Kamala 2020: Where did it go wrong?

Jon Prevo
Jon Prevo
Nov 5 · 8 min read

How did Kamala Harris go from the young Democratic star, topping 2020 drafts, to a middling presidential candidate in 2020?

Credit: Shivansh Ahuja/The Daily Iowan

Kamala Harris took the stage last Friday at the 2019 Liberty and Justice Celebration in Des Moines to speak along with a slate of other presidential hopefuls. She arrived to a receptive crowd waving yellow campaign sticks and signs floating her campaign mantra, boasting one of the largest crowds any candidate had that night.

Despite these supportive and energetic crowds, Harris has faded to anywhere from fourth place to sixth place in the average of Iowa polls, hovering anywhere from five to three percent. What went wrong? To answer this, it’s best to take a glimpse back at her career.

Credit: Office of Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, March 30, 2004

Kamala Harris is no stranger to difficult political battles. In 2003, she announced her campaign to unseat incumbent San Francisco DA Terence Hallinan in the 2004 elections. This was a campaign she had been planning for years; Harris wanted a snowball’s chance to unseat Hallinan, so she gained political clout by means of campaign volunteering and joining boards of non-profits in the San Francisco area such as the San Francisco Jazz Organization, San Francisco Domestic Violence Consortium, Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco, among others. Further, Harris managed to successfully lobby to prevent the California Democratic Party from endorsing Hallinan prior to the election.

On December 9th, 2003, Kamala Harris was elected the first woman district attorney for San Francisco with 56% of the vote.

Harris’s tenure as San Francisco DA was rocky. Only a few months into her term, SFPD Officer Isaac Espinoza was shot and killed on the job. DA Harris elected to not seek the death penalty for his killer, angering much of the establishment in the area including the San Francisco Police Officers Association and sitting senator Dianne Feinstein. Despite efforts by Feinstein and public outcry, Harris stood fast and never sought the death penalty. Espinoza’s killer was found guilty of murder and sentenced to life in prison.

On the other hand, Harris initiated the Back on Track Initiative in 2004, allowing the records to be cleared for any first-time drug offenders whose crimes didn’t include any gangs or weapons and agreed to take classes to attain a GED, job training, parenting classes, and drug tests. Despite not having many students in the program, the program was deemed effective for the participants it did have.

In 2007, Harris was reelected San Francisco DA unopposed.

It was after her reelection in 2007 that the idea of a Kamala Harris presidential campaign began to be floated. In a May 2008 article in the New York Times by Kate Zernike, Harris was said to have landed on “one list” for potential presidential candidates.

At the same time, the felony conviction rate in San Francisco rose to 67% in 2006 from 52% in 2003, the highest in a decade. Harris became notorious for securing plea bargains to close more cases. Harris defends this by attributing it to the large case log left to her by her predecessor in the office.

As DA, Harris’s office ended the aid to Joey Piscitelli and his efforts against sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, angering local activists. However, Harris did begin a Hate Crimes Unit aimed specifically to protect against hate crimes against LGBT children and teens.

In November of 2008, San Francisco DA Kamala Harris announced her intent to run for California Attorney General in 2010. Not long after, Harris netted the endorsements of power players like Nancy Pelosi, Dolores Huerta, Dianne Feinstein, and Barbara Boxer.

On November 2nd, 2010, Kamala Harris was elected California Attorney General with 46% of the vote, becoming the first woman, the first Indian-American woman, and the first Jamaican-American woman to serve as California AG.

Credit: L.A. Cicero

As California AG, Harris touted a flashy record: praise from President Obama at a 2013 fundraiser, prosecuting predatory lending cases, presiding over the first gay marriage in California after resuming in 2013, and recommending indictments for oil companies after an oil spill off the Californian coast in 2015, among other achievements.

The Harris AG office faced criticism, though, as Californian prisons were deemed over capacity, guns of Californian criminals took long to confiscate, and investigations into police shootings weren’t opened.

In 2015, Senator Barbara Boxer announced her retirement for 2016, which led to rapid discussion of Kamala Harris running a senate campaign. Not long after, Harris announced her intent to run for the open senate seat on January 13th, 2015, where she ended up facing Rep. Loretta Sanchez.

Credit: Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times

On November 8th, 2016, Kamala Harris was elected to the U.S. Senate with 62% of the vote, becoming the second black woman elected to the U.S. Senate.

Kamala Harris was floated as a progressive star and a potential presidential candidate before even winning the senate election, so it wasn’t a shock to many when she announced her intent to run for president in 2020 on January 21, 2019.

Credit: Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Area News Group

Harris kicked off her campaign with strong polls; only a month after she announced, she was third in the polling average, challenging frontrunners Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders who had become household names prior to 2020.

With somewhat low name recognition when she entered and the tantalizing prospect for many Democrats of being the first female president, it seemed Harris could only go up. However, as the months of the 2020 campaign drew on, Harris saw her support lower from the low double digits to the mid single digits as more candidates jumped in.

The Harris 2020 campaign needed a breath of life, so what to do? First, the attempt was to become the fresh, progressive alternative for the Left, taking the mantle from 2016 progressive idol Bernie Sanders and the ever-rising Elizabeth Warren. Despite her best efforts, Harris faced skepticism from white liberals, leaving her numbers steady at best. What now?

Joe Biden’s lead in the primary is largely attributable to black and older voters. So, Kamala HQ decided to put their marks on Joe Biden for the first debate in June of 2019.

Credit: PBS News Service

At the first debate, Kamala Harris had her moment: during a tense exchange with Joe Biden over his recently-exposed praise of senators who fought for segregation and against busing, Kamala Harris had a viral moment.

Harris said she found it hurtful Biden offered kind words to senators who supported segregation, bringing up “…a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her public schools, and she was bused to school every day. And that little girl was me,” Harris said.

After that first debate watched by millions looking to see their first taste of the presidential race, Harris saw her numbers surge, reaching second place in the polling average for a short time and seeing a huge influx of campaign donations, large and small.

That surge, that debate bump, didn’t last, though. What Kamala needed for this surge to last was more support from older voters, from black voters, from voters who aren’t plugged into political news every day. Her debate bump was short, buoyed mostly by high-information liberals looking for a flavor-of-the-month candidate who they felt would be someone who could take down Donald Trump. Warning signs this wouldn’t last emerged when polls taken during and after the bump showed little movement among black voters and moderate/traditional Democrats.

Credit: Associated Press

At the July presidential debate, Harris faced intense scrutiny from Hawaii representative Tulsi Gabbard, who brought up her record as a prosecutor years ago. At the debate, Tulsi challenged Kamala in saying:

“But I’m deeply concerned about this record. There are too many examples to cite but she put over 1,500 people in jail for marijuana violations and then laughed about it when she was asked if she ever smoked marijuana.

“She blocked evidence — she blocked evidence that would have freed an innocent man from death row until the courts forced her to do so. She kept people in prison beyond their sentences to use them as cheap labor for the state of California.”

Tulsi’s challenge and spotlight of Harris’s past wasn’t new to her and wasn’t new to many voters; rather, a presidential candidate bringing up the reason the Left has been skeptical of her is what threw her off her game and potentially what cemented her downfall.

Since the July debate, Harris has only seen her national numbers fall, now sitting at roughly 3.5% on average and now at fifth place, potentially being overtaken by businessman Andrew Yang or Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar.

Since Tulsi’s comments at the July debate, Harris has faced onslaughts of “Kamala is a cop” memes from online trolls and questions of her prior record from the Left and from voters in the early states.

Credit: YouTube (Kamala Harris)

So, what can we say is the reason for Kamala Harris 2020 not managing to catch fire? It’s complicated.

By focusing on her record, the Left remains hostile to Harris’s ambitions and black voters remain loyal to Joe Biden. The Harris campaign has tried many paths: taking the progressive road to take the spotlight from Bernie and fighting for black voters from Biden. Neither has lasted, if they worked in the first place. Perhaps voters don’t think she’s consistent. Perhaps voters don’t think she can beat Trump. Perhaps voters don’t trust her record.

The Iowa Caucus is 91 days away of November 4th, 2019. Kamala Harris sits at roughly 3% in the average of Iowa polls. Can she still catch fire? It’s possible, but voters seem less enamored with her than she would like.

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade