Harris won because she was a black woman and used her black status to turn the election into being about throwing out the old white man in favor of the young black woman, and got a bunch of power brokers and celebrities to help her.

I personally think that most of her career success can be attributed to:

Speaker of the California Assembly Willie Brown, who was then dating Harris,

She spread her legs and leveraged Willie Brown to win her various positions. Assembly Speaker was far more powerful back then than it is now, probably equal to that of Governor, because all legislation had to go through Brown. And he wasn't subject to term limits like they have now.

But I do agree that the legal profession bends itself into pretzels trying to accommodate black people generally, and black women especially.