It's Official: Kamala Harris Calls it Quits (Updated With Video)

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., speaks during a town hall for the American Federation of Teachers in Detroit, Monday, May 6, 2019. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)

Kamala Harris

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., speaks during a town hall for the American Federation of Teachers in Detroit, Monday, May 6, 2019. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)

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When last we left you, post-mortems from national media news outlets were already being written about Sen. Kamala Harris’ collapsing presidential campaign, even though she was still in the race – but just barely.

Today, the struggling candidate made it official: She’s dropping out:

Kamala Harris dropped her presidential campaign on Tuesday after months of failing to lift her candidacy from the bottom of the field — a premature ending for a California senator once heralded as a top-tier contender for the nomination.

Harris told aides of her intentions in an all-staff call. A person familiar with the call said she sounded distraught. While Harris had qualified for the December debate in her home state, she was running dangerously low on cash — lacking the resources to air TV ads in Iowa — and her staff was gripped by long-running internal turmoil.

Harris also announced her decision in a post that was published to Medium:

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She wrote, in part:

I’ve taken stock and looked at this from every angle, and over the last few days have come to one of the hardest decisions of my life.

My campaign for president simply doesn’t have the financial resources we need to continue.

I’m not a billionaire. I can’t fund my own campaign. And as the campaign has gone on, it’s become harder and harder to raise the money we need to compete.

In good faith, I can’t tell you, my supporters and volunteers, that I have a path forward if I don’t believe I do.

So, to you my supporters, it is with deep regret — but also with deep gratitude — that I am suspending my campaign today.

Her husband Douglas Emhoff tweeted a note of support for her after she informed her staff:

The Daily Caller, on the other hand, took the “buhbye” approach:

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) has been credited – even by some Harris aides – of accelerating her decline, which is a claim that has some merit, considering Gabbard’s torching of Harris’ criminal justice reform record at the second debate in late July. Her supporters and fans, and even other candidates, are also blaming her campaign’s freefall on “sexism”, her being a WOC, and the assumption that she can’t compete with “billionaire candidates.”

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But they are, of course, conveniently ignoring how her racially tinged attacks on Joe Biden over the busing issue backfired on her just two weeks after confronting him at the first debate in June elevated her in the polls and caused big money Democratic donors to jump ship from Biden and knock on her door.

Where her support lagged the most was with two key Democratic voting blocs: Female voters and black voters. A July to August analysis of both groups showed a dramatic drop in support among both for Harris. Her continued attacks on Biden’s race record, which didn’t make sense, and her wishy washy stances on Medicare for All were a turnoff for Democratic voters.

She was never able to recover after Gabbard’s attacks, and struggled to define herself and what kind of president she would be. She really only has herself to blame for her poor showing nationally and in her home state, not “billionaires” or racism/sexism.

After all, if you can’t run an effective national political campaign and can’t demonstrate to voters who you are and what you stand for, just how do you plan on convincing people you can run the country? In the end, she couldn’t.

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Update – 3:03 pm: She posted this video announcement just a few minutes ago:

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— Based in North Carolina, Sister Toldjah is a former liberal and a 16+ year veteran of blogging with an emphasis on media bias, social issues, and the culture wars. Read her Red State archives here. Connect with her on Twitter. –

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