The two challenges that doomed Kamala Harris

[brooklynite]

Washington Post

Just six months ago Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.) delivered an impressive debate performance, unnerving former vice president Joe Biden and rocketing in the polls. On Tuesday, she announced she was suspending her campaign, citing lack of money.

How did Harris go from rising star to a pre-Iowa exit? Here was a candidate who (when she was “on”) was passionate, funny, empathetic and commanding. Her one-on-one conversations with voters along the trail were tutorials in empathetic listening. She, among all the candidates, best fit the description of happy warrior. It was not enough.

If raw political talent were the test or demonstrable empathy were the determining factors in a presidential race, she would be lapping the field. But ultimately, the test of presidential candidates is whether they can build a behemoth organization around a focused message, one that in 2019 could break through the messages from numerous other candidates.

News accounts documented tensions and confusing lines of authority in the campaign, which, when things are going poorly, often become the default explanations. (Those accounts, in turn, make fundraising difficult if not impossible.) However, these “dissension in the ranks” stories tend to be more a symptom than the cause of a campaign’s unwinding. In this case, it was a campaign for a candidate boxed in between far-left progressives and moderates, with no single policy objective to provide an organizing principle. She did suffer at times from a lack of focus, a fuzziness that some incorrectly attributed to excessive caution.

[FailureToCommunicate]

1. As Rachel might say: Horse-pucky

[NoMoreRepugs]

2. Ms Harris raised the bar - for that I say thank you.