The Democratic Party has received a much-needed shot-in-the-arm with Kamala Harris’ presidential bid, sidelining the Republican Party to the precipice of oblivion in the liberal state.
Since Harris became the presumptive candidate after President Joe Biden announced he would not seek re-election, pundits have taken it upon themselves to explain just how Harris reinvigorated her support base. In the process, numerous anecdotes have emerged, highlighting Harris as a superlative communicator of the party’s ethos, potentially moreso than her 2020 bid for the presidential nomination, which she eventually withdrew in favor of Biden.
Harris’ supporters today are asking Americans to admire her record as a career prosecutor, pitting her qualifications and integrity against a presidential-hopeful mired in 34 felony convictions. The Democratic Party is also quick to remind the public that Harris served at the vanguard of the Biden administration’s reproductive rights policies, inspiring Democrats to coalesce around their most potent electoral issue. Similarly, potential voters are being urged to note that Harris’ incisive and no-nonsense oratory has already unnerved Donald Trump, prompting him to retreat from a scheduled debate.
Yet, while these factors serve to justify Harris’ ascent, they are insufficient in highlighting the core of her campaign’s strength. Key to the vice-president’s success is her stronghold of California, from where she emerged on the political scene during the anti-immigration zeal of the 1990s and witnessed first-hand the Republican Party’s slide into irrelevance. Today, she is using her experience as a prosecutor and eyewitness through press releases that catalogue the lies and fringe fixations of the Trump-Vance ticket, branding the GOP’s policies as simply “weird,” reflecting the zeitgeist.
To properly understand Harris, however, one must turn the clock back to 1994 when California’s Republican Governor Pete Wilson was seeking re-election. He seized upon the ethno-nationalist tensions fanned by the early ’90s recession, fully cognizant of the macro-political landscape he operated in, and the GOP’s tilt to the far-right under then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Wilson’s campaign glorified and glamorized Proposition 187, a state ballot initiative that sought to deny basic services to undocumented immigrants in a significant overstep of federal border enforcement. “They keep coming,” a narrator spoke in grim tones in one of Wilson’s notorious anti-immigration ads, before Wilson himself appeared to declare, “enough is enough.” Prop. 187 passed overwhelmingly, and Wilson rode its wave to re-election.
This moment marked the zenith of Republican sway in California, with subsequent years seeing various provisions of Prop. 187 struck down in court for militating against the constitution, and bringing to an end Wilson’s political career. Since then, the Republicans have struggled to surpass the Democrats in securing major political office in California—barring the governorship of Arnold Schwarzenegger.
To be clear, the GOP’s declining fortunes in California are not solely reliant on the failure of Prop. 187. While the rapidly growing demographic of Latino voters pushed back against their marginalization under Prop. 187 by voting Blue, the GOP also lagged in adapting to the state’s evolving post-industrial economy. It similarly struggled to secure the support of suburban voters who had traditionally skewed conservative but were increasingly more accepting on issues like gay rights, climate change, and reproductive rights.
Unsurprisingly, this led to a fundamental shift in the state’s political scene, with Kamala Harris’ candidacy for the district attorney of San Francisco in 2003 coming at a time the city was predominantly Democratic in a firmly Democratic state. At the time, she positioned herself to the right of her primary opponent, incumbent Terence Hallinan, though both supported San Francisco’s sanctuary city policy of not prosecuting various immigration offenses.
Following her victory, and the growing dominance of the Democratic Party in California, Harris projected herself as a pragmatic law-enforcement official during her 2010 run for state attorney general. Wisely, she remained neutral on controversial issues such as Prop. 47, seeking to downgrade some specific felonies to misdemeanors, and a 2016 referendum for early prison releases. This cautious approach, naturally, alienated the leftmost anti-establishment fringes of the Democratic Party, as well as some criminal justice reform advocates. It also foreshadowed a similar strategy in Harris’ 2016 Senate race against former Democratic representative Loretta Sanchez. Harris emerged victorious by securing the support of establishment Democrats, including an endorsement from the retiring Barbara Boxer, while Sanchez appealed to Republicans with tough-on-crime rhetoric.
To some, Harris’ political prowess in California’s largely Democrat-leaning environment is a cause for concern in her electoral match-up against Trump. They point to the path to the U.S. presidency traveling through the Rust Belt states, where her left-signaling messaging might face pushback. However, Harris is no Bernie Sanders, and her record thus far proves she can function as a political insider with pro-establishment credentials.
Yet, amidst prevailing partisanship, Harris’s ideological commitment to Democratic ideals and values and her discipline within the broader party machine is far better suited to countering the MAGA movement than Biden’s nostalgic and folksy attempts to bring together a fractured polity. It is almost politically axiomatic that Democrats from within California have long dismissed their Republican counterparts as inept and unserious. Having witnessed first-hand the GOP’s self-destructive habits in California, Harris needs no crash course in confronting Trump and Vance’s bizarre antics; in fact, there is no one better placed to do it now.
With the stage now set and all the players in place, Kamala Harris has made no secret of her desire to take Trump head-on—unlike President Biden’s approach, which was more cautious. Her campaign takes succor from its branding as a “crusade” to reclaim the nation’s soul from the clutches of chaos. It remains to be seen whether November marks her redemption or deflation, but one thing cannot be denied: Kamala is ready, and she is coming for the prize.