Kamala Harris campaign crashing and burning in Iowa, her top priority
Kamala Harris's presidential campaign has been a disaster for her and may even damage her political career prospects beyond 2020. It's been all downhill since the impressive kickoff rally in Oakland, where her campaign claimed that 20,000 people turned out. With her national polling cratering, she turned to the Iowa caucuses for salvation, betting that a sustained presence, pressing the flesh, would jump-start the disaster. A bit over a month ago, Senator Kamala Harris was overheard telling Senate colleague Mazie Hirono, "I'm f------ moving to Iowa."
“I’m f****** moving to Iowa,” Sen. Kamala Harris joked to Sen. Hirono (before she noticed me) pic.twitter.com/dv0PRWLY8g
— Matt Laslo (@MattLaslo) September 18, 2019
But as Stacey Matthews reports at Legal Insurrection, Iowans aren't that f------ happy with what they see.
Harris, who polled at 18% in Iowa after the first debate when she went toe to toe with Joe Biden, now stands at a measly 2% in the crucial first caucus state:
IOWA POLL: @JoeBiden and @ewarren lead the #Iowa Democratic Primary, followed by @PeteButtigieg and @BernieSanders. https://t.co/CIjFwBESSE pic.twitter.com/8ygutTyOmk
— Emerson Polling (@EmersonPolling) October 17, 2019Her low numbers in Iowa are in addition to her poor showing in key primary states like South Carolina, New Hampshire, and even her home state of California.
The news from Emerson was no doubt a devastating blow for the Harris campaign, which made it a point in mid-September to announce they were going all-in on finishing strong in Iowa. “We want to make sure that we have a strong top-three finish,” her campaign manager Juan Rodriguez said at the time.
Harris, who has no political convictions beyond personal ambition, has been pushing issues that get her nowhere. Her effort to silence President Trump's Twitter account has sparked little support and was flatly rejected by frontrunner Elizabeth Warren in last week's Ohio presidential debate, and her campaign's photoshopping of her into the White House confrontation with Nancy Pelosi was so nonsensical and embarrassing that it was deleted.
Kamala Harris' national press secretary has deleted his attempt at a meme. pic.twitter.com/82cDRn2ndA
— Julio Rosas (@Julio_Rosas11) October 17, 2019
If sleeping with the right person could get Harris into the Oval Office, then she'd have a much better chance at the presidency. But now that she is in the national spotlight and has other prominent Democrats opposing her, her intellectual and moral vacuity are self-evident. What sufficed for high office in California under the patronage of Willie Brown, along with a fashionable racial pedigree, is not up to the bar for the chief executive of the United States.
The only question now is how long it will be before Harris ends the embarrassment and damage her presidential campaign is inflicting.
My guess is that she will excuse a poor performance in Iowa on the state's mostly white population, so it will take a poor showing in South Carolina to end the ordeal.