WASHINGTON _ Not long ago, California Sen. Kamala Harris was one of the few Democratic candidates for president who earned praise from Donald Trump.
"I would say the best opening so far would be Kamala Harris," Trump said in an interview last January, shortly after she rallied 20,000 people in her hometown of Oakland. "I would say in terms of the opening act, I would say, would be her."
But Harris' decision to withdraw from the race on Tuesday, after months of sliding poll numbers and depleting funds, offered Trump and his campaign a rare lesson: crowd size isn't everything.
Trump sent a farewell message in a tweet Tuesday evening: "Too bad. We will miss you Kamala!"
The Democratic field now has 15 candidates in the race for the nomination, after over a dozen candidates _ including House members, senators and governors _ dropped out in recent months. The Democratic nominee will face Trump, a Republican, in the general election later next year.
White House aides and Trump campaign officials mocked Harris on her way out the door, trolling her on Twitter with videos that had, in her stymied bid for the Democratic nomination, been used by her campaign to show off her jovial side.
The Trump campaign brushed off her exit from the race as irrelevant in a statement to McClatchy that cast remaining contenders in the Democratic field as further to the left than in past election cycles.
"Kamala Harris's departure doesn't change anything," said Tim Murtaugh, a Trump campaign spokesman. "It has never mattered to us who emerges from the Democrat primaries. Whoever it is will be running on a big government socialist platform and will be overmatched against President Trump and his record of accomplishment."
Rather than being a product of the far-left, Harris' campaign troubles stemmed in part from her inability to choose sides on major debates dividing the Democratic Party between progressives and moderates. She made pronouncements on health care, guns and criminal justice that she later backtracked on.
Harris soared to the top of the Democratic field after she landed an attack on former Vice President Joe Biden at the first primary debate only to be dragged down a month later by Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii in a similar format.
Harris' support � polling nationally at an average of 3.4% among possible Democratic voters, according to the latest aggregation of national surveys by RealClearPolitics � could turn to a candidate who is seen as a threat to Trump.
A Morning Consult survey released this week found Harris had 5% support among potential Democratic voters. In that poll, Harris' supporters said they were most likely to pick either Biden and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren as their second choice, followed by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
But Trump campaign officials are not publicly speculating on the potential impact her exit will have on the primary battle.
In London on Tuesday for a meeting of NATO leaders, Trump said his campaign is "winning so big" roughly six months out from the start of the general race.
"We had our biggest fundraising month ever," he said. "The impeachment hoax is going nowhere. The Republican Party has never been as unified as it is right now. I've never seen anything like it."
