When Kamala Harris was formally put in because the Democratic presidential nominee, her home-state delegation had the most effective seats in the home, proper up entrance.
Visions of the Golden State and a parade of its personalities crammed 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 — have been among the many hottest tickets in Chicago.
Immediately, California is on the heart of politics, in a approach the nation’s most necessary 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 second,” mentioned Don Sipple, a political strategist who helped elect a number of of the state’s governors, due to “the girl who opened the door and the girl who walked by means of it.”
(Although, it ought to be famous, the door-opening girl, Nancy Pelosi, and Harris have by no means been shut. The previous Home speaker publicly spoke of an “open course of” to switch President Biden earlier than endorsing his vice chairman as the most effective different after Biden gave up his reelection bid.)
With heightened consideration comes better scrutiny, and with that added scrutiny comes a combat to outline California — and, by extension, Harris — for the remainder of America.
The result may 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 present even the fundamentals — security, clear shelter, sustaining livelihoods — for a shamefully giant portion of its inhabitants?
Sure and sure.
“There may be loads of proof” to help each views, mentioned Jack Pitney, a former Republican operative and professor of presidency at Claremont McKenna School. He paraphrased Walt Whitman.
“California is giant. It accommodates multitudes,” Pitney mentioned. “It’s doable for 2 issues to be true directly.”
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’ house state will dangle like a millstone across the vice chairman’s neck.
“In the end, a presidential marketing campaign is about selecting somebody who you suppose will make your life higher,” mentioned Carrick, who has labored extensively in nationwide politics. It’s not, he mentioned, a few candidate’s return handle.
Certain, Carrick went on, “there are some ideological Republicans who’re dedicated to Trump” and who eagerly lap up the California-as-hellhole narrative — however “we’re not going to get them anyway.”
Most voters, or least those that are open to supporting Harris, know little or no in regards to the vice chairman. That, Carrick mentioned, provides her a possibility to introduce herself — and her house state — on her personal phrases, “versus 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 research in what goes unsuitable 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 legal professional common after which for a comparatively transient stint as certainly 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 house state in a single vital approach.
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 principally white and reliably Republican, with a broad and deep conservative streak. By the point Harris arrived in Sacramento after being elected legal professional common 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 lady in politics.
In that approach, Harris and Reagan function excellent bookends to the state they represented.
Given the adjustments of the final 30-plus years, it’s stunning California Democrats haven’t managed to place certainly one of their very own within the White Home, mentioned Jim Newton, a biographer and state historian.
“We consider it as such an exceptionally blue place,” he mentioned, “and it’s produced so many nationwide 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 novel 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 may 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 every part.
