Along with losing presidential elections to President Donald Trump, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former Vice President Kamala Harris have another thing in common: As they campaigned for the nation’s highest office, they never articulated a unique vision for the country or why they ran for president.

This messaging failure contributed to their losses. But it was even more glaring in the face of Trump’s aggressive “Make America Great Again” mantra and the simplistic and accessible policy agenda that accompanied it. A politically disengaged voter could generally articulate why Trump was running for president: Politicians had sold America out to other countries through trade deals and had refused to secure the border. Trump would fix both of these things.

Recommended Stories

• Why the Education Department has to go
• Houthi Signal snafu isn't the scandal Democrats hope it is
• US boosts Iran strike options with aircraft carrier and bomber deployments

In 2021, Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-VA) had a campaign message that resonated with voters: Grocery costs were too high, so he would push for the repeal of the state grocery tax to help ease the burden on families. And after the disastrous COVID school closures, Youngkin promised to put parents back in charge of their children’s education. 

This cohesive message resonated with voters in the commonwealth of Virginia. Youngkin would become the first Republican to win a statewide race in more than a decade. The Democratic candidate he defeated, former Gov. Terry McAuliffe, suffered from a lack of message and purpose, much in the same way as Harris and Clinton.

It is easy to mock these individuals for their failed campaigns, especially since the examples cited are all Democrats. But four years after Youngkin defeated McAuliffe, Virginia Republicans are on the verge of nominating a woman who has yet to articulate a reason for her candidacy beyond her identity and her political affiliation.

Winsome Earle-Sears rode Youngkin’s coattails in 2021 to become the first woman to be elected as the lieutenant governor of Virginia. With the governor term-limited due to Virginia’s prohibition on serving consecutive terms, Earle-Sears has long been well positioned as the heir apparent to Youngkin.

In a deeply partisan state such as California or West Virginia, party affiliation is the only thing that matters. A flawed candidate can and will be elected simply because of the partisan lean of the state. But in a competitive race such as a presidential election or a gubernatorial race in the purplish-blue state of Virginia, partisan alignment alone will not carry the day.

Both Clinton and Harris were nominated to lead the Democratic Party into the presidential election for two reasons: They were both women, and they were next in line. Clinton had come oh-so-close to winning the Democratic nomination in 2008, and her rerun in 2016 only drew one serious and largely unexpected challenge from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT). 

In 2024, Harris benefited from then-President Joe Biden’s late withdrawal from the race. She was nominated to lead the ticket because she was the vice president. And she never would have been vice president if it were not for Biden’s promise to pick a black woman to join him on the 2020 ticket.

Besides wanting the job, neither Harris nor Clinton articulated a reason for why their respective campaigns existed. They each had impressive resumes to tout to voters as evidence of their ability to do the job, but neither woman was able to galvanize a political movement that presented a vision for the country at a time when voters craved change.

In the Virginia gubernatorial election, there is good reason to believe that Earle-Sears’s effort to position herself as Youngkin’s successor was good politics. Youngkin is consistently rated as one of the more popular governors in the United States. He enjoys approval ratings that would position him well for any future run for office. If he were not term-limited, he would be a formidable bet to win reelection, even in a year that is expected to be tougher for Republicans.

On paper at least, Earle-Sears is the next best thing. She has a compelling personal story — her family immigrated to the U.S. from Jamaica when she was a child. She served in the U.S. Marine Corps before turning to politics and served a term in the Virginia House of Delegates. In 2021, she was elected lieutenant governor, and after four years as Youngkin’s second-in-command, she positioned herself to seek the top job. It’s the exact kind of resume and personal story that is generally appealing to voters. 

But a resume alone does not make a candidate. Since launching her campaign in September, she has struggled to get her bid for the governor’s mansion off the ground.

In what was supposed to be a glide path to the GOP nomination, Earle-Sears has churned through staff and hired an expensive new consultancy firm. Questions have been raised about her ability to lead a winning campaign, and primary challengers who had no intention of running now are. In an election cycle where Democrats and likely nominee Abigail Spanberger will have a built-in advantage due to the partisan lean of the state and the overall political climate being more favorable to Democrats with a Republican in the White House, Earle-Sears needs a near-flawless campaign operation and a galvanizing message that distinguishes her campaign from national political trends.

So far, Earle-Sears has not shown an ability to do that. Every poll released since the beginning of the year on a hypothetical matchup between her and Spanberger shows the Democratic candidate with a healthy lead. And it is not hard to see why.

Earle-Sears’s campaign is entirely devoid of a message beyond her personal story and the fact that Youngkin has endorsed her. Her campaign launch video leans heavily on her personal story and how bad Democratic governance can be. Nowhere in her campaign is there a vision for Virginia that speaks to the challenges voters are worried about in 2025. 

The lead graphic on her campaign website is a donation form. Right below it is a graphic touting Youngkin’s endorsement, a plea for volunteers, and her bio. Reminiscent of the Harris campaign’s delay in announcing a policy platform, there is no mention of any policy plan for Virginia anywhere on Earle-Sears’s website. Much like the former vice president’s failed bid and Clinton’s failed 2016 campaign, Earle-Sears has built a campaign on identity, ambition, and association.

Of course, Spanberger’s campaign website is not much better. But in an environment where the Democratic candidate will automatically be favored, any Republican who runs a flawed campaign will put themselves in a difficult position.

WINSOME EARLE-SEARS CLAPS BACK AFTER CHALLENGER CLAIMS SHE’S ‘RENDERED HERSELF UNELECTABLE’

Republicans have rightly railed against the Democratic Party’s embrace of the diversity, equity, and inclusion agenda and its divisive cultural battle lines. There is a strong argument to be made that DEI was a major reason that the party was stuck with no option other than to nominate Harris in the 2024 presidential election. But elections are not won on identity. If they were, Trump would have never been elected.

But Earle-Sears and most of the Virginia Republican establishment backing her are effectively betting the party’s future in the governor’s mansion on a DEI campaign, assuming that her identity and affiliation with Youngkin will be enough to carry the day. But until her campaign finds a real voice, one that is unique and inspiring on its own, her bid to lead Virginia will continue to stumble and stagger.