After a summer of steadily declining in the polls and fundraising growing stagnant, Kamala Harris is trying to project strength as she tries to get her footing back in the 2020 Democratic presidential race.
The California senator and her campaign staff continue to tell reporters that she remains in the top-tier of presidential candidates, though polls repeatedly show her in fifth place, far behind Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Bernie Sanders of Vermont, and Joe Biden. She also lags South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg in fundraising and polls.
“Of course I’m part of that top tier, and we all know that,” Harris said last month in New Hampshire.
Harris, 54, reiterated that position earlier this week following a presidential candidate gun control forum in Las Vegas.
“We have a strong team that got us to the point that I am, by most accounts, one of the four top-tier candidates in this campaign to be president of the United States,” she said when asked by reporters about recent staffing changes in her campaign, which can often be a sign of turmoil.
A RealClearPolitics average of recent polls shows Harris toward the middle of the 2020 Democratic pack of roughly 12 candidates, with 4.8% support. A recent Quinnipiac poll found that 3% of Democratic primary voters are still supporting her, a statistical tie with tech entrepreneur Andrew Yang, former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke, former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julian Castro, and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar.
When New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker’s campaign warned a few weeks ago that he would drop out if he did not raise an additional $1.7 million by the end of the third quarter, it noted that four candidates had “the money necessary to build and sustain the national organization needed to win the nomination.” That included former Vice President Biden, Warren, Sanders, and Buttigieg — but not Harris.
Harris’ newest push to prove to voters that she can take President Trump head-on in a general election is a campaign asking Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to suspend the president from the social media platform.
“I write to call your attention to activity that President Trump has been engaged in on his Twitter account, which appears to violate the terms of the user agreement that your company requires all users on the platform adhere to,” reads the letter to Dorsey by Harris, a former California attorney general and San Francisco district attorney. “In the past, Twitter has banned or suspended people who have violated its user agreement. I believe the President’s recent tweets rise to the level that Twitter should consider suspending his account. Others have had their accounts suspended for less offensive behavior.”
Some of her 2020 Democratic primary opponents scoffed at her Trump suspension push. Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard argued that suspending Trump violates free speech principles, while Buttigieg said that he is “less worried about the president’s access to Twitter than his access to the nuclear codes.” Warren laughed and said “no” when asked if Trump should be banned from Twitter.
Harris’ team and allies in recent days took jabs at Biden for adopting a plan to take executive action banning the import of military-style weapons just weeks after Biden criticized Harris on the September debate stage, arguing that Harris’ plans to take executive action on gun policy was unconstitutional.
“After @JoeBiden incorrectly claimed Kamala’s executive action proposal on assault weapons was unconstitutional during the last debate, he *checks notes* explicitly included it in his gun plan,” Harris deputy policy director Corey Ciorciari tweeted. “If KH did this she’d be flip flopper, plagiarizer, etc,” former South Carolina state Rep. Bakari Sellers said in a tweet.
But while Biden incorrectly suggested on the debate stage that Harris wanted to ban the sale of all assault weapons through executive action, Harris did not correct him. “Hey, Joe, instead of saying, no, we can’t, let’s say yes, we can,” she said, seemingly willing to let the audience believe that she planned to go further than the contents of her gun violence plan.
Harris plans to spend more time in early primary states this fall to recoup her poll numbers, but those who have openly endorsed Harris appear to be keeping their options open. Oakland, California, Mayor Libby Schaaf endorsed Harris earlier this year, but she attended a high-dollar donor fundraiser for Biden at California Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s home in San Francisco on Thursday evening, according to a pool report. Though major Democratic donor Susie Tompkins Buell was an early Harris endorser, she hosted a fundraiser for Buttigieg.
The Harris campaign did not respond to request for comment.
