She did say that she would appoint a republican, just not then [the View interview]
Still, Harris defends her actions against her critics who said she should have done more to distance herself from Biden, saying she did not “want to embrace the cruelty of my opponent.” She also argues that naming one specific policy difference would have created a “backward-looking rather than forward-looking” conversation and “would have limited the definition of the difference between us to that one thing, rather than my unique perspective on a variety of issues.”
In hindsight, Harris writes, she wishes she’d said that, unlike Biden, she would appoint a Republican to her Cabinet.
I'm not interested in second-guessing the campaign, but rather highlighting the thinking that is still driving them.
They all (leadership, the cool kids of the caucus, the centrist dipshit pundits and consultants) believe that her problem is that she wasn't Republican-friendly enough, that Biden himself was too left wing, and when they imagine "Republican" they think "Liz Cheney fan." The white suburban soccer moms from 2004, only now they are soccer grandmas.
If those Sensible Republicans were still Trump-curious in 2024, they weren't Sensible Republicans, were they? That model voter does not exist in any quantity.
They dedicated the campaign to chasing those voters, and they think they just didn't do it well enough.
Look to the UK for the popularity of Starmerism. Labour did manage to get elected due to the conservative vote being split across two parties, and the associated collapse of the Tories, but they are currently at syphilis levels of popularity.