Sen. Kamala Harris announced on Tuesday that she is suspending her campaign for president.
“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,” Harris wrote in a letter to supporters. “My campaign for president simply doesn’t have the financial resources we need to continue.”
Harris’ campaign started strong, launching with a huge rally in her hometown of Oakland, CA, that drew an estimated 20,000 people, which remains one of the biggest crowds of the 2020 campaign season. The former California attorney general distinguished herself with specific plans to help working people, including raising teacher salaries, and vowed to take executive action on gun reform. If she had advanced, she would have been the first Black woman and the first South Asian woman to win a presidential nomination.
After the first presidential debate in June, Harris enjoyed a peak in her polling numbers, likely due to her viral takedown of Joe Biden’s opposition to federally mandated busing to desegregate schools. While her personal story resonated with many, her status as one of the frontrunners didn’t last long and in the fall, her polling numbers dipped to single digits. A few days ago, The New York Times published an in-depth look at the “unraveling” of her campaign — a piece that will likely be called the nail in its coffin — which claimed there had been infighting between staff, mismanagement, and an uneven message.
To Harris and her supporters, however, her message was always and remains clear. “I will keep fighting every day for what this campaign has been about. Justice for the People. All the people,” Harris wrote in her statement. “We will keep up that fight.”
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