I Did A Poll-- And So Did Emerson

Jonathan Allen, writing for NBC News, lays out Kamala Harris' path to victory. It depends heavily on a "juggernaut" in California, which many California voters are discovering for the first time, is where she's from. "California voters alone," wrote Allen, "will send more than 400 delegates to the convention, nearly double second-ranking Texas. Will California voters cast their votes for someone just because she's from California, despite having ZERO accomplishments and a very mixed record? She's managed to round up endorsements from a governor few people care about one way or the other yet. And 4 members of Congress, two of whom are extremely popular-- Ted Lieu and Barbara Lee-- but neither of whom has the capacity to deliver votes to anyone else through a machine or anything like that.

I know it's early but I decided to ask my neighbors. I live in a super-educated area of L.A., racially mixed, all virtually all Democratic and upper income. I hike the hill daily and run into everyone sooner or later. I spent a week asking everyone I met-- including gardners and delivery men, all of whom I also know-- if they know who the senators from California are. Almost everyone-- 26 people out of 31-- said Dianne Feinstein. Four out of 31 also mentioned Kamala Harris. When I brought up Kamala Harris to them next, most people had heard of her, some even knew she was running for president. Only 2 had opinions of her-- one who absolutely loved her, although didn't know why beyond her being a woman-- and one hated her because he claimed she was the worst Attorney General in history, although the specifics of her worst-ness seemed to have faded from his mind with time.

I was so thrilled with my results that I decided to do it again but in my best friend's neighborhood, nearby. This one is a low-income neighborhood transitioning from El Salvadorean to hipster. I asked 28 people on a route I took 3 times. Not one mentioned her as a senator and just 2 had ever heard of her. No one had an opinion of her.

"[F]or Harris," wrote Allen, "the real key is to make California-- where it is notoriously expensive and difficult to organize statewide campaigns-- a maelstrom of wasted time and money for everyone else. And while she's been making the rounds of early states with the other Democrats, her campaign has begun the work of standing up an operation back home. 'You need a long runway to build and run here,' said Buffy Wicks, a state House member who ran Obama and Clinton's winning primary campaigns in California. Wicks is something of a secret weapon for Harris: an elected official who has endorsed the senator but also brings to the campaign unrivaled experience in winning contested presidential primaries in the state." Wicks is also a symbol of what people detest about corporate centrists inside the Democratic Party. There are probably people who know nothing about Kamala Harris but who will refuse to consider voting for her because of her connection to Wicks.

One thing Wicks certainly has right is that in smaller states campaigns typically rely on paid staff to build their operations. California is too big for that. Instead the trick is to turn to a "lay leadership" network of existing activists to help organize the state, many of whom have worked to elect Harris as attorney general and senator. Generally that meant just working for the party ticket, not for Harris. Harris had lagged the party ticket in her races, very seriously in fact. Wicks' description, though, fits the Bernie California campaign-- where there is genuine enthusiasm-- better than the Harris campaign. And, of course, I asked the 31 and 28 neighbors in the two neighborhoods I surveyed what about the presidential race. As an open-ended question-- "Who do you support for president?"-- these were the results:

• I don't know- 26
• Bernie- 21
• Beto- 4
• Marianne Williamson- 3
• Elizabeth Warren- 2
• Kamala- 1 (from someone who hadn't known she was running until I told her)
• Amy Klobuchar- 1
• Cory Booker- 1

One woman, who watches MSNBC, mentioned Eric Swalwell, who didn't know anything about how except that he had had a baby recently and that he might run "as the California favorite son." Every single person said they would vote for whomever the Democrats nominated against Trump. Allen:

Ballots go out to voters Feb. 3, the same day as the Iowa caucuses, meaning that candidates can ill afford to ignore California even as most of them concentrate on trying to get a boost from a strong performance in the Hawkeye State.

While California and Texas results are being tabulated next March 3-- and political insiders expect a war between Harris and former Texas congressman Beto O'Rourke, who has still not announced his candidacy, over Latino voters in those states-- it is likely that the outcomes in heavily African-American states further East will already be known.

...For Democrats, delegates are apportioned based in part on the percentage of the vote each candidate gets statewide and in part on the percentage each candidate gets in each of a state' congressional districts-- with the proviso that candidates who fail to hit 15 percent get no delegates and have their share of the vote split among those who fared better. In California, there are 53 House districts.

All of that can create a major advantage for a candidate who already has support in every district in the state, or the money to advertise and organize over a long period of time. And history suggests it is hard to catch a candidate who builds a significant delegate lead.

That will be the first of the three big questions facing her campaign to be definitively answered: before results indicate whether she can become the favorite of most African-American voters, before it's evident whether she can execute on her California strategy, comes the challenge of doing well enough early enough to be seen as the top contender as the race heads back to her home state.

In other words, for any demographic advantage or home state edge to come into play, she'll need to make it to Super Tuesday in good shape. If she performed poorly in early states or failed to raise the kind of money she needs to compete effectively through Super Tuesday, the rest could be moot.

Tad Devine, a veteran Democratic strategist who was a top adviser on Bernie Sanders' 2016 campaign, said party voters are most concerned with beating President Donald Trump and will start to make their judgments long before the monthlong voting in California ends.

"If you're going to do well in California, you're going to have to start doing well in Iowa and New Hampshire," he said.

Between the early endorsements from politicians with their own operations in the state and the fact that her campaign management team-- Juan Rodriguez, Sean Clegg and Averell "Ace" Smith-- has run several of the most effective statewide Democratic campaigns in California in recent years, Harris may have the luxury of standing up an apparatus in the Golden State while she's personally spending time in other states.

"You have to do both," Harris's communications director, Lily Adams, said. "It's important to get to the first few states to introduce herself." But, Adams noted, "you can't start too early" in California.

Of course, the great unknown is whether California Democrats will flock to their home-state senator, favor one of the other choices or splinter enough to prevent any one candidate from turning the state into a treasury of delegates.

There was also more scientific polling going on than what I was doing in Los Feliz and East Hollywood last week. Emerson was in New Hampshire. It looks like more people know who Kamala Harris is there than they do is California! She's coming in third, after Bernie and Biden! The younger the voter, the more likely they are to back Bernie, while the older they are, the more likely they are to vote Biden, although it isn't clear if they like Biden because their minds have melted or because they prefer his reactionary record.

Voters were also asked about which characteristics they seek in an ideal candidate. The most highly prioritized characteristic is truthfulness, as cited by 42% of respondents, followed by being on the same side of the issues at 25%. Experience (14%) and authenticity (13%) were the third and fourth most highly prioritized characteristics. The poll also finds the following preferences among voters regarding potential characteristics of a presidential candidate:

• 85% of voters agree that the president should make efforts to work with the other party, 6% disagree and 9% are unsure.
• 70% of voters agree that the president should be transparent about their financial background. 11% disagree, and 19% are unsure.
• 68% of voters want the president to be an aggressive leader. 10% disagree, and 22% are unsure.
• 50% of voters want a president that has held elected office before. 22% disagree, and 28% are unsure.
• 42% of voters don’t want candidates to talk about their religious beliefs, 20% do want them to talk about their religious beliefs and 38% are unsure.
• 38% think a woman should be either president or vice president, while 15% disagree, and 47% are unsure.
• Military experience is a non-issue for a plurality (45%) of respondents. While 30% are not looking for military experience, 25% are.