Joe Biden seems like he’s running again, God love him.

He will most likely make this official in the next couple of months, and with the support of nearly every elected Democrat in range of a microphone. That is how things are typically done in Washington: The White House shall make you primary-proof. The gods of groupthink have decreed as much.

Unless some freethinking Democrat comes along and chooses to ignore the groupthink.

In private, of course, many elected Democrats say Biden is too old to run again and that they wish he’d step away—which aligns with what large majorities of Democrats and independents have been telling pollsters for months. The public silence around the president’s predicament has become tiresome and potentially catastrophic for the Democratic Party. Somebody should make a refreshing nuisance of themselves and involve the voters in this decision.

Yes, this would be a radical move, and would anger a bunch of Democrats inside the various power terrariums of D.C., starting with the biggest one of all, at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. There would be immediate blowback from donors, the Democratic National Committee, and other party institutions. But do it anyway. Preferably before Biden makes his final decision, while there’s an opening. If approached deftly, the gambit could benefit the president, the party, and even the challenger’s own standing, win or lose.

[David A. Graham: The 2024 U.S. presidential race: A cheat sheet]

There has to  be one good Challenger X out there from the party’s supposed “deep bench,” right? Someone who is compelling, formidable, and younger than, say, 65. Someone who is not Marianne Williamson. Someone who would be unfailingly gracious to Biden and reverential of his career—even while trying to end it.

Before we start tossing out names, let’s establish a big to be sure. To be sure, primaries can be very bad for presidents seeking reelection. There is good reason no incumbent has been subjected to a serious intraparty challenge in more than three decades—not since the Republican Pat Buchