It did not take long for the Left to demand a consolation prize for their failed leader Kamala Harris. The opening bid was replacing Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor with “Justice” Harris. What joy that would be. But it’s also mercifully implausible. Not only would the Wise Latinx Justice need to retire to make way for a proud black Brahmin, but Chuck Schumer would have to wrangle a one-vote majority that includes departing former Democrats Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. In his lame duck era, Schumer doesn’t really have the ability to rally this captious crowd behind any nominee. But for Harris? Please.

We must go back to the beginning of our quest: how to console the hapless Harris? She’ll have to do what she always does: fail upward. And there’s only one logical next step on that path: the governorship of California.

The ghastly Gavin Newsom is termed out in two years. Unless California Rs get their stuff together in a big way, he will inevitably be followed by another progressive D. And there is no bigger progressive D in Cali Town than Kamala D. Harris, D-San Francisco.

Harris recently won three statewide races in California, twice for attorney general and once for the United States Senate. She then appeared twice on presidential tickets that handily won California in 2020 and 2024. She will easily win a race for governor. Yes, she is a disaster in national politics, but for the exact same reasons she is the bespoke lefty for today’s Golden State coasties.

She would certainly get a primary boost from Newsom, Nancy Pelosi, and other California machine politicians. With their backing, Harris could easily advance in the California jungle primary and then almost certainly be elected governor.

Nothing would be more on the nose for California either. Kamala’s ignorant, entitled, and dismissive persona channels the mindset of the state’s progressive elite, both the faculty lounge and the government union types. The liberal tears are flowing freely in the gutters here. Electing Harris as governor would dry those tears. It would be the ultimate “California gives Donald the Finger” act of performative and feckless defiance.

So there you have it, friends and relations: Kamala Harris, your next governor of California.

Must We Go Gentle Into That Good Night?

But what if, like me and my family, you (still) live in California? Surely we can prevent this, no? We just rode the Red Wave back to Making America Great Again! Surely even here California, a new red sun rises!

To an extent, yes. There is a real post-election right-shift vibe in California, which just voted overwhelmingly to make shoplifting illegal again and rejected both a minimum wage increase and statewide rent control. Even in San Francisco, tech bros and affluent normies have joined forces to cut the political throats of the City by the Bay’s worst woke offenders. The SF normie-techie coalition has recalled America’s worst Soros DA, recalled three school board members who banned algebra, defeated three very progressive incumbent county supervisors, and now elected a tech-oriented mayor to replace career civil servant London Breed. Across the Bay Bridge, Oakland voters just recalled their lunatic mayor and their own Soros DA. Voters in Los Angeles County, meanwhile, dispatched the OG Soros District Apologist, George Gascon, in favor of liberal former Republican Nathan Hochman (no, not that Nate Hochman). Good times.

But a Republican governor is a white pill too far. Forget it guys. No Republican is going to beat Harris for the governorship in four years. The shift we are seeing in California is real, but it is not a red shift. A majority of California voters, even in coastal redoubts, have had it with progressive psychopathy and are willing to vote for something and someone else. But the Republican brand is not the something else yet in California. San Francisco and Los Angeles provide two good case studies to demonstrate this.

San Francisco has been able to gather itself on its hind legs and eject its worst wokies with a winning coalition of plain old normal liberal Democrats. All of the energy in the city is coming from a dissident faction of Democrats, who first organized around getting more influence in The City’s Democratic Party Central Committee, and then worked in house-to-house district election campaigns to narrowly defeat entrenched progs on the Board of Supervisors. They want basic civilizational goods: clean and safe streets, nice schools where kids can learn math, humane treatment for drug addicts instead of monetizing their misery, and an end to the NGO Industrial Complex.

These are ’90s Dems, not GOPers. Disgraced fake SF DA Chesa Boudin’s fatal error (aside from being, you know, Chesa Boudin) was to cast the recall against him two years ago as a Right-Wing Republican Power Grab^TM. But everybody in San Francisco knows that there are no Republicans in San Francisco. Nobody in the Bay Area is frightened that the normie-techie political incubator is a Republican front.

It is precisely the sparsity of Republicans in the Bay Area that got the progs so far out over their skis. As they moved further and further Left, they left behind a majority that is, well, “only kind of left.” None of the winning local candidates are conservative or right-wing; most if not all were Harris supporters. This is not the Silicon Valley tech bro squad that just plunked for Trump, despite some of those guys living in The City.

Los Angeles shows that a previously known Republican like Hochman can win a county-wide race against a weak opponent if he ditches the Republican label. And DA races in California are non-partisan, so nobody who didn’t already know that Hochman used to be an R was troubled with that knowledge when pulling the lever for him this time.

So a Republican cannot win a statewide election in California. But Republicans are a large enough minority that their support will be necessary to elect a non-woke alternative to Harris. California has a jungle primary, meaning the two highest vote getters in the primary advance to the November general election, regardless of party. Republicans routinely field candidates for statewide office who draw just enough support to come in second on the primary ballot, advance to November, and get slaughtered on the General Election ballot.

Golden State Republicans and conservative independents could take a look at the Trump coalition and campaign messaging, ask ourselves what part of it looks most like our home state electorate (all of it, not just the part we most identify with), and look around for candidates and platforms and saleable brands that could draw a winning coalition. And we could quickly come up with a plan to get all the Cali Rs to vote for the best candidate, even if (gasp) his name doesn’t end in “R” on the ballot. Because someone with an R will lose. But someone with the RFK Jr. vibe might just work. A former Dem, OG liberal who’s fed up with the stupidity of the hard Left and credible enough to attract the beginnings of a coalition but lacks the party backing that would put him over the top. Someone with a platform who’s willing to partner with those of good will and like mind.

In other words, San Fransicko author Michael Shellenberger.

Imagine Winning

The Silicon Valley tech bro junta should be happy to help Shellenberger for a lot of the same reasons they were willing to help Trump. And a Shellenberger-type candidate, if he made it past Republican voters in the primary, could set up the kind of dynamics, especially against Harris, that just round-filed a decade of progressive hegemony in San Francisco and Los Angeles. That just voted 70-30 for “Can we just go back to sending thieves to prison for stealing stuff?” That just narrowly said, “Yeah enough rent control and minimum wage boundary pushing.”

Will the prospect of a Harris governorship be bad enough that we summon both the wisdom and the discipline to vote as a block for the “only kind of Left” Michael Shellenberger in the primary and advance him to a head-to-head contest against Harris, where he might extend the Golden State’s new dawn vibe for four years with an upset victory against the stupidest politician in history?

That would require the state GOP to admit that it is just digging itself into a deeper hole every cycle, and to stop digging. Stranger things have happened. Donald Trump is the president-elect for the second time. It’s Morning in America. Maybe we can act in our own best interest and elect a governor who will Make California Great Again too.