Esquire's C. Pierce, "The Democratic Race Is Poorer for Losing Kamala Harris."
The Democratic presidential primary season hit its first major pivot point on Tuesday when California Senator Kamala Harris announced that she no longer had the resources to continue her campaign. Harris was a first-tier candidate when she launched her bid and remained one through most of the summer. Then, in the first debate, she dared call out friendly ol’ Joe Biden for the accommodations he’d made with the defenders of white supremacy in the decades since he first got to the Senate. (I mean, it’s OK to attend Strom Thurmond’s services, I guess, but you didn’t have to eulogize the old racist sonuvabitch.)
They can all tap-dance around this as much as they want to, but Harris’s audacity shook the comfort zones of a whole lot of people committed to the Democratic establishment, especially those with a history of complicity with the conservative movement. Couple that with the “Kamala Is A Cop” business coming from the portsiders, and Harris soon found that she didn’t have a lot of room to maneuver. Her visibility dropped to near-zero. Her fundraising dried up. And, unsurprisingly, since campaign operatives generally have the loyalty of gaboon vipers when things go south, stories blew up over the weekend about what a hopeless mess her campaign had become.
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Harris should still be in the race. She is a brilliant, accomplished woman who showed her leadership chops when she reduced Brett Kavanaugh to tears during his Senate confirmation hearings. (In fact, one of the only upsides to her decision that I can see is that now she’ll have all the time she needs to prep for her role in the Senate trial of El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago.) She got screwed by the political system of legalized influence peddling that we were gifted by the Supreme Court. It has bothered me from the start that fundraising numbers were such an important metric for the DNC in deciding who should be on the stage and who shouldn’t. Harris qualified for the December 19 hoedown, but she couldn’t sustain her campaign until then. (Two whole weeks!) Instead, we’ll get Tom Steyer, but not Julian Castro. Tulsi Gabbard, but (probably) not Booker. How is this good for anyone? In what is arguably a populist moment, this is simply crazy.
Kamala Harris will still be a force. Right now, she has to be at the top of every vice-presidential shortlist. Any Democrat elected has to consider her for attorney general. And, once the Senate trial starts. she’ll likely get all the free airtime that she couldn’t get while running for president. In addition, she is the most important outstanding endorsement on the board right now. But the field is infinitely poorer without her, and completely out of touch with the actual dynamics of the 2020 election.
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I might be wrong but Russian Bots were out big time working against Sen. Harris.
