Comments@THE GUSS REPORT-There are big post-mortems on why California Senator Kamala Harris failed miserably in her campaign to become the 2020 Democrat nominee for president.
In the New York Times, Miriam Pawel asks, “Did We Ever Know the Real Kamala Harris?” And in the Los Angeles Times, George Skelton says, “Kamala Harris Should Have Never Run for President.”
The titles are all you need to know because few will care to read more about candidates who didn’t come close to reaching the early primaries.
While there are many reasons why Harris failed, she disingenuously states it’s because she ran out of money. That may be so, but she dodges these other stunning factors:
- One day before quitting, a poll showed that former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the ninth richest person in the world and a candidate of just two weeks for the same nomination, immediately jumped ahead of Harris in the polls.
- Harris needed a pre-emptive excuse for the trouncing she was going to take in the California primary, which would have been a political death sentence for any lingering thoughts of running in the future.
- Harris played heavily on being a prosecutor who could take on President Donald Trump during the coming debates, but it was another Democrat candidate, Tulsi Gabbard, who knocked out Harris during a recent heated debate exchange.
- There was that blistering exposé in the New York Times last week in which former staffers of her campaign described its operation, run by her sister Maya Harris, as toxic and disorganized. This will undoubtedly resurface if the Senator decides to run for president again. But like Joe Biden’s original presidential campaign in 1988, which ended after plagiarism accusations, the Senator may have done irreparable harm to herself already.
During her campaign, Harris also repeatedly used a catch phrase promise to “speak truth.” But look at this Twitter exchange between her and vacuous California Governor Gavin Newsom the day before Harris pulled the plug.
At 2:58 p.m. on December 2, Newsom Tweeted, “Looking forward to joining @KamalaHarris out on the trail!”
At 5 p.m., Harris responded with, “Thanks @gavinnewsom! Don’t forget your jacket – December in Iowa is a little different from the Bay.”
Just 18 hours later, Harris Tweeted she was ending her campaign.
Did Harris mislead Newsom into thinking her campaign was going to continue when it was ending the next day? Did both of them mislead her 3.2 million and his 1.4 million Twitter followers?
Those are the lesser of three evils because if Harris didn’t know on December 2 that she was going to end her campaign on December 3, it means she was delusionally detached from reality all along. . .or she lied to everyone right to the very end.
Daniel Guss, MBA, is a member of the Los Angeles Press Club, and has contributed to CityWatchLA, KFI AM-640, iHeartMedia, 790-KABC, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Daily News, Los Angeles Magazine, Movieline Magazine, Emmy Magazine, Los Angeles Business Journal, Pasadena Star News, Los Angeles Downtown News, and the Los Angeles Times in its Sports, Opinion, Entertainment sections and Sunday Magazine, among other publishers. Follow him on Twitter @TheGussReport. His opinions are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch. Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
