Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) announced her bid for the Presidency on Jan. 21 and later followed it with a rally of 20,000 people in her hometown of Oakland, California. She was a one-timefrontrunner, first in momentum, received a considerable first-debate bump after her attacks on Former Vice President Biden, and assured voters that she was the one to prosecute the case against President Trump. She was the only woman of color in the race and despite already qualifying for the December debate, on Dec. 3 Harris announced that she would be suspending her campaign. That same day billionaire Tom Steyer qualifies for the debate and a week later billionaire Mike Bloomberg announced his candidacy. The Democratic Party went from the most diverse field ever to six white candidates projected to be on stage in December. Where did the Senator — or, more importantly, where did the Democratic Party — go wrong?
In short: the Democratic Party is moving far left. It is happening so quickly that they cannot fathom a former Attorney General as President. Yet it is that very principle — Harris’ background in law enforcement — that made her the perfect candidate to go toe to toe with President Trump. She was the one: a moderate who had the potential to earn votes from independents and voters in fly-over states across the country. Harris had moderate views on issues like healthcare and wanted a ban on automatic weapons, yet owned a firearm herself. If the party was not so close-minded, Kamala could have landed herself as our first female president.
Instead, Democrats are having a hard time understanding that to beat President Trump it will take a new, fresh moderate voice like Harris who can take back states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. They are too obsessed with who best embodies Medicare for all, or who has the most radical take on the Green New Deal, to care about how to win over swing states or independents. The candidates themselves may not be as naive to the voices of those key voters, but their celebrity donors and out of touch liberal supporters most certainly are. This is now crystal clear through Harris dropping out of the race.
“Kamala is a cop,” circled social media leading up to her suspension, implying that her background in law enforcement makes her unelectable. What troubles me most about this is that now the party believes that being a “cop” makes her automatically unfit. Supporters of other candidates point to her previous stances on the death penalty and Marijuana especially, as prime examples of why she did not deserve the party’s nomination. Despite what competitor Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) may suggest, Harris was always against the death penalty throughout her career. As Attorney General for the second-largest Department of Justice in the country (second to the United States Department of Justice) it is unfair to hold Harris accountable for the work of over 4,500 staffers and their improper handling of a few cases that never even reached her desk.
With marijuana, as a San Francisco District Attorney, before becoming state Attorney General, only 45 people were sentenced to state prison for marijuana convictions in her tenure. In contrst, 135 were sentenced by her predecessor who held office for just as long as Harris. Tulsi Gabbard came after her for her record on marijuana as a State Attorney which is also unfair since marijuana convictions are done by the county District Attorneys, like Harris was in San Francisco, (with only 45 prison convictions), not state Attorney Generals. Far-left Democrats championing Gabbard’s unfounded attacks on the once “cop” need to take a deep look in the mirror before they go about cheering on an anti-Hillary, pro-Bashar Al Assad candidate. The media attention on these issues soon consumed the platform for Harris, and she was forced to work around this new unprioritized far-left, Democratic Party.
Harris’s withdrawal from the race highlights potential biases held against her by pundits and analysts on account of her race. Whether it was announcing campaign fund re-assessments or stances where she greatly deviated from the far left candidates like Bernie Sanders, the media made sure the electorate heard about it. The media chose these stories to stir up the far left voters for ratings while turning a blind eye to Elizabeth Warren’s lies about her Native American heritage, Joe Biden’s creepy altercations with women and girls, in addition to Bernie Sanders’ heart attack, all major concerns for moderates (not to mention their radical, seemingly unachievable, agendas).
In the meantime, Senator Harris’ story was suffocated. A career’s worth of triumphs from getting $18 billion for homeowners in California, legalizing gay marriage for the state in 2013 (2 years before the supreme court approval) and the country’s first open data initiative to fight implicit racial bias in the police force were not enough. Her passion was “For the People,” as an advocate for minorities, women and LGBT rights but most importantly she felt she could reunify the country. She aimed to bring us together: from those on the far left to the unhappy Trump supporters. We have more that brings us together than divides us. This was embodied within Kamala Harris. This is why she was the moderate our country needed that many did not know we even had. This is why she is sure to be at the top of all Democratic candidates shortlist for Vice President. This is why Kamala Harris deserved to be the Democratic nominee in 2020 and the first female leader of the United States.
