Kamala Harris, the first-term senator from California, has ended her presidential campaign. The Democratic nomination turns out to be one thing the former prosecutor couldn’t lock up.
It seems almost unfathomable that a top-tier candidate that many political analysts placed in the Top 3, if not as the favorite, could drop out two months before the Iowa caucuses. Yet it happened. How did we get here?
In the second Democratic debate, on July 31, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard completely exposed Harris, saying, “Sen. Harris says she’s proud of her record as a prosecutor and that she’ll be a prosecutor president. But I’m deeply concerned about this record. There are too many examples to cite, but she put over 1,500 people in jail for marijuana violations and then laughed about it when she was asked if she ever smoked marijuana. She blocked evidence — she blocked evidence that would have freed an innocent man from death row until the courts forced her to do so. She kept people in prison beyond their sentences to use them as cheap labor for the state of California. And she fought to keep the cash bail system in place that impacts poor people in the worst kind of way.”
As Gabbard eloquently explained, Harris is the epitome of our broken criminal justice system and corrupt politics. But what made matters worse for Harris was how she responded.
After the debate, CNN’s Anderson Cooper asked, “Did you expect that from Tulsi Gabbard? Had you had interaction about that in the past? And how do you think it went?”
Harris replied, “Well, I mean, listen, I — this is going to sound immodest, but I’m obviously a top-tier candidate, and so I did expect that I would be on the stage and take hits tonight, because there are a lot of people that are trying to make the stage for the next debate.”
“For a lot of them, it’s do or die,” Cooper said.
Harris added, “Especially when some people are at zero or 1%, whatever she might be at. So I did expect that I might take hits tonight. But, you know, listen, this coming from someone who has been an apologist for an individual, Assad, who has murdered the people of his, you know, of his country like cockroaches. She who has embraced and been an apologist in a way to refuse to call him a war criminal. I can only take what she says and her opinion so seriously. So, you know, I’m prepared to move on.”
The hubris here is stunning. This came a month after Harris set herself apart from the field with a powerful performance in the first debate.
Harris was rewarded for that captivating moment with a poll bump. However, it soon fizzled when it was revealed that Harris and Biden shared the same position on busing.
When asked whether she supports federally mandated busing, she said, “I think of busing as being in the toolbox of what is available and what can be used for the goal of desegregating America’s schools.” As she was asked to clarify her position, she responded, “I believe that any tool that is in the toolbox should be considered by a school district.”
Before busing was even a topic of national conversation, the focus was on “Medicare for all” and Harris’s plan to abolish private health insurance.
In a January town hall on CNN, Harris told Jake Tapper, “Listen, the idea is that everyone gets access to medical care and you don’t have to go through the process of going through an insurance company, having them give you approval, going through all the paperwork, all of the delay that may require. Who of all us have not had that situation where you have to wait for approval, and the doctor says, ‘I don’t know if your insurance company is going to cover this’? Let’s eliminate all of that. Let’s move on.”
Harris’s plan would, according to our estimates, kick over 177 million Americans off their private insurance.
After getting lambasted for this policy proposal, Harris attempted to clarify her position but ended up confusing voters even further, saying, “It was in the context of saying, let’s get rid of all the bureaucracy. Let’s get all of the waste … If you watch the tape, I think you’ll see that there are obviously many interpretations of what I said. What I meant is, let’s get rid of the bureaucracy.”
Getting rid of bureaucracy is something most Americans would prefer, but that doesn’t replace her plans for reform. American voters are energized by bold visions from their leaders, not half-hearted, half-empty platitudes.
Despite her questionable, if not unethical, record as California attorney general and San Francisco district attorney, Harris had so much goodwill coming into this race. To see her collapse as she did, Harris has done what few people thought: besting Hillary Clinton for having the worst, most dysfunctional campaign a top-tier presidential candidate has ever had.
