Kamala Harris bets it all on Iowa to break freefall

[brooklynite]

Politico

Kamala Harris is putting her stumbling campaign on the line with a new Iowa-or-bust strategy: She's shifting away from the closed-door fundraisers that dominated her summer calendar to focus on retail politicking in the crucial kickoff state.

Harris huddled with top campaign officials Tuesday in Baltimore to discuss the next steps as a series of polls show her plummeting into the mid-single digits. She's not expected to significantly alter her message. Instead, Harris is planning to make weekly visits to the state and nearly double the size of her 65-person ground operation, sources familiar with the discussions told POLITICO.

The re-engagement in Iowa — where the California senator held a 17-stop bus tour in August but hasn’t returned since — is part of a broader acknowledgment inside the campaign that she hasn’t been in the early states enough. It's designed to refocus her campaign and clarify her narrowing path to the nomination.

Harris has been backsliding since her summer confrontation with Joe Biden, dropping so far in recent surveys that her once-promising campaign appears in danger of becoming an afterthought.

[Peacetrain]

1. I do not blame her a bit for doing that..before what happened in the first debate

She was such a rising star in Iowa.. she really had the wind to her back, and then I still do not know what she was thinking when she did that.. But there is a still a lot of good will for her ..

[emmaverybo]

2. Maybe the confrontation of (not with) Biden wasn't so hot an idea. Made for an overnight sensation

but then more was revealed. I found it an unseemly and over-theatrical ambush that made me
seriously question her integrity.
But honestly, I am biased. I can’t really account for how she has dropped like a hot potato. Somehow not as much on her toes this last debate. Did not summon up the full strength of
presence she is capable of. Also, appeared thrown by Tulsi and got fuzzy on healthcare.
Still...
She has got grit and charisma. I do admire her fighting spirit and the fact that she worked hard to get on the inside to change the system. Not an easy way to do it.

[wysimdnwyg]

3. It's good to see they have finally realized their campaign has been severely lacking

I like Kamala a lot (she was my selection until a few days ago, although I've been waffling on the decision to switch for some time), but her campaign has been, well, not great. Look at what is making the other candidates successful, both in short bursts and long term:
* Warren engages with her fans/backers at every event, including hours-long selfie lines, to make all attendees feel like they are part of her campaign instead of just potential voters/donors. She is also extremely clear on her policies, and - for the most part - can clearly and concisely back up her positions. (I'd like to see a better response to the taxes paying for M4A questions.)
* Buttigieg is authentic and just a very likable and relatable person. He's young, and likely won't get more than 5% of the votes, but very few people dislike him, and he's destined for a position in a Democratic White House.
* Sanders is passionate about his policy positions, and it (REALLY) shows.
* Biden is that calming influence that makes people remember a time when politics wasn't a hellscape of back biting and dirty deeds.

Harris is inconsistent - at best - at these things. She's very likable, but it's sometimes hard to relate to her given her prosecutorial background. She engages with backers at small events, but not as much at the larger ones. She's passionate about a few things (mostly getting rid of Trump, it seems). Harris has her policy positions, but some of these seem to shift a bit, and for many of them Harris has a difficult time explaining or backing them up. (See her inability to explain why her time as AG is a good thing, or why her healthcare plan is better than either Biden's Obamacare expansion or Sanders'/Warren's M4A plan.) Finally, she is not a calming presence like Biden.

Harris is fantastic, but it's clear the Democratic electorate wants one of two things (besides the obvious of beating Trump): Bold, new ideas (Bernie/Liz), or that feeling that we can go back to a time when politics was something we cared about, but in a quiet, polite way (Joe/Pete). We didn't run around with 40 bumper stickers practically screaming how our ideas were great and anyone who disagrees is either a moron or a traitor. Harris has tried too hard to play to the middle of that, and neither side is buying.



As an aside to some of the respondents in this thread:
That lump of smelly... something... over there? That's the horse you've been beating for three months. Harris took a shot at Biden in the first debate. It clearly caught Joe off-guard, and he didn't respond well. Was it below the belt? Come on. This is politics, and if he wins the nomination you know full well he's going to get ten times worse from Trump. In the end, Kamala got a short spike in the polls that her poor campaign could not sustain. Joe got... well, he wasn't really affected by it. He still leads almost every poll out there, often by wide margins. Please, just let it go.

[NurseJackie]

4. Sounds like a good strategy to me...

... it's difficult to predict the outcome, however. We'll just have to wait and see.