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Kamala Harris Suspends Presidential Campaign
Kamala Harris / shutterstock.com
Kamala Harris, the self-described “obviously a top-tier” presidential candidate, told her campaign staff in a telephone call this morning that she would be dropping out of the race to be the nominee of the Democrat party to run for president of the United States, according to a breaking news story at POLITICO.
Moments ago, Harris tweeted confirmation:
To my supporters, it is with deep regret—but also with deep gratitude—that I am suspending my campaign today.
But I want to be clear with you: I will keep fighting every day for what this campaign has been about. Justice for the People. All the people.https://t.co/92Hk7DHHbR
— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) December 3, 2019
Another day, another Democratic primary candidate packs it in. Over the weekend, Montana Gov. Steve Bullock (who?) withdrew as did Adm. Joe Sestak (seriously, who?) but Kamala Harris was expected to be a formidable option for the White House. Her notable campaign moments included a weird logo, attacking Joe Biden on school bussing, and getting vivisected by Tulsi Gabbard on criminal justice reform. Here’s where the Democratic field stands:
Still in the race
- Michael Bennet (Sen., CO)
- Joe Biden (Fmr. VP)
- Michael Bloomberg (Fmr. Mayor, NY)
- Cory Booker (Sen., NJ)
- Pete Buttigieg (Mayor, South Bend, IN)
- Julian Castro (Mayor, San Antonio, TX)
- John Delaney (Fmr. Rep., MD)
- Tulsi Gabbard (Rep., HI)
- Amy Klobuchar (Sen., MN)
- Deval Patrick (Fmr. Gov., MA)
- Bernie Sanders (Sen., VT)
- Tom Steyer (Businessman)
- Elizabeth Warren (Sen., MA)
- Marianne Williamson (Author)
- Andrew Yang (Businessman)
Thrown in the towel
- Steve Bullock
- Bill de Blasio
- Kirsten Gillibrand
- Mike Gravel
- John Hickenlooper
- Jay Inslee
- Wayne Messam
- Seth Moulton
- Richard Ojeda
- Beto O’Rourke
- Tim Ryan
- Joe Sestak
- Eric Swalwell
Consider the source, the Daily Beast. https://www.thedailybeast.com/kamala-harris-drops-out-of-2020-presidential-race?ref=home
I think that Harris was the third worse Democrat in the race, after Sanders and Warren.
I wonder if any of the others might want her for a VP candidate? Although . . . VP candidates are often chosen to help secure the votes of their home state and California is a lock for the Democrats, anyway. Not always the case, obviously – George W. Bush didn’t select Dick Cheney because he needed the 3 electoral votes from Republican sure thing Wyoming.
From Daily Beast:
LOL. Come on. Is anyone really surprised?
For what it’s worth, I have never seen a single Harris yard sign here in New Hampshire. We’ve got Bernie, Pete, Pocahontas, Tulsi, and Bitin’ signs, but I haven’t really seen anyone else’s. Harris had closed her NH offices and was not contesting in the first in the nation primary.
Gee, you mean a campaign based on maligning the electorate as backward racist misogynists not “ready for a female POC” isn’t going to soar like an eagle? Who’da thunk it?
I saw a Harris yard sign in Ouray, Colorado, this summer. So, at least one person in the Centennial State is sorely disappointed.
13 down and 15!! 15! to go. Good grief. It is like the entire clientele of the bar in Mos Eisley ran for the Democratic nomination to take Donald Trump in the general election.
Right now the Democratic electorate are playing the “Who Can Beat Trump?” game and since they’re insulated in their own little world they’re not exactly making rational decisions. Not that Kamala would be a rational pick, they are focused on what they perceive as being liabilities and Harris has a bunch of them.
Yeah but that’s music to ears of the Woke Democratic base.
Her real problem was having a record as being a pretty tough prosecutor, a no no with the Woke Ones, and her hypocrisy on jailing people for weed then bragging about smoking it. All in all a nasty piece of work.
Max, you disappoint me. It’s “Fauxcahontas,” not “Pocahontas.”
Liawatha works too.
There’s still a lot of hubris about the Permanent Democratic Majority going on here. Harris’ intersectionalism would have seemed to have made her a perfect candidate for the Obama game plan of trying to voters to turn out based on race and/or gender identity politics. But Hillary’s 2016 failure combined with the far left side of the party’s belief that they are the national majority, and only Hillary’s theft of the nomination prevented President Sanders, means that the sops Kamala was suppose to throw to moderates, based on her record as Attorney General, suddenly became major liabilities she had to run away from.
