When President Donald Trump was elected in 2016, Kamala Harris appeared to hold the pole position to challenge him in 2020.

And yet, three short years later, she has already conceded New Hampshire, is polling even worse in Iowa, and is at 4.5% nationally. Even in her home state of California, she is back from the front pack.

This has been the biggest surprise of the Democrat primary, since she started from such an apparent position of strength. On paper, she is an intersectional Democrat dream candidate with her mixed Indian and black heritage. She is also brutally liberal at a time when the Democrat base is pining for liberal purity. While she may not identify as a pure socialist in the way Bernie Sanders does, she is cut from similar cloth. That's why the leftist media loved her. They recognized one of their own.

She is from the nation's most populous state of California and appeared positioned to grab many of its delegates. She had, at least on paper, what looked like a good presidential résumé, as opposed to what Pete Buttigieg brings to the table. Yet Buttigieg is the rising candidate, while Harris is finished.

The collapse of Harris's candidacy offers a key insight into the Democratic Party.

Her biggest problem was supposed to be her strength. Her years as prosecutor and California attorney that were supposed to make her palatable to the broader electorate became a massive dumbbell hung around the neck of her candidacy. She spent years building what she thought was an unassailable résumé for president only to discover that she had completely misread where the Democrat electorate was headed. Elizabeth Warren, as a former college professor with a front-row seat on the Marxification of America's youth, did a far better job of reading her voters.

The Black Lives Matter movement that burst on to the scene in 2013 and 2014 poisoned the Democratic Party. Harris is a delayed casualty. Any hint of belief in law and order is now the kiss of death in the party. The Left relentlessly attacks all law enforcers, from policemen to Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. These brave guardians are viewed with suspicion at best and hatred and revulsion at worst. In a party where up is down, the criminals are celebrated as heroes while courageous defenders are cast as villains.

It is the same trend that has led Democrats to decriminalize many drug and theft crimes in their jurisdictions down to misdemeanors. The result, to no surprise, is that these types of acts are becoming as common as jaywalking. Lawlessness is now viewed as a civic virtue. In some areas of California, you can walk into a Target and help yourself to your favorite DVD or a pair of designer jeans with no threat of being apprehended.

In the Democrat hive mind, the ultimate crime is being a Republican. But that memo arrived too late for Harris, whose prosecutorial past hurt her the most with the voters she really needed: black Americans and Millennials.

A more skillful politician may have been able to navigate the changing political waters, but that is not Harris. One way she tried to overcome this legacy was by joining Elizabeth Warren in pushing an evil smear against policeman Darren Wilson by calling him a murderer. This was the worst lie of the entire primary season, but Democrats are so far down this rabidly anti-American hole that fact-checkers refused to even call it a lie. Still, it was too little, too late for Harris.

For the record, Harris is no law-and-order Democrat. She has recalibrated to the sick new reality, just like every other Democrat candidate. But she had positioned herself to be understood that way, thinking it would be to her political advantage. It killed her campaign, leading to a healthy dose of Schadenfreude.

This is why Tulsi Gabbard's flying elbow off the top rope at the second debate did so much damage to Harris. In a party that hates cops and coddles criminals, the worst possible accusation is to be maligned as a cop or a cop sympathizer. Gabbard managed to tar Harris as a secret "cop-lover" while also pointing to her hypocrisy.

The collapse of Harris's wretched candidacy also shows that there are limits to identity politics. Harris's protestation that the country is not yet ready for a black female president is laughable. She is in the Democrat primary, where those are viewed as supreme job qualifications. She is losing in spite of her race and sex, not because of them.

Even her biggest media win, her attack on Joe Biden at the first debate, was a strategic disaster. Sure, she made a mentally sluggish Biden look as foolish as a transgender power-lifter. But she did it by attacking him on his opposition to busing, an issue that almost no American supports. Not smart. The attack on Biden also separated her further from Barack Obama, who is still very popular with the very Democrat voters she desperately needed.

She has been flopping around, trying to find some persona or issue to gain traction. She first opted for a personality transplant, becoming crazy Aunt K for the third debate, where she made odd jokes and looked as if she was hiding an empty flask in her podium. But this attempt to create the likable Kamala bombed.

She then tried to become the biggest abortion cheerleader. But this strategy was destined to go nowhere. There is no separation among the leading Democrat candidates on this issue. Every single one of them is all in on the evil sacrament of killing babies up to and perhaps beyond the moment of birth. There would be no discernible difference in the type of judges all would appoint, which would be younger versions of Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

At this point, Harris is hanging around, hoping for a miracle while attempting to land a Hail Mary pass, or for the appearance of that comet. She was last seen releasing a weird reaction video from after the 2016 election. She will dance around a little bit longer, trying to position herself as a top choice for the vice presidential nod.

One thing is clear. At least for the foreseeable future, no Democrat candidate will benefit from any connection to promoting law and order or providing safety and security for Americans. The Democrats are all in on lawlessness. Harris is collateral damage pointing to this broader Democrat pathology. This is one of many reasons none of them should be trusted with leadership of America.

Fletch Daniels can be found on Twitter at @fletchdaniels.