This is really misunderstanding how that works. The 2020 field at that point was wide open, no one candidate was looking dominant. She absolutely "could" have stayed in with a real shot at winning, which was true for basically all of them. She got out because (1) staying in costs money and fundraising in a wide-open primary is extremely hard and (2) she judged[1] that she'd have a better path to the presidency by positioning herself as an obvious VP candidate via playing kingmaker with her political capital and identity markers. Which is exactly how it played out.
"Sen. Kamala Harris drops out of 2020 presidential race": [0]
"Following that debate, her polling numbers dropped to the single digits — and never really recovered.
Amid those problems, Harris' campaign reorganized — laying off some staffers in early states to focus its resources and attention on Iowa.
The latest RealClearPolitics average of recent polling showed Harris with just 3.4 percent support nationally, and just 3.3 percent and 2.7 percent backing in the early-voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire, respectively."
With all their talk of campaign finance reform, it is not clear to me why the DNC does not finance their most valid primary candidates? Why make them jump through hoops and raise money to stay in the race between the primary elections?
No. I want the DNC to provide some basic money all valid candidates (say those who get above certain percent of votes) so that they can spend their time making their case to the primary voters, instead of trying to raise money.
In the end, it is the primary voters who will pick the candidate who will run for presidency.
> She absolutely "could" have stayed in with a real shot at winning, which was true for basically all of them.
This was true for three of them: Sanders, Biden and Buttigieg; but if Buttigieg stayed in, it was looking like at the time that he and Biden both would have lost to Sanders. I remember my last act as a registered member of the Democratic Party was going to be to vote for the candidate who had the best shot at beating Sanders in my State specifically thus denying him some delegates, and I was having a difficult time up until nearly the last minute figuring out who that was going to be up until Buttigieg made the decision extremely easy by removing himself from the race.
Harris didn’t even make it to the starting line. Her campaign simply ran out of money in December before the Iowa Caucus.
[1] Correctly, with near-prescient precision!