If you think you’re the majority ideologically, you don’t need intersectionality and you don’t need to have a candidate touting their ‘tough on crime’ message. Harris’ inability to pander to the left and defend her record killed her, because the party didn’t care if she was black, Asian and female if she didn’t check off all the progressive boxes (Bloomberg’s about to run into the same trap, in terms of what most people would value about his record as mayor of New York for 12 years the progressives in the Democratic primaries see as disqualifying liabilities, no matter how hard he tries to apologize or run away from them).
Noteworthy is that she was running at #5 in the RCP rankings:
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2020/president/us/2020_democratic_presidential_nomination-6730.html
after three geezers (Grandpa Joe/Uncle Joe/Lieawatha) and two midgets with zero black support (Bloomberg and Pete).
She really was not in all that bad a position for someone with less than 5% in the polls. ;-)
Chief Spreading Bull.
Dances With Quotas.
I was convinced that she would win, based on her being exactly the look that Democrats wanted.
But her campaign has been in freefall for months apparently as I just read in the New York Times.
Booker will be gone soon. Two of Kavanaugh’s main antagonists. I hope its not a coincidence.
I think that you are right. He hasn’t qualified for the December debate.
Just a few days ago she was cooking Thanksgiving dinner at someone’s house in Iowa so this must have been a recent realization.
DJT shot first.
Back on February 20, I made my initial predictions about the Democrat primaries in a Ricochet post (here). I can’t claim to have been much of a Nostradamus.
I predicted that Harris would do well, and would finish third in the Dem primary. Wrong!
I think that I was right about Booker, Beto, and Klobuchar fizzling. I also predicted that Gillibrand would not generate sufficient spark to be able to fizzle, which was right.
I predicted that Warren would fizzle, which was incorrect.
I predicted that Bloomberg would not enter the race, which was technically incorrect, though it remains to be seen whether he actually does anything of significance.
I picked Biden to win and Bernie to be second, with Biden picking Harris as his running mate. Still possible, I suppose.
Nah, PDT legitimized the second one.
There seems to be a misapprehension that PDT’s choice of “Pocahontas” is somehow a simplification or reduction of “Fauxcahontas”. The latter came first, I’ll grant, but that doesn’t mean it’s the root of the tree. Even if DJT heard it before his first Warren tweet, he’d have properly rejected it as insufficiently-stinging and overly-trying-to-be-clever-like-the-front-row-kids, with a shade of faux-literary-awareness. No way would DJT say “Fauxcahontas.”
No, calling her Pocahontas is perfect. It’s a schoolyard-level taunt that leaves the faux academic Warren powerless. The only thing that moderates its effectiveness is the false step made by amateurs who got there first for once.
All things equal, the Democratic activists will demand a ticket balanced by race and sex. Biden/Harris, Bernie/Harris or Warren/Spartacus. Sorry Deval, can’t have a two candidates from the same state.
You think Spartacus is still an option? That’d be awesome. Think of the YMCA memes.
Trump seems to be popular among minorities, surprise, surprise. The Democratic Party is in thrall to diversity. An African American candidate in first or second spot seems mandatory. As does a woman.
I could be wrong. (It’s happened before)
Why do they always “suspend” their campaigns? As if they may rest up and give it another go somewhere down the line.
There is an apparent reason for suspension because it allows a candidate to wrap up their campaign in an orderly manner.
I snorted when I read “Bitin'”
and in Politico last week.
The knives were definitely out.
Such as paying their campaign debts? I didn’t think any of them ever did that.
One problem with party chosen candidates in one party states – they think they are great campaigners and they’ve never faced decent competition. Then they run for something with a decent opponent and reveal their glass jaws. For recent examples, see Hillary Clinton and John Kerry.
Now add a fawning press that builds a candidate up because they favor the candidates agenda or hate their opponent. See Beto O’Rourke.
Kamala suffered from both of these factors and it gave her and her fans an inflated sense of her abilities and chances. She was a horrible candidate from the virtual get-go. Flat-footed, uncertain, too eager to please, and most importantly without an articulated reason for voting for her.
She lasted this long because the field was so big. Had it been smaller, she’d have flamed out faster.
The other reason is that candidates keep their pledged delegates if they “suspend” after primary elections.