Kamala Harris’ Hopes for the White House Waning

Is Democratic presidential hopeful Kamala Harris’s star beginning to tarnish?

It seems that lately as other Dems in the race are on the rise, with several shooting past Harris – she is having trouble gainning a solid foothold amongst likely Democratic voters.

The junior U.S. senator from California was one of the first Democrats to launch a White House bid, raising at the time an astonishing $1.5 million in just 24 hours while attracting tens of thousands of supposed supporters to a rally in Oakland.

The 54-year-old former state attorney general and San Francisco district attorney — who succeeded Democrat Barbara Boxer in the Senate in 2017 — was viewed as a frontrunner in the 2020 race thanks to her progressive bona fides and effective opposition to President Trump. Meanwhile, her stint as a DA, while criticized by progressives, was seen as a way to appeal to more moderate voters.

However, now that we are several months into Harris’ bid for the White House, she had to recently return to LA for California’s annual state Democratic Party convention no longer as a frontrunner.

A Failure to Connect

According to the LA Times, local political pundits believe that part of the reason why Harris’ campaign has stalled is that she has failed to make a succinct case for her candidacy, beyond her background as a prosecutor and virulent opposition to the Trump administration.

“You don’t get elected because you’re a list of qualities,” Gil Duran, a former Harris adviser, told the newspaper. “What’s the big idea she’s carrying? That’s what she’s trying to figure out. She’s having trouble figuring out what she represents.”

Latest polls were particularly troubling to Harris, with former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont fighting for the title of party frontrunner.

Furthermore, according to the Morning Consult poll tracker, Harris’ support peaked just weeks after her announcement, with 14 percent of Democratic voters throwing their support behind her in an early February poll. Since then, her support has dwindled to 7 percent.

But, what should clearly be distressing for Harris, it seems that the momentum behind her campaign has evaporated while other candidates have solidified their support and may be poised to expand further nationally.

On the other hand, instead of panicking, Harris’ major supporters suggest that her campaign is in the exact right spot at this time — still able to compete and fundraise without the burden of being a frontrunner.

“I don’t think anyone ever thought she would get in the race and blow away the field and be a frontrunner from January 2019 through Election Day,” Brian Brokaw, who managed Harris’ runs for state attorney general, told the Times.

“She needs to stay in the upper tier, which I think she is. Stay in striking position and you outlast everybody.”

Meanwhile, out on the stump, Harris, is putting out policies to firm up her far-left agenda. She recently said that she would use executive orders to mandate background checks on the private transfers of guns, revoke the licenses of gun makers and dealers whose guns are used in crimes, and ban the importation of many semi-automatic guns.