Hollywood may play a bigger role in Biden’s future than California’s politicians | Opinion

California’s leading Democrats are largely silent or supportive of President Joe Biden as he battles for his political life due to one of the worst debate performances of all time. This isn’t shaping up to be one of those bold leadership moments that California legislators like to pride themselves in.

Even though a few hotly contested congressional seats here in California could sway the balance of power in the House of Representatives, most state Democrats are choosing to play it safe. They’re leaving the dirty work on how to right the party’s listing ship to leaders from other states.

Perhaps this is inevitable, given how California is home to Biden’s Surrogate In Chief. Gavin Newsom last weekend was campaigning harder for Biden than Biden himself as the governor was campaigning in states like Pennsylvania and New Hampshire. “I have a responsibility to meet this moment,” Newsom said at a recent press event. “I felt a responsibility to miss my family on the 4th of July and to be there for this country, for our promise and what we’re promoting.”

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Newsom’s appointee to the United States Senate, Alex Padilla, has been towing the Newsom line as well. ““The bottom line is: Joe Biden is the leader of our party,” Padilla said. Biden “is running on a successful record for the last three-and-a-half years with much more to do.”

Padilla is in a safe spot, not up for re-election until 2028, a political eternity. He can stay comfortably in the status quo without repercussion. The same can’t be said for California Democrats like Merced’s Adam Gray, who is seeking to knock off incumbent Republican Congressman John Duarte. Calling for Biden to stay or leave the presidential race would rankle one of his key bases of support. These Democrats are understandably silent.

Ro Khanna, the Congressional Democrat from Silicon Valley who spends considerable time visiting other states with his unique brand of progressive ideas, supports Biden’s candidacy as he seeks to reshape the party’s agenda to focus more on Americans who aren’t benefiting from the new economy. “No polling has shown he doesn’t have a path to victory,” Khanna recently said. Yet Biden seems to see nothing wrong with the current economy, touting at his Thursday night press conferent about lowering inflation and unemployment without commenting on underlying consumer anxieties.

Congressman Scott Peters of San Diego is a lonely advocate of Biden bowing out of the campaign. “The stakes are high, and we are on a losing course,” he recently said. Yet his announcement did not trigger others.

Straddling the fence, meanwhile, is Congressman Adam Schiff, on a trajectory to become the state’s other Senator. Schiff is urging the president to seek advice while not saying what he should actually do. ““He should take a moment to make the best-informed judgment,” Schiff recently said. “And if the judgment is run, (then) run hard and beat that SOB,” as in the factually challenged Donald Trump.

Why is it in California that only a creature of Hollywood, George Clooney, seems capable of stringing a series of sentences together and offering a coherent opinion?

The only top-tier California leader who appears to be like many Americans, truly agonizing on the right course, is our senior stateswoman, Congressman Nancy Pelosi. She has been engaging in a public kabuki of the highest level, ignoring the president’s stated intent to stay in the race and respectfully suggesting that he soon decide.

““I want him to do whatever he decides to do,” Pelosi recently said. And that’s, that’s the way it is: Whatever he decides, we go with.”

Out of California’s 39 million residents, Pelosi is likely the only one with some actual influence in this matter. Newsom is a mouthpiece. Pelosi is a thinker and a party standard bearer given years of Congressional leadership. Other than her, California politicians are proving irrelevant in one of the most important political decisions in a long time. And that is a weird place for California to be.