Could This Be Why Kamala Harris Dropped Like A Rock In The Polls?

Matt Vespa | August 20, 2019 5:05 PM

Well, there’s a new CNN poll out. I know. It’s CNN—but Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) has dropped 12 points. She’s now very far from the top tier that now consists of former Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Bernie Sanders, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren. What happened? Wasn’t she going to be the true dark horse, the one who was going to knock Biden off his perch? (via Fox News):

According to a CNN survey conducted by SSRS, Harris stands at 5 percent support, down 12 percentage points from CNN’s last poll, which was released in June. Harris saw her poll numbers surge after what was regarded as a strong performance in the first round of Democratic presidential primary debates in late June, when she knocked Biden on his heels over his opposition to federally mandated school busing integration.
Biden saw his numbers take a dip after the first debate. But Biden now stands at 29 percent in the new survey, which was released Tuesday, up 7 points from CNN’s previous poll.
The former vice president enjoys a double-digit lead in the survey, with Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont at 15 percent and Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts at 14 percent. The support for the Democratic Party’s two progressive standard-bearers is largely unchanged from a month ago.
South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg is tied with Harris at 5 percent.
A Fox News poll released last Thursday indicated Biden at 31 percent, Warren at 20 percent, Sanders at 10 percent, Harris at 8 percent and Buttigieg at 3 percent, along with Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey and entrepreneur Andrew Yang.

The field is still huge. A lot can still happen and were still months away from Election Day 2020. Yet, a double-digit drop is quite jarring for someone who looked like a solid alternative to establishment Joe. One debate can ruin you. Michael Dukakis and Walter Mondale know that, as does George H.W. Bush and him looking at his watch.

CNN actually had some guests and contributors noting that Harris really hasn’t offered a clear vision for the country. As David Swerdlick of The Washington Post said, Biden has ‘Make America…America again’ and Warren is offering blueprints for her policy initiatives. He added that Harris is good for viral moments, but that’s it. Gloria Borger described her campaign as a souffle that rose in her first solid debate against Biden, where she blitzed him on busing. It went well enough for voters, as Borger put it, to give Harris a second look and they appear to not like what they found, saying hypocrisy abounds when she was placed under the microscope.

So, yeah—that could be it—or it could be after Tulsi Gabbard hit her on her records as a prosecutor, which got her flustered, Democratic voters maybe saw her as not the one who could beat Trump.