Kamala Harris burned at least $1 billion of Democrat money and lost every single swing state to Donald Trump in 2024.
Now the party sent her to Mississippi to rescue a long-shot Senate race in a deep-red state Trump won by a wide margin.
Then came the Columbus rally and Democrats got their answer.
Kamala Harris Mississippi Rally Draws a Half-Empty Room and a Word Salad
Democrat Scott Colom is running against Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith in Mississippi – a state that hasn't sent a Democrat to the U.S. Senate since 1982.
National Democrats flooded in anyway, desperate to manufacture midterm momentum.
Barack Obama cut an ad for Colom, Pete Buttigieg announced a Gulf Coast swing, and Raphael Warnock flew in from Georgia to headline a Jackson rally.
All of them came because the Colom campaign blasted out a press release headlined: "NEW INDEPENDENT POLL: Mississippi Senate Race Tied As Race Shifts In Scott Colom's Favor."
The poll was from a firm called Wedgewood Polls, and it was fake.
On October 20 – two days before Harris landed in Columbus, Mississippi – Wedgewood admitted its data was fabricated, calling the operation a "social experiment" to expose vulnerabilities in the polling industry.
The New York Times pulled 15 Wedgewood polls from its aggregate and Decision Desk HQ pulled 17.
They had mobilized their entire cavalry for a race that was never competitive, built on numbers a polling firm invented from scratch.
And then they sent Kamala Harris.
She headlined a rally and the gymnasium was barely filled.
Harris stepped up to deliver what her team clearly hoped would be a signature rallying cry – the kind of moment clips get made from.
"You know, I mentor a lot of young people, and I talk to them sometimes and part of the advice I give them is, you know, never let someone else with limited ability to see your capacity be a limitation on your ambition," she told the crowd.
Silence.
So Harris tried again.
"Let me repeat that: Never let anybody else's, somebody else's limited ability to see your capacity to be a limitation on your ambition," she said.
https://twitter.com/WesternLensman/status/2113580427445452960
The crowd cheered on the second try.
"That's their limitation. That's not our limitation. That's their limitation. We are not limited in our ambition and desire and ability to see what is possible and what can be," Harris continued.
She finished with a new accent.
Doug Emhoff Told People Privately He Does Not Want Her Running for President in 2028
Democrats still consider this woman a serious 2028 presidential contender.
Harris is polling at 18% in the Democratic primary – enough to lead a field that CNN's Harry Enten publicly called a "total clown car."
That 18% is a collapse from the 36% she was pulling in McLaughlin's February polling.
A Berkeley Institute poll found her at just 9% among California Democrats – the voters who have watched her longest.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Doug Emhoff – the man who spent three decades building a legal career before walking away to support her political ambitions – has privately told people he would prefer she not run for president again, a view Democrat donors share.
Harris is still flying to Mississippi anyway, performing word salads to rooms that can't figure out when to clap, still being treated as the best the Democrat Party has to offer.
Mississippi last elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate in 1982.
Cindy Hyde-Smith will win this seat comfortably in November.
Democrats watched Harris lose all seven swing states in 2024 and decided the right move was an encore.
Republicans should want her to run in 2028.
She already proved she cannot beat Donald Trump's coalition with a billion-dollar campaign, a unified party, and wall-to-wall media coverage.
A second run removes the one excuse she had – that she only had 107 days.
Four years of preparation, and she still cannot get a Columbus gymnasium to cheer without saying the same thing twice.
Emhoff sees it, California Democrats polling her at 9% see it, and every donor quietly writing smaller checks sees it.
Run her back out there.
Sources:
- Dmitri Bolt, "Kamala Harris Was Deployed to Rally Democrat Voters in Mississippi. It Didn't Go Very Well," Townhall, October 23, 2026.
- "Kamala Harris Fuels 2028 Speculation With Two-Word Tease," The Daily Wire, 2026.
- "Doug Emhoff Doesn't Want Kamala Harris to Run for President Again in 2028: Report," The Post Millennial, October 2026.
- Ward Clark, "California Democrats Say 'Thanks, Next' As Kamala Harris Bombs in New Berkeley Poll," RedState, March 20, 2026.
- "Kamala Harris Sinking Like a Rock in 2028 Race," Washington Examiner, 2026.
- Frank Corder, "Poll Pushed by Colom Claiming Senate Race With Hyde-Smith Is 'Tied' Was Fake, Fabricated," Magnolia Tribune, October 20, 2026.
- "Election Polling Rocked by a New Fake Data Scandal," Axios, October 21, 2026.