Could a Californian Be Vice President?

“The Bidens are looking for somebody as loyal to them as they were to Barack and Michelle Obama,” Christine Pelosi, the daughter of the speaker, told my colleagues recently.

Although, as my colleague Lisa Lerer wrote, it’s best not to get too caught up in the chatter.

So, how does this all affect California?

Ms. Bass and Ms. Harris are not the only competitors, of course; the Biden campaign is orchestrating an unusually public “veepstakes,” in which all the contenders are established public servants who would represent subtly different visions of the Democratic Party, said Raphael Sonenshein, the executive director of the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs at Cal State Los Angeles.

And Mr. Biden’s announcement during the primaries that he’d choose a woman for the job has helped head off less substantive discussion about a woman’s electability and instead focused it on which woman would be most likely to help Mr. Biden beat the president. That, Mr. Sonenshein told me, is the biggest priority for many California Democrats.

Still, he said, it’s notable — nay, “exciting” — to have two Californians at the top of the list.

“What’s interesting is, historically, California has not been a site for Democrats to get on the national ticket,” he said.

Despite Democrats’ current dominance within the nation’s most populous state, when it comes to national elections, California has been a more powerful springboard for Republican politicians — think Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon.