Newsletter: Kamala Harris and the rise of the California YIMBYs

Good morning. It is Saturday, Aug. 24. Here’s what we’ve been doing in Opinion.

California, we’ve arrived.

That’s the thought I had watching Vice President Kamala Harris’ speech at the Democratic convention Thursday. Our state, though by far the largest and most economically powerful in the country, has long felt like a political backwater, where our leaders rise to regional but rarely presidential prominence. Yes, we’ve given the country Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan (though only the former was a native son), but they came from the Republican-dominated California of the not-too-distant past. Since then, we’ve had governors flame out in presidential primaries (Jerry Brown lost to some guy from Arkansas,) and thanks to the electoral college, issues such as homelessness and housing that dominate the discourse in California tend to fall by the wayside in national elections.

Harris’ speech broke from that. Her promise to build more housing, echoing former President Obama’s call two nights before to set aside outdated regulations that hinder construction, put California’s progressive brand of market-friendly YIMBYism in the national spotlight. Her references to the East Bay and her native Oakland — even delineating between the middle-class “flats” where she grew up and the “hills” where wealthier people lived — swelled me and surely many others with the kind of pride that comes when a neighborhood kid “makes it.”

Seeing the California delegation in the front sections cheering Harris and other speakers over four nights — not just the likes of Gov. Gavin Newsom and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, but also our attorney general, at least one L.A. County supervisor, a Latina labor and civil rights legend, and even the mayor of my L.A. suburb — ought to remind locals of the familiar political environment through which the likely next president rose.

For at least a generation, a politician’s California pedigree has been used as an attack line, and that’s still true today. When President Biden bowed out of the race last month and endorsed Harris, Republican operatives expressed confidence that former President Trump could wipe the floor with a California liberal. Harris could lose, of course, but at the very least, she’s shown that the “California liberal” attack line doesn’t stick so easily anymore.

She’s also shown, in a time of California’s supposed decline, that it’s possible for the nation to look west and find hope. Our state has problems that didn’t abruptly manifest when we started electing Democratic leaders, but were nurtured for decades and have only recently bloomed. Housing isn’t suddenly in short supply; generations of population growth conspired with the tax-policy populism of Proposition 13, restrictive local zoning and well-meaning environmental laws to produce our situation today, and it’s a situation an increasing number of states are struggling with as well. These problems risk immiserating generations of Californians and are reflected nationally in millennials’ and Gen Z’s bleak financial outlook.

Harris has emerged from a local political class that happened to be in charge as all this progressed to a breaking point. As with Newsom and other big-city Democrats who have run out of patience for NIMBYism, Harris seems to recognize the problem and appears eager to face it head on. This frankness is what gives hope: not to deny the reality on the ground or spiff up our image to deflect the “California liberal” attack line, but to acknowledge it in a way that recognizes the economic uncertainty faced by middle-income Americans and get to work fixing it.

What could be more California than that?

The honeymoon is over. Harris must start making the case for her presidency. “Now that the Democratic National Convention is over, the hard work for Harris begins,” The Times’ editorial board writes. “She must do more than explain why Trump is unfit. She needs to make the case to the American people that she would do more to improve their lives and livelihoods.”

Speaking of environmental regulations, California legislators should reform CEQA instead of punching holes in it. The California Environmental Quality Act is often blamed for driving delays in housing construction and other badly needed development, leading the state Legislature to pass embarrassing, one-off laws exempting projects it considers a priority. William Fulton asks, “How many holes does the Legislature have to punch in CEQA — either for the state’s own projects or those of politically influential friends — before the Swiss cheese approach leaves the state’s growth and development policies in shreds?”

What kind of prosecutor was Kamala Harris? The answer could be pivotal to her campaign. The vice president, a former district attorney and attorney general in California, is burnishing her lock-em-up bona fides, while former President Trump insists she was a soft-on-crime liberal. Harry Litman, a former U.S. attorney and deputy assistant attorney general, says that “Harris has a complicated track record on the subject.”

We’re living under a flawed Constitution. Let’s start fresh and rewrite it. UC Berkeley School of Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, who led the effort to rewrite Los Angeles’ city charter in the late 1990s, writes that many of the problems with American democracy “can be traced back to choices made in drafting the Constitution.” He says that the document written to stitch together a nascent, weak federation in the late 1700s has proved incapable of fixing our weaknesses today.

Let’s not learn the wrong lessons from Matthew Perry’s ketamine tragedy. “The harm is not in ketamine itself, nor even in its rising popularity among the rich and famous,” says the editorial board. “It’s in using it to prey on the ill and vulnerable for personal gain. Crackdowns on a drug are generally counterproductive. Crackdowns on unconscionable exploitation of vulnerable people for personal gain are generally in order.”

More from opinion

From our columnists

• Robin Abcarian: Warren Hern is one of the country’s few late-term abortion doctors. This is what drives him
• Jackie Calmes: How much of Kamala Harris’ rise is backlash against Donald Trump’s misogyny?

From guest contributors

• Tipping culture is out of control. Trump and Harris would make it worse
• How Ukraine can press its advantage after seizing Russian territory
• How Shirley Chisholm’s run for president made Kamala Harris’ campaign possible

From the Editorial Board

• Delay California’s oil drilling protections until 2031? No way
• Why California should lead on AI regulation

Letters to the Editor

• Fake service dogs brought into the hospital — they’re a problem
• What does JD Vance think about grandfathers raising kids? Nothing?
• Contrast between Biden and Trump convention speeches couldn’t be clearer