which the presidential nominee would be chosen on the spot. If she were the nominee after the convention, Harris would face a passionate GOP that has already stepped up its attacks on her.

But even with those obstacles, she would be closer to winning the presidency than she ever was in 2019.

Harris’ stumbles began shortly after she announced she was running for the White House.

In April 2019, she expressed regret over a policy she defended that prosecutors used to prosecute parents of truant children. Prosecutors took parents to court across the state, and some were jailed, but never by Harris directly. The moment underscored concerns among some Democrats that Harris was a product of an unjust criminal justice system.

In June, as her primary opponents, including Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), had laid out their positions on a wide range of economic and social policies, Harris struggled to articulate exactly what her administration would look like. Instead, she stuck to long-held (and largely safe) mainstream Democratic positions.

During a debate that month, Harris was one of two who raised her hand when moderators asked which candidates would end private health insurance. A day later, Harris changed her answer, saying she misheard the question.

In July, her campaign added 35 staffers to Iowa and 25 to New Hampshire after months of criticism that she had not prioritized the two early voting states. Two months later, she adopted an Iowa-first strategy, hiring 60 additional staffers in the state as she fell behind other candidates in the polls.

In November, dwindling funds forced her to withdraw just as her campaign advisers expected her to resurge. The following month, her presidential bid was over.

Still, advocates say it showed her potential as a campaigner and her ability to galvanize a younger, more diverse, female-led party. Biden picked her as his running mate in August 2020, making good on his promise to put a woman on his ticket and anointing Harris as the future of the party.

Biden referred to his presidency from the start as the “Biden-Harris” administration, rather than using just his name, as previous presidents had done — a show of confidence in his decades-younger vice president.

Still, Harris struggled to communicate at times in her first year in the White House, including in an interview with Lester Holt from Guatemala, where she was deployed to address the root causes of migration. During the interview, she ultimately decided to go to the U.S. southern border, giving oxygen to Republican efforts to tie her to migrant crossings.

Harris’ supporters say she is under a greater magnifying glass than most politicians, and certainly most vice presidents, who have often been footnotes in presidential history. Harris entered the history books when she was inaugurated as the first woman and the first person of Black and Asian descent to win nationally elected office.

“People expected her to make history every time she walked into a room,” said one former aide, adding that many of the attacks appeared to be rooted in racism and misogyny. “It was an impossible standard.”

Major news organizations have set up reporting lines focused on the vice president. The Los Angeles Times, her home state newspaper, has been tracking her approval ratings for the vice president. But former staffers say they eventually got used to the sometimes sharp criticism.

“Part of it is getting used to the fact that there are cameras on you all the time,” said one former aide, who asked not to be named to provide a candid analysis. “Even people at that stratospheric level have to learn to get comfortable with it — that everything they say is going to be scrutinized. That people are not going to be forgiving about the time of day that they do an event. You say something and suddenly it’s scrutinized at a very high level, in terms of the number of cameras, in terms of the reach.”

That scrutiny was perhaps most intense at the end of Harris’ first year as vice president, amid several high-profile departures of aides, including her press secretary, her communications director and her chief of staff. The firings raised new questions about why Harris is firing top-level Democratic employees, an issue that has dogged her for most of her time in public service.

The drumbeat of unflattering anecdotes took its toll. Some Democrats found her tenure as vice president disappointing, marked by her failure to deliver messages and, at one point, near-invisibility. It left many unsure whether she had the strength, charisma and skill to seize the White House on her own. And some looked for alternatives to lead the party into the future.

Then the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade, and Harris’s strategy — and reputation — shifted. She made dozens of trips to Democratic strongholds and swing states, warning that the Supreme Court decision was an example of Republican dominance that would grow if voters didn’t send them a message at the ballot box. And Biden’s team increasingly saw her as a key electoral asset, particularly in reaching younger voters and people of color, whose enthusiasm for the president appeared to be waning.

“The highest court in our land — the Thurgood and RBG court — right? — took a constitutional right that was recognized by the people of America, by the women of America. And now we have to talk about Deer in the past tense,” she said at an event in February in Savannah, Georgia.

Her supporters say other weaknesses that limited Harris in the 2020 primaries have also been addressed.

One attack Biden used against Harris and other Democrats in 2020 was his personal relationships with many world leaders, often naming them in debates and campaign appearances. But since becoming vice president, Harris has been the keynote speaker at the Munich Security Conference three times, invoking the European continent when Russia invaded Ukraine. She has sought to shore up allies in South Korea, Tokyo and Southeast Asia, and improve conditions in the Northern Triangle countries, sources of large numbers of immigrants to the United States.

She’s also shaken up her team. The vice president has a new chief of staff, Lorraine Voles, who was communications director for then-Vice President Al Gore and former Sen. Hillary Clinton. There have also been changes among staffers who help shape the vice president’s public image. And Anita Dunn, one of Biden’s closest political strategists, has taken a more intense focus on the vice president’s schedule and public events.

But while advocates say Harris’ approach to the task has improved, She also benefits from a changed political landscape, which is more favorable to her.

In 2019, Harris was one of two dozen Democrats vying for the presidential nomination — competing for top campaign talent, donor money and, most importantly, the attention of voters. Harris’s story, and her role as one of the few Black women to reach the Senate, were powerful symbols. But she was largely unknown nationally. Her campaign staff was filled with California politicians trying to reach communities culturally and geographically removed from the Golden State.

If Harris suddenly becomes the Democratic nominee for 2024, She would have the support of the entire Democratic campaign establishment, which is desperate to defeat Trump a second time. She has name recognition equal to that of any national politician, and the Biden-Harris campaign has already raised nearly a quarter of a billion dollars that would flow to her.

“The party and the party structure will all do the same to support her,” said the Democratic strategist. “So it’s not really about her. She doesn’t have time to decide what the campaign looks like. That’s not going to happen. What’s going to happen in this campaign for five months — that’s already set.”

Chelsea Janes, Isaac Arnsdorf and Paul Kane contributed to this report.