It could be quite a tense scene if Kamala Harris and CNN's Chief Political Analyst Gloria Borger ever cross paths on the campaign trail...or at least if they ever met in a kitchen making soufflés.
During CNN Newsroom on Tuesday Borger told host Brooke Baldwin that the reason why Kamala Harris' rising soufflé suddenly deflated following the second Democrat presidential candidate debate in July was due to hypocrisy. What inspired this observation was a CNN poll published on Tuesday that revealed a startling plunge for Harris:
Aside from Biden's increase, the only statistically meaningful change in the candidate standings is a 12-point decline in support for California Sen. Kamala Harris, who stood at 17% support in the June poll but now has the backing of 5% of potential Democratic voters. That's similar to the level of support she had in the spring before a surge following her initial debate performance.
Yikes! And here is Borger applying the metaphor of the rising and falling Kamala Harris soufflé.
GLORIA BORGER: She was kind of like this souffle that rose after she took on Joe Biden during that first debate. She did really well, and people said, "Wait a minute, I'm going to give her another look." And what happens when you get a second look is, you go under a magnifying glass and you either continue to rise, or you plateau or deflate, not to carry the souffle metaphor too far.
And I think what's happening with her is effectively, people are saying "Wait a minute, how about describing your record on crime when you were a prosecutor in California? You were tough on crime, not a bad thing. But um, now you're saying that, well, Joe Biden was too tough on crime, so are you a bit of a hypocrite there?"
So I think that she really has not been able to take advantage of that initial gain that she made, it's early as you point out. So we'll see what happens in the next debate.
And how did people find out about Harris' record on crime in California? Borger somehow leaves out this critical as well as dramatic point. For that we need to leave behind the political analyst and her deflated soufflé and go to the Tuesday Washington Examiner, where Becket Adams answers the question in "Can you hear Tulsi Gabbard now, Kamala Harris?"
How the mighty have fallen.
Sen. Kamala Harris last month dismissed Rep. Tulsi Gabbard’s criticisms of her record as a corrupt law enforcement official, pointing smugly to the disparity between her and the Hawaiian congresswoman’s 2020 Democratic primary polling numbers.
However, a survey released this week by CNN shows Harris’ support among potential Democratic voters has plummeted from 17% in June to a measly 5%. In contrast, Gabbard has seen her admittedly poor numbers improve slightly, clocking in at 2% in August, up from 1% in June.
...As of this writing, Harris, who was a pitiless, overzealous law enforcement official when she served as district attorney of San Francisco and later as California’s attorney general, has yet to respond to Gabbard’s broadside on her record, which came during the second night of the second round of Democratic primary debates.
And now we know how the public found out why the mighty have fallen or, as Borger put it without giving us much detail on the reasons why, the soufflé has deflated.
