Early yesterday afternoon, word came that Senator Kamala Harris has suspended her campaign for president.

Given recent polling (she’d been stuck in the high single digits since around June, after her breakout “That Girl Was Me” moment) and the behind-the-scenes campaign turmoil, I’m not necessarily surprised, though I’m more than a little saddened; she’d been one of my favorites since the beginning.

The Senator really did (and likely continues to) have a lot going for her as a candidate: a successful prosecutor, district attorney in San Francisco, California Attorney General, and United States Senator. She’s got tremendous passion, knowledge, charisma, and tenacity (see her work on the Judiciary Committee during the Comey firing and during the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings), has been a significant voice supporting progressive immigration reform (and opposition to the current administration’s policies), and as a mixed-race (Jamaican/Indian) woman, she looks a hell of a lot more like the larger American population than the crop of mediocre rich white guys she’s continually surrounded by in government.

But despite that, she had trouble getting traction in the crowded field, and didn’t articulate her positions on issues as well as some of her primary opponents have, and, as that NYT piece linked above indicates, her campaign was not the most organized affair.

Those issues aside, I really admire her ability and presence, and I really hope we haven’t seen the last of her, and I don’t expect we have. I hope she remains a strong voice for the party; this just wasn’t her year.

We also lost two more largely anonymous white guys (Sestak and Bullock) that most people didn’t even notice were running, but that’s honestly not really much of a story.

Of those who remain, I like a few, though my heart currently belongs to Elizabeth “I have a plan for that” Warren. She’s smart, accomplished, has a great story, an ambitious progressive vision for the country that, as a teacher, she’s able to articulate effectively (if people would only listen), and has shown herself willing to take on the rich and powerful in order to make things better for all of us (she’s got the billionaire and establishment running scared, actually).

But what’s really sold me on her isn’t all that, it’s this, a simple exchange with an LGBTQ+ teen at a town hall in Iowa this weekend, where she was asked about a time when someone she looked up to didn’t accept her, and she tells a heartfelt story about not aligning with her mother’s expectations, and then proceeded to offer comfort and encouragement to the kid.

Yeah, I maybe teared up a bit (as did others who’ve seen it). While Senator Warren’s got a plan for everything, she’s also got something else a lot of other politicians (and people in general) lack: Genuine Empathy. I think that’s something we maybe need more of in our national discourse.