WASHINGTON — Kamala Harris had a big day in her ill-fated 2020 presidential campaign: her first.
Then came a quick collapse.
The freshman senator who announced her candidacy in January 2019 before 20,000 supporters in Oakland, California, dropped out in December before a single vote was cast.
When she resigned, Harris lacked money, a message and a cohesive campaign operation — all ingredients for a successful candidacy.
It was a hard fall for someone whose youth and biracial identity evoked the appeal of the last Democratic president, Barack Obama.
“I have mixed emotions about this,” said his rival and eventual winner, Joe Biden, after hearing that she had withdrawn of the race for the Democratic nomination. He called her a “first-rate intellect.”
Now, Harris may have another chance. As the sitting vice president, she would be a leading candidate to succeed Biden if he succumbed to party pressure and dropped out of the race. Other elected officials could move forward to challenge Harris, dividing Democrats and clouding the general election picture ahead of a showdown with Donald Trump in November.
“I know there are people working behind the scenes who feel she may not be the best person to lead us to victory if he [Biden] steps aside,” said Maria Cardona, a member of the Democratic National Committee’s rules panel. “If this is seen as a completely inorganic tactic led by senior Democratic Party officials, there will be a civil war within the Democratic Party that we will not survive.”
Persuading Biden to step aside is difficult enough without involving a bitter intraparty battle to succeed him, others said.
“This is heartbreaking,” said Hilary Rosen, a Democratic strategist. “It is painful to ask a good sitting president not to run for re-election. We will have as much pain as we can bear if he agrees not to run away.”
With just months to launch a campaign against Trump, Harris could not afford to repeat the mistakes that marred her last presidential bid. There would be little time to recover. Hers would need to be a virtually error-free run until Election Day.
When Harris gave that announcement speech before a crowd in her hometown five years ago, her prospects seemed dazzling. A Monmouth University Research released a week after she entered the race, it showed her running third in a crowded Democratic field that eventually numbered more than two dozen. With 11% support, she trailed only Biden and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, both of whom have run in presidential races before.
Harris earned her bona fides as a former prosecutor and stood out in Senate committees as a feared interrogator who could dismantle a witness’ testimony.
A pro-Harris super PAC prepared an ad that showed she grilling Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and two Trump-era attorneys general, William Barr and Jeff Sessions.
It never aired. On the day the $1 million ad buy was supposed to start airing, Harris backed out.
Making the leap from state politics to national politics proved daunting for her. Rivals like Sanders and Senator Elizabeth Warren have spent much of their adult lives immersed in politics.
Harris did not master the political issues that dominated the Democratic debates. She had originally supported Sanders’ “Medicare for all” plan, but later launched her own version that won a continued role for private insurers.
She quickly faced fire from the left and center of the ideological spectrum.
Sanders aides denounced his proposal as “terrible policy.” Biden’s campaign joined the attack, warning it would undermine Obama’s Affordable Care Act.
“She was trying to figure out where she landed in the primaries on a number of issues,” said one of her former campaign aides in California. As a state employee, Harris “didn’t have to deal with that level of nuance.”
Another political stumble derailed what appeared to be his forward momentum. In a debate in June, she attacked Biden for opposing busing in the 1970s.
Harris mentioned a “little girl” in California who rode the bus to school every day. “That little girl was me,” she said. Within hours of the exchange, her campaign triumphantly began selling “That Little Girl Was Me” T-shirts for $29.99 each.
But after the debate, she struggled to offer a consistent answer about whether she believed federally mandated busing should be used to integrate schools.
A Biden campaign aide seized on the misunderstanding, tweeting that she was “tying herself up trying not to answer the same question she asked” Biden.
This time, instead of facing other Democrats, Harris would be able to nominate one of their own to serve as her running mate. She would have a plethora of promising choices to balance the ticket, including Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper and Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear, all of whom won in places where Trump had a good performance.
Admirers say Harris grew up on the job. Early in her campaign, she traveled to South Carolina and spoke to a group of Democratic women.
“The woman I met in early 2019 was not as confident and was significantly more tentative in how she presented herself to potential voters,” said Amanda Loveday, senior adviser at a pro-Biden super PAC called Unite the Country.
While stating that she wants Biden to remain at the top of the ticket, Loveday said of the vice president: “The woman I met then is very different from the woman I see on TV today. She has grown as a leader and developed more confidence.”
Both the Harris administration office and the Biden-Harris campaign declined to comment for this article.
A campaign is similar to an expensive business on a national scale. You need an inspiring candidate, but you also depend on a unified team. Harris didn’t have one. People close to the campaign say lines of authority were blurred between Harris’ sister and campaign chair Maya Harris and other advisers who worked on her statewide races but were not related by blood.
In November 2019, a member of the campaign team wrote a letter, obtained by The New York Timeswhich portrayed a campaign in crisis.
“Campaigns have ups and downs, mistakes and miscalculations,” wrote Kelly Mehlenbacher. “But because we refuse to confront our mistakes, foster an environment of critical thinking and honest feedback, or trust the expertise of talented employees, we make the same unforced errors over and over again.”
At that point, Harris was in fifth place, with her poll numbers dropping to 6%. Money was dwindling, accelerating the downward spiral. That fall, Harris’ campaign laid off staffers and moved others from its national headquarters in Baltimore to Iowa to save money.
Any hope of reviving his candidacy with a strong performance in the Iowa caucuses in January was short-lived. On December 3, Harris dropped out. She emailed staff saying she “simply doesn’t have the financial resources we need to continue.”
A Harris sequel would look nothing like the original, former aides said. She would be supported by a Democratic Party that would unite behind her, desperate to defeat Trump. Donors who have given up on Biden will be able to take another look at the race with a younger candidate at the top of the ticket.
She would also likely inherit the parts of the Biden campaign that are working — like the massive field and data operations designed to increase voter turnout. While Biden’s most senior aides are likely to leave, many rank-and-file campaign staffers with long resumes may choose to stay.
Harris’ experience as a prosecutor could be advantageous in a future debate. Instead of arguing with fellow Democrats about health care and education policy, she would be upset about Trump’s criminal conviction in Manhattan.
“Literally everything” would be different, starting with her pitch to voters, a longtime Harris adviser told NBC News. “It’s a three-month sprint, not a two-year slog.”
This story originally appeared on NBCNews.com read the full story
