According to Politico‘s autopsy of Kamala Harris’s bid for the Democratic presidential ticket, Christopher Cadelago reports that the California senator’s advisers have held forth hope in her campaign as “a possible consensus fallback” if front-runner Joe Biden begins to crumble.
“If Biden crashes, these people argue, it’s not an ideological moderate like Buttigieg or Klobuchar who stands to inherit his base of senior citizens and black voters (a good majority of them women),” Cadelago writes. “It’s Harris, if she can overcome her jitters and remind Americans what got her here.”
If this is the logic Harris’s brain trust is employing, she should stand down now and depart this race with dignity. Harris is no one’s second choice, or at least, she’s not the second choice for the lane where a second choice is needed.
Although Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’s base is as sticky as President Trump’s, it’s hard to imagine that the majority — perhaps a very large majority — wouldn’t easily transfer to Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren. The left lane of the primary doesn’t need a new alternative. There’s reason to believe that the center lane does, but it won’t be Harris.
For starters, she’s an ex-prosecutor who has repeatedly beclowned herself in attempting to win over the Left. Her entire campaign has read like a poorly interpreted focus group, with her positions twisting wherever the political winds seemed to blow. At various points in her campaign, she has emphatically endorsed and disavowed “Medicare for all,” the Green New Deal, decriminalizing illegal immigration, banning private health insurance, and federally forced busing.
And that ignores a career’s worth of 180-degree reversals on prostitution, sanctuary cities, marijuana legalization, civil asset forfeiture, and the death penalty.
She’s already made herself toxic to the liberal lane of the party, and the polling demonstrates it.
Sanders and Warren are tied for Biden supporters’ second choice if he falls, according to Morning Consult’s latest polling, but third place after that isn’t Harris: It’s Pete Buttigieg. And if the South Bend, Indiana, mayor were to fall, his supporters would gravitate to Warren then Biden and then Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar. In Iowa, the New York Times found that Buttigieg follows Warren and Sanders with the third-highest support for being likely caucusgoers’ first and second choice.
Harris’s national RealClearPolitics average has plummeted from the double digits in August to 3.6%. She is now less than a point ahead of Andrew Yang and exactly 1 point ahead of Klobuchar, who has seen a significant bounce in the polls over the past month. If you were going to bet on a backup for Biden, why wouldn’t it be Buttigieg, who’s built incredible early state ground games and maintained stable support? Or even Klobuchar, a Democrat who won her swing state by more than 20 points just two years after Clinton won it by 1 point?
Biden is old. Sadly, it shows. But if the Democrats’ single best hope for defeating Trump does crumble in the polls, it won’t be Harris taking his place. She should bow out now and salvage what remains of her credibility for a future run.
