2019 Redux

Doing web searches on Kamala, I'm suddenly coming up with stories on her failed primary campaign in 2019, for instance at Politico on December 3 of that year, The spectacular collapse of Kamala Harris:

On Monday, hemorrhaging cash and way down in polls — and with autopsies of her failing campaign being performed on the live body — Harris mercifully decided to drop out. She told her staff in a call Tuesday, sounding clearly disappointed, according to one participant, as she shared her decision to bow out.

Even when the hype around Harris was at its apex, her advisers and confidants wondered if the freshman senator was ready for a presidential run. In each of her past campaigns — first for district attorney of San Francisco, then California attorney general and the Senate in 2016 — Harris improved immensely, rising to the moment and giving her best performances when her back was against the wall.

This time, the moment — and the stage — proved too large. Kamala the campaigner couldn’t live up to Kamala the idea. And her campaign let her down.

The intriguing thing is how applicable the 2019 post mortems now seem to her current position:

Eventually, her most memorable moment — her exchange with Biden in the June debate over busing for school desegregation — turned into a mess when Harris flubbed the follow-through. She offered a muddled, shifting answer that allowed Biden’s campaign to paint her as opportunistic and a hypocrite.

Her polling sugar high subsided. She slid to the level of Andrew Yang and Tulsi Gabbard and never recovered.

Look at the headlines now, just from the past few weeks: Dem strategists fret Harris 'sugar high' is over; Kamala Harris’ ‘sugar high’ has ended: Michael Whatley; Is Kamala Harris' 'sugar high' wearing off?

The current narrative is also similar to 2019's, a campaign that started with a lot of promise that's runniong out of steam:

The Democratic nominee is in a statistical dead heat in crucial states with Trump, the Republican former president, according to public and internal campaign polls cited by Democratic sources, sparking a round of finger-pointing and second-guessing from some corners.

It is a frustrating moment for a whirlwind campaign that opened with a huge jump in enthusiasm and cash when she replaced President Joe Biden in July, put on a robust Democratic convention and was widely hailed as the winner of her only debate with Trump.

Pieces like this still bravely maintain the "statistical dead heat" fiction, but Kamala's standing in the Real Clear Politics averages has been declining all week; as of this morning, her lead in the national popular vote is down to 1.3%.

An oddly prescient conclusion in the 2019 Politico post mortem discussed her political future:

[B]ehind the scenes, advisers were talking about ways to protect her long-term reputation and extricating her from the mess. Harris is 55 years old.

. . . Now, Harris has become among the most coveted endorsements in the race.

Sen. Doug Jones of Alabama, a Biden supporter, said he wasn’t surprised by Harris’ decision to pull the plug. “I think she’s got an incredible future, but this was just not going to be the year and I think doing something now rather than continuing was smart,” Jones said.

Perhaps more importantly, Harris is still very much in the veep stakes, Jones said. (Biden was asked about this Tuesday, but declined to answer.)

So we're looking at the seeds of 2024, which were planted in 2019. Biden, a bad choice for nominee, made an even worse choice for his running mate.

Her disadvantages were well known at the time: there was no there there, and she was open to charges of hypocrisy. The problems, though, could have been avoided if the powers behind the scenes, like then-Speaker Pelosi, had prevailed on Biden to withdraw as a 2024 candidate much earlier. At that point, there would have been a much better opportunity to see that Kamala would never be a viable candidate.