I know I’m not alone in this — early on, I expected Kamala Harris to be a strong contender for the Democratic nomination for president this go ’round. I was genuinely surprised to see her wilt in the face of Tulsi Gabbard’s well-placed jabs.  Especially after her bold (but perhaps, in retrospect, unwise) confrontation of Joe Biden in the first debate.

As my colleague, Brandon Morse, noted yesterday, however, Harris has experienced a precipitous drop in the polls and she has an interesting explanation as to why — it’s not the revelation of her dubious criminal justice record or her feeble attempt to cover her tracks in that regard. It’s because…she’s a woman of color.

Here’s the thing about that — if she’s right, why was she previously higher in the polls? (She was polling at over 15% in July but has now slid to just over 5% per the RealClearPolitics aggregate.) Is she contending that people who used to have no issue with her being a woman of color now suddenly do?

More importantly, these are Democratic primary polls. In other words, reflecting the preferences of Democratic voters.  So, is Harris contending that Democrats are racist and sexist? She might want to ask Hillary Clinton how insulting people whose votes you want works.