Kamala Harris is out

On Tuesday, Democratic Sen. Kamala Harris informed her staff that she would be suspending her presidential campaign. Harris, whose large number of Democratic Party endorsements had been second only to former Vice President Joe Biden, announced via tweet that while her campaign has officially ended, she “will keep fighting every day for what this campaign has been about. Justice for the People. All the people.”

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[W]hen diverse candidates such as Harris or New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand drop out of a presidential race even as white male billionaires such as Michael Bloomberg and Tom Steyer enter it, something is broken.

  NBC

Just now noticing that?

When candidates like Julián Castro, who represents one of the largest ethnic voting blocs in the country, cannot make it to a debate stage, but affluent men flushed with enough cash to continuously fund what can only be described as vanity projects can buy their way to the podium again and again, our country’s political process is crippled.

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In 2014, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, the top .01 percent of all income earners in the United States accounted for 29 percent of all political committee fundraising.

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Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who has vowed to forgo personal donations to his campaign and will refuse a presidential salary if elected, claims his personal fortune makes him independent. This is potentially a good thing, especially where special interest and lobbying groups are concerned. But it also makes him beholden to no one. Whereas Sen. Bernie Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren have worked hard to forge connections with grassroots donors. Bloomberg is saying he doesn't need to hear from Super PACs — or from individuals.

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With Harris out of the picture, the candidates who have so far qualified for the December presidential debate are all white.

What a surprise.

From abortion rights and reproductive justice to trans rights, maternal mortality, affordable child care, paid family leave, public education reform and systemic racial injustice, the issues that impact Americans on a daily basis — and which billionaires simply have not experienced — naturally fall to the back of the line. It’s “how do we reach the moderates?” and not “how do we protect the marginalized?” that becomes the prevailing political question.

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You don’t have to have supported Harris’ candidacy — or even liked her very much — to understand why her dropping out now is bad news for the Democratic Party. Our political system is massively imperfect; that’s a given. But current party leadership has designed the primary in such a way that the most diverse candidates don’t seem to have a fair fighting chance. This is bad for the party, and of course, it’s bad for voters. When it is money, and not experience, innovative thinking or eloquence that determines who gets to stay in the presidential race, our democracy suffers. And it’s suffering still.

Welcome to two-party capitalism.