538: What Happened To The Kamala Harris Campaign?

[Celerity]

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-happened-to-the-kamala-harris-campaign/

Kamala Harris was being described by some pundits as the Democratic front-runner before she even formally announced her candidacy. By early July, she seemed poised to challenge the polling leader, Joe Biden, who she had sharply criticized in the first Democratic debate. Harris stood at 15 percent in the RealClearPolitics average of national polls, narrowly ahead of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Everything was coming up peaches. Since then, however, Harris’s support has plunged. She’s down to mid-single digits in most national polls, trailing Biden, Sanders, Warren and even Pete Buttigieg. Her numbers are also dismal in the early states, Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina.

So, what went wrong?

It’s too early to write Harris off; she remains well-liked by Democratic voters and has raised enough money to keep her campaign running for months. In other words, she is decently positioned to make gains if one of the top three candidates falters, or if she can create another moment, like in the first debate, that gets Democrats excited about her. But it’s worth thinking about why Harris has stumbled from that post-first-debate high. We can’t know for sure, but here are some theories (most of these are not mutually exclusive, and many likely played a role, but I ordered them from strongest to weakest, in my view):

1. 2020 was never going to be her year in the first place

This theory views Harris’s brief rise to 15 percent in national polls as something of a fluke. Instead, Harris’s “theory of the case” was never going to truly work in 2020 — the problem isn’t Harris, really, it’s that Democratic voters are looking for something else. At least four 2020 candidates — Beto O’Rourke, Cory Booker, Buttigieg and Harris — have run campaigns that echo Barack Obama’s 2008 run: a youthful candidate without much Washington experience runs on charisma and personality more than a defined ideology or particular policy stands. Obama is beloved by Democrats, and his 2008 campaign was iconic, so it’s natural that 2020 candidates would try to emulate him. But Harris, Booker, Buttigieg and O’Rourke are at 14 percent combined in national polls, suggesting that Democratic voters aren’t looking for an Obama re-run.

In some ways, Harris has the same problem that Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio had in the 2016 Republican primary, when they (wrongly) thought that the GOP would be excited about nominating a youngish, non-white standard-bearer with a solid conservative record. There is evidence to support the theory that Harris just isn’t a good fit for 2020. To take just one example, Obama was 47 years old in 2008. (Harris is 54.) The three leading Democratic candidates are 78 years old (Sanders), 76 (Biden) and 70 (Warren.) Moreover, Harris’s uptick in national polls was an outlier. She was in only the high single digits for most of February, March, April, May and June, and has gradually receded back to single digits after surging in early July. Also, as mentioned, the other Obama-esque candidates aren’t really doing any better.

Even on ideological grounds, Harris has had “fit” issues. In her rise through California politics, Harris positioned herself as a left-but-not-that-left, establishment-friendly figure. But that may not be a great profile in today’s Democratic Party, which has grown increasingly liberal. Indeed, Harris has struggled to defend her sometimes more conservative decisions as a district attorney and later attorney general of California and even her choice of becoming a prosecutor in the first place. Her positioning might be just fine if Biden were not in the race winning the votes of African-Americans and Democrats to the right of Warren and Sanders, but Biden is in the race.

snip

much more at the top link

[Dem4Life1102]

1. I liked Harris a lot

but her attack on Biden really left a bad taste in my mouth.

[Celerity]

2. ironic that right after that sparring was the only time she shot up, but then quickly went back down

[DrFunkenstein]

3. Harris Stumbled After Her Post-Debate Spike, But Could Have Caught On

It seemed as if she hadn't properly thought out her positions. She's still an insanely smart woman, and her future in the Party is going to be bright no matter what.

[ritapria]

4. Harris is a leading contender to be Biden's VP Pick

[Skya Rhen]

5. @ 5%?

[Zambero]

6. I believe that to be correct

Her criticisms of Biden have all but vanished since the first debate.