When Kamala Harris was formally put in because the Democratic presidential nominee, her home-state delegation had one of the best seats in the home, proper up entrance.
Visions of the Golden State and a parade of its personalities stuffed the conference’s four-day program, and passes to California’s after-parties — that includes appearances by John Legend, the Killers and Oakland’s Tony! Toni! Toné — had been among the many hottest tickets in Chicago.
Instantly, California is on the heart of politics, in a means the nation’s most essential and populous state hasn’t been since former Gov. Ronald Reagan was within the White Home.
A California Democrat sits atop the occasion’s presidential ticket for the primary time in historical past, thanks in good half to the machinations of one other California Democrat who helped elbow the incumbent — and nominee-in-waiting — apart.
“California is having a moment,” mentioned Don Sipple, a political strategist who helped elect a number of of the state’s governors, due to “the woman who opened the door and the woman who walked through it.”
(Although, it ought to be famous, the door-opening lady, Nancy Pelosi, and Harris have by no means been shut. The previous Home speaker publicly spoke of an “open process” to interchange President Biden earlier than endorsing his vice chairman as one of the best various after Biden gave up his reelection bid.)
With heightened consideration comes higher scrutiny, and with that added scrutiny comes a combat to outline California — and, by extension, Harris — for the remainder of America.
The end result might very properly decide who wins in November.
Is California a sun-kissed incubator of innovation and alternative that continues to beckon doers and dreamers from the world over, because it has for properly over 150 years?
Or is it an overburdened and overstretched assortment of struggling communities that fail to offer even the fundamentals — security, clear shelter, sustaining livelihoods — for a shamefully massive portion of its inhabitants?
Sure and sure.
“There is plenty of evidence” to assist each views, mentioned Jack Pitney, a former Republican operative and professor of presidency at Claremont McKenna School. He paraphrased Walt Whitman.
“California is large. It contains multitudes,” Pitney mentioned. “It is possible for two things to be true at once.”
Purple and blue America. Affluent and failing California. Two methods of seeing the identical factor.
Invoice Carrick, longtime political advisor to the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein, scoffed on the notion that Harris’ dwelling state will hold like a millstone across the vice chairman’s neck.
“Ultimately, a presidential campaign is about picking someone who you think will make your life better,” mentioned Carrick, who has labored extensively in nationwide politics. It’s not, he mentioned, a couple of candidate’s return handle.
Positive, Carrick went on, “there are some ideological Republicans who are devoted to Trump” and who eagerly lap up the California-as-hellhole narrative — however “we’re not going to get them anyway.”
Most voters, or a minimum of those that are open to supporting Harris, know little or no concerning the vice chairman. That, Carrick mentioned, offers her a possibility to introduce herself — and her dwelling state — on her personal phrases, “as opposed to the Republican cartoon characterization.”
Possibly so.
However Trump and his fellow Republicans, abetted by Fox Information and different sympathetic media, will make a case that California is a case examine in what goes incorrect when Democrats are put in cost. They’ll maintain up Harris, a statewide officeholder for greater than a dozen years, because the prime instance of its damaging ruling class.
That vastly overstates her energy and affect, first as lawyer basic after which for a comparatively transient stint as considered one of California’s two U.S. senators. However that element will certainly be misplaced within the fog of marketing campaign warfare.
Harris is, nonetheless, an exemplar of her dwelling state in a single important means.
There’s no doubting she displays the politics and make-up of recent California, simply as the 2 presidents the state yielded, Reagan and Richard M. Nixon, embodied the California of their day and age.
The 2 males rose to energy at a time when California was largely white and reliably Republican, with a broad and deep conservative streak. By the point Harris arrived in Sacramento after being elected lawyer basic in 2010, the state was solidly Democratic, more and more liberal and had extra Black and brown than white residents. Not least, there have been additionally considerably extra alternatives for a girl in politics.
In that means, Harris and Reagan function excellent bookends to the state they represented.
Given the modifications of the final 30-plus years, it’s stunning California Democrats haven’t managed to place considered one of their very own within the White Home, mentioned Jim Newton, a biographer and state historian.
“We think of it as such an exceptionally blue place,” he mentioned, “and it’s produced so many national Democratic leaders.”
Amongst them, the legendarily highly effective Rep. Phillip Burton, Pelosi (who succeeded Burton’s widow in representing San Francisco in Congress), and Feinstein. However till Biden selected Harris as his operating mate, no California Democrat had come remotely close to the White Home, although a number of tried.
In fact, Harris wouldn’t have this shot on the presidency however for a singular set of circumstances. If Biden hadn’t carried out so terribly in that June debate, if Democrats hadn’t panicked afterward, if Pelosi and different occasion leaders hadn’t maneuvered to shove the president apart, the vice chairman might very properly have been out of a job come January.
That also may occur. However give Harris her due for getting the place she is. After 20 years in politics, she stands inside hailing distance of the White Home and making additional historical past from a geographic standpoint.
In politics, as so typically in life, timing is all the things.
