If last month’s gathering of California Republicans had the feel of a postmortem, this weekend’s California Democratic convention seemed much more like a three-day end-zone dance. Speaker after speaker took to the podium to tout the party’s 2012 victories: supermajorities in both the Assembly and Senate, winning six House seats from Republicans, and the passage of Gov. Jerry Brown’s Proposition 30 tax measure.

With Brown in China on a trade mission and neither of California’s U.S. senators speaking at the convention, the weekend gave up-and-coming Democrats a chance to step into the spotlight. In that sense, the weekend offered a preview of what a post-Brown gubernatorial primary might look like.
The convention was highlighted by passionate speeches from two Democrats with clear ambition for higher office: Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom and Attorney General Kamala Harris.
Newsom began his speech by joking about the six-day old “Newsom Administration” (he’s serving as acting governor with Brown abroad). Then he launched into a call for issues like the legalization of marijuana and repeal of the death penalty. “It’s not a deterrent. It’s not fool-proof. It is racially biased,” he said of capital punishment. “It costs more. And there’s no way to reverse a mistake when you put a wrongly accused person to death.” Newsom has clashed publicly with Brown, and at times he sounded more like an opposition candidate than a member of a governing administration. He burst the Democrats’ feel-good bubble by calling for action to address the state’s economic problems. “We not only have the highest homeless rate in America, but the highest poverty rate. Think about this: California has three of the top five impoverished metro areas in the entire nation: Fresno, Modesto and Bakersfield. … 1.8 million Californians actively seeking employment that cannot find work. Statewide unemployment rate of 9.6 percent. The nation’s highest.”
How to Use a Supermajority