Kamala Harris strikes back
Joe Biden is getting a whole lot of attention in the 2020 presidential race because the polls are favoring him by a roughly two to one margin over any other Democratic candidate. Pete Buttigieg is getting a lot of attention because no one expected the mayor of a small town to enter the race for president and be this impressive on the national stage. But Kamala Harris just reminded us that we should be talking about her candidacy a whole lot more.
Last night Kamala Harris hosted a town hall on MSNBC and came across as – there’s no less direct way to say this – presidential. Her combination of intelligence, empathy and passion is generally what people look for in a Democratic candidate. There are so many people running this time around, a whole lot of good candidates are getting very little media attention. Considering how poorly some of them are polling, that’s unlikely to change. But there’s a mathematical reason why Harris should, and probably soon will, get a whole lot more attention than she’s getting right now.
Joe Biden is polling at about 35% in an average of polls. That’s a dominant number, but he’s also the most firmly established candidate on the national stage, so you’d expect him to be dominating right now. Bernie Sanders is in second place with about 18% – but he’s also very firmly established on the national stage, and his numbers have been steadily dropping over the past month. Pete Buttigieg has gotten a huge amount of free promotion from the media over the past month and a half, but his current 6% poll number isn’t any higher than it was a month and a half ago.
This suggests that the sleeper candidates are Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris. They’re polling at 10% and 8% respectively. These are not impressive numbers on their face. But neither of them entered this race with the national stage presence that Biden and Sanders had, and yet they’re polling decently despite having received relatively little media attention in recent weeks.
Of course this is all subject to change when the first Democratic debate takes place four weeks from now; all of the above poll numbers could shift dramatically based on how everyone performs on stage. But last night’s town hall was a reminder that Harris is definitely a contender in this race – and so is Warren. Just don’t tell that to most of the media right now.
