Kamala Harris needed a strong debate showing to jump start her stalled campaign for president, but Democratic strategists doubt her White House bid will receive that jolt after the third round in Houston.
The California senator and White House hopeful, who’s developed a reputation among critics as an inconsistent performer on the trail, delivered memorable one-liners in her 13 minutes of speaking time late Thursday but failed to recreate a moment like when she confronted Joe Biden during the opening series this summer in Miami.
Leaning into the Democratic primary electorate’s preoccupation with “electability,” Harris’ team previewed their principal’s strategy heading into the debate: proving the former San Francisco district attorney and two-term California attorney general, 54, has the chops to take on President Trump in the 2020 general election.
“You have used hate, intimidation, fear and over 12,000 lies as a way to distract from your failed policies and your broken promises,” she said directly to Trump during her introductory remarks.
But California-based consultant Larry Levine, who’s donated to former Vice President Joe Biden in the past, said Harris didn’t score points in that ledger for him. Acknowledging that the “danger of this kind of conversation” is that commentators can “be overly harsh,” Levine questioned whether there was still a lane left open for her to occupy five months before the Iowa caucuses next February.
“She’s got the look of somebody who doesn’t have a clear agenda. She’s changed her positions on a number of things, and hasn’t been able to lock herself in. Instead of saying, ‘This is what I believe now,’ she’s still explaining what she used to believe and why she changed,” he said. “The truth be known, what she apparently believes now, there are other candidates ahead of her in the pecking order.”
Adding that healthcare, immigration, and criminal justice reform were issues on which she would struggle to peg her campaign, Levine suggested “it may be too little, too late.” Harris has been grilled on her abandonment of “Medicare For All,” despite being one of the first senators to co-sponsor Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ signature legislation, and shifting stances she’s held over the course of her legal career, including on the decriminalization of marijuana and investigations of police shootings. Other contenders have dominated on immigration matters.
Harris, who made history Thursday night by becoming the first historically black college or university graduate to stand on stage at another HBCU, Texas Southern University, and speak about the importance of the institutions and African American teachers for the black community, did make waves on social media for some of her digs at Trump, and her response to questions about her prosecutorial record.
“He’s like the ‘Wizard of Oz’. When you pull back the curtain, there’s just a little dude,” she said, referring to Trump and his administration’s trade policy.
But while fundraising and organizing messages sent to supporters after the almost three-hour debate touted her success in demonstrating “she’s the only candidate ready to take on Trump” and “why she’s the strongest choice to defeat Trump,” Bill Carrick, a neutral California strategist, wasn’t so sure. “She didn’t make any mistakes,” he said, but she “wasn’t as big of a presence.”
“It is very hard to have a really breakout performance and, if you need that, it is a real problem because it’s almost impossible to get there. I think that the one thing that Elizabeth Warren had done and done well was to just go out there and campaign every day, and build up a real operation on the ground to support the campaign,” he said, mentioning the Massachusetts senator. “I think there’s a lesson in that for everybody.”
Carrick also expressed concern that Harris could course correct before the next debate in October, which will be hosted in Westerville, Ohio.
“Campaign time and real time are two different things, and campaign time’s running short. That’s the truth. To introduce yourself to the people in the critical states, and people in the next round of states, and do the debates, and raise the money, you’re running out time. That’s the reality,” he said.
Harris currently ranks fourth behind Biden, Sanders, and Warren’s double-digit support, with an average of about 6% of the vote, according to RealClearPolitics data. She’s clustered near rival South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg to round out the top five.
