Vice President Kamala Harris is campaigning for California Gov. Gavin Newsom ahead of the recall election, and President Joe Biden will soon head out to the Golden State to do the same. California is crucial to them because they want to use it as a model for the rest of the country.
That was apparent going back to Biden’s pick of Harris as his running mate, but it was made clear in a Los Angeles Times report just before their inauguration. According to the Los Angeles Times’s Evan Halper, “California is emerging as the de facto policy think tank of the Biden-Harris administration and of a Congress soon to be under Democratic control.”
“There is no place the incoming administration is leaning on more heavily for inspiration in setting a progressive policy agenda,” the Los Angeles Times reported, listing multiple issues that Biden was looking to California for inspiration on, including climate change, college tuition, and criminal justice reform.
“You have to understand that this recall campaign is about California, and it’s about a whole lot more,” Harris said while campaigning for Newsom on Wednesday. “They’re thinking that if they can get this done in California, they can go around the country and do this.” She later added, “They think if they can win in California, they can do this anywhere.”
Harris is telling on herself here because this is a line of thinking more prominent among Democrats than many of the recall backers. Biden and Harris know that, if the most prominent Democratic governor in the country gets tossed out of office in a blue state such as California, their agenda collapses before it even gets going, as it has been bottled up by the fact that their majorities in the House and Senate are narrow.
California’s problems, ranging from poverty, homelessness, out-migration, high unemployment, and the runaway cost of living, aren’t enough to scare Biden and Harris away from using the state as a model. After all, California is a state governed by liberal elitists for liberal elitists, and Democratic leaders are increasingly catering to the highly educated social liberals in the party’s base. But an electoral disaster such as a successful recall would force them to call off the experiment. They need Newsom to win to preserve their own goals.
Most people in California that are backing the recall aren’t thinking of that. After all, their biggest concern is their own state and the fact that Newsom is unfit to lead. But Biden has invested his political legacy and Harris her political future in California’s ultrablue liberalism. Aside from Newsom, they have the most to lose if the recall ultimately succeeds.
