Kamala Harris drops out of the Presidential race; tells Trump, 'I'll se you at your trial'

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Senator Kamala Harris' popularity began dropping after the July debate.

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Sen. Kamala Harris today became the first major contender to drop out of the 2020 Presidential race.

Harris who launched her campaign with 20,000 supporters in Oakland and followed with a  a strong performance in a debate in June. After a so-so performance in a July debate, her poll numbers have steadily fallen.

She struggled to find a niche in the campaign. She’s right of progressives Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, but left of moderate Joe Biden. With so many candidates, many of her would-be supporters were siphoned off by other candidates.

In an email to her supporters obtained by The Guardian, Harris wrote:

Eleven months ago at the launch of our campaign in Oakland I told you all: ‘I am not perfect. But I will always speak with decency and moral clarity and treat all people with dignity and respect. I will lead with integrity. I will speak the truth.’

And that’s what I have tried to do every day of this campaign. So here’s the truth today.

I’ve taken stock and looked at this from every angle, and over the last few days have come to one of the hardest decisions of my life.

My campaign for president simply doesn’t have the financial resources we need to continue.

I’m not a billionaire. I can’t fund my own campaign. And as the campaign has gone on, it’s become harder and harder to raise the money we need to compete.

In good faith, I can’t tell you, my supporters and volunteers, that I have a path forward if I don’t believe I do.

So, to you my supporters, it is with deep regret — but also with deep gratitude — that I am suspending my campaign today.

Harris’s campaign also struggled to gain traction in both the Black and Asian American communities despite her Jamaican and Indian American heritage. Blacks overwhelmingly support Joe Biden and Asian Americans have failed to gain enthusiasm for her in part because of the perception she has not embraced that side of her background. 

The senator was the first candidate to release a platform aimed directly at the AAPI communities laying out her goals and how she plans to accomplish them, from immigration reform benefitting family reunification to a promise to require federal agencies to disaggregate their data collection to benefit the subgroups within the broad umbrella of "Asian American & Pacific Islanders."

Recently she released a video with Mindy Kaling showing the two of them cooking up some masala dosas. The video went viral, especially among Asian Americans, but may have come too late in her campaign.

The announcement came a day after ia super PAC, People Standing Strong, was set to go on the air in Iowa starting Wednesday (Dec. 4). The $1 million ad campaign was cancelled.

Additionally, Harris' financially-strapped campaign hasn’t had any TV ads since September, and it stopped buying Facebook ads in the past two months.

By Tuesday afternoon, Harris released this video:

Donald Trump, who was impressed with the Oakland launch and had not come up with a derisive nickname for Harris as he has for Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, was quick to respond to Harris' announcement.

The high point in her campaign came right after the June debate when she attacked Biden's past support of segregationist senators against the bussing of school children to combat the racial segregation of schools. 

After the debate, she was polling nationally second to Biden and money was pouring in. 

In the July debate, she stumbled after being attacked by rival Rep. Tulsi Gabbard on Harris' record as a San Francisco DA and as California's Attorney General. She also failed to come up with a clear message on her healthcare plan, a complicated issue national media seems to return to again and again.

She never recovered from that poor performance. Harris numbers kept falling until she dropped into the single digits. As other candidates became known to the voters, Harris' early backers seemed to drift over to Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigeig.

The coup de gras may have come over the weekend when a key senior campaign aide resigned to join the campaign of billionaire Michael Bloomberg. Recent polls released this week showed the New York mayor, who had entered the race only two weeks ago, had jumped ahead of Harris.

A series of articles began appearing  in mainsream media saying that her campaign was in trouble. The articles pointed out the release of most of her campaign staff, dropping out of the New Hampshire primary and placing all her cards on the Iowa Caucuses.

In the first week of Bloomberg's campaign the New York mayor spent over $30 billion in, most of it in TV ads, more than all the money raised by the Harris campaign since she announced her candidacy last January.

Surprising most political pundits, Harris dropped out before her lesser known AAPI rivals Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii and business entrepreneur Andrew Yang, both who have not yet qualified for the next debate on Dec. 19 at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.

Yang and Gabbard tweeted their reactions:

If Gabbard and Yang, as well as Julian Castor and Cory Booker do not meet the qualifications set by the DNC, it will be the first pre-primary debate without any candidates of color. 

As of this date, only six of the remaining 16 candidates have qualified including Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigeig, Tom Steyer and Elizabeth Klobuchar giving rise to the hashtag #PrimariesSoWhite.

CCORRECTION: Earlier versions of this erroneously reported that Tulsi Gabbard and Andrew Yang had qualified for the Dec. 19 debate.

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