On Friday, the personal Twitter account for Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) released a video from election night 2016 in which the senator gives a speech to her team about President Trump’s victory.
During the speech, Harris tells a story about her nephew allegedly running up to her and crying about the president’s electoral win:
So, we just had a small family dinner, and many of you have met my nephew, my godson, Alexander. So, Alexander came up to me about 20 minutes ago and he was teary, and I didn’t know if one of the other kids had kind of done something, I didn’t know what was going on. I said, “Come here, little man. What’s going on?” And he looked up at me, I swear to God, he looked up at me and said, “I don’t want Trump to win. Did he win?” And he’s crying. So, the tears of joy we shed when we elected Barack Obama and then my little godson’s tears tonight ‘cause we might have elected Donald Trump. This is some s***.
And so, once again, our team, I think, will have to do what we always do, which is be prepared to fight, and to roll up our sleeves and fight.
Harris then spoke about how the “campaign” to “fight” would continue:
…the biggest state, the first open Senate seat a long time on this hemisphere, and the fifth largest economy in the world. I need you guys for what we’re gonna need to do now going forward because I think our campaign is actually not over – but it’s a different kind of campaign. It’s not to win an office, but it’s gonna be a campaign to fight for everything that motivated us to run for this office in the first place because I think there is no question that everything that we have been talking about in terms of everything from criminal justice reform to climate change to immigration, this s*** is now really on the line. There is no guarantee that we are any closer than ever before, and we may actually be further behind.
The senator went back briefly to continue the story about her nephew:
And when I look at my little nephew, and he looks up at me, he’s looking at me for inspiration, and I’m trying to find the words to tell him something that makes him feel better, and so I actually, because he loves superheroes, I start to say, “Well, you know how your superheroes, when they’re facing a challenge and the mean guys are coming at ‘em, what do they do?” And he said, “They fight back,” and I said, “Yeah, so we have to be like superheroes, and it’s okay to have emotion. Superheroes, all good ones, have emotion, but we’re gonna have to fight.”
So, I think we’re gonna have to figure this stuff out kind of quickly, but we’ve gotta figure out how to go out there and give people a sense of hope…
It’s interesting how when people are under attack, the people who are being attacked usually do one of two things – they either fight back or they retreat. I’m so afraid that if this guy actually won, we’re gonna have whole communities of folks who are just gonna retreat. They’re gonna be so damn scared about what this all means for them.
After we found out Trump was going to win, there was no question that justice was on the line. I told my team we had to fight. And that’s what I’ve done. pic.twitter.com/d0gmtdWYtL
— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) November 9, 2019
Sen. Harris was briefly considered a top-tier candidate. Following the first Democratic primary debate in late-June when Harris sparred with former Vice President Joe Biden, she saw a surge in the polls.
After reaching highs of 14% and 15% in early-July, Harris’ numbers slowly but surely fell to single digits. Harris hasn’t risen above 7% in any national poll since mid-October, and as of publication, sits in fifth place nationally with 4.5%, according to the RealClearPolitics (RCP) average.
Harris’ prospects in early voting states are no better.
In Iowa, the RCP average has Harris in sixth place with 3.3% of the vote. In South Carolina, she’s in fourth with 7% of the vote. In New Hampshire, she’s in fifth with 4% of the vote. In Nevada, she’s also in fifth with 4.3% of the vote. Even in her home state of California, Harris sits in fourth place with just 8% of the vote.