What Happened To The Kamala Harris Campaign?

[brooklynite]

538

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).

[Doormouse]

1. Two problems.

She didn’t get a top tier campaign manager and then let them run the show.

She let family try to run the show.

[LakeArenal]

2. I was never with her since Franken.

So there’s that. I know I’m not the only one.

[brooklynite]

3. Somehow Warren and Sanders did well despite the Franken thing...

[LakeArenal]

4. Booker hasn't.

Time will tell. As a Biden supporter I won’t support those two anyway.

[brooklynite]

5. And neither is Klobuchar; which tells us that Franken has nothing to do with voter attitudes

[LakeArenal]

6. I didn't say it had anything to do with your opinion

I said it was my opinion.

But I also know I’m not alone in that opinion