Kamala Harris’s Campaign Ends in a Fizzle

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Arts, News, Wnyc, Books, David, Storytelling, Society & Culture, Yorker, New, Remnick

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 4 December 2019

⏱️ 23 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Senator Kamala Harris had a lot going for her campaign for the Democratic Presidential nomination: national name recognition, strong fund-raising, an association with Barack Obama, and a way of commanding the spotlight both on television and on Twitter. She promised to be the prosecutor who would bring Donald Trump to justice and a candidate who could take him on in the race, a combination that thrilled her supporters. But, on Tuesday, two months before voting begins in Iowa, she ended her campaign. What happened, and what does it reveal about the Presidential race? Eric Lach calls three New Yorker colleagues to debrief: Dana Goodyear, who reflects on her Profile of Harris from the promising early days of her campaign; Jelani Cobb, who talks about Harris’s standing with black voters; and Ben Wallace-Wells, who notes that the gap between the progressive and centrist wings of the Democratic Party may have grown too large for any candidate to straddle. Finally, Lach calls a heartbroken campaign volunteer, who estimates that she made thirteen thousand calls on Harris’s behalf.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is a bonus episode of The New Yorker Radio Hour.
0:12.0	Eric Latch writes and edits our news blog that's called The Current at New Yorker.com.
0:17.3	Here's Eric.
0:19.0	This is my question.
0:21.1	How can a candidate an up-and-coming Democratic star, a person capable of creating viral moments in a congressional hearing room and on Twitter, from a big-time state, a big-time fundraiser, capable of getting 20,000 people out to a rally and attracting establishment party
0:39.8	endorsements.
0:41.8	How can that person walk away from the Democratic race for the presidency before the voting even
0:46.9	begins?
0:48.3	What does that say about the race happening now and what are voters supposed to make of the choices
0:53.6	left in front of them?
0:58.0	Hello?
0:59.3	Dana, hey, it's Eric Latch.
1:01.3	Hi, how are you?
1:02.3	I'm doing fine.
1:04.0	Dana Goodyear is a staff writer who profiled Kamala Harris earlier this year.
1:08.5	You spent time with Harris just as her campaign was in its sort of
1:13.3	meteoric launch phase. Yeah. You know, were you surprised to see it end the way it did?
1:20.8	I was surprised because she has mounted comebacks before in her political career, or she's come from very little and made
1:29.9	a lot out of it. And she does have a reputation as a very smart street fighter in politics, which,
1:37.9	you know, that's very much what San Francisco politicians are known for. And I know she has,
1:43.7	as Gavin Newsom said, a lot of grit.
1:46.3	And I thought she would stay in and maybe surprise people by some kind of miraculous comeback. I mean,
	...

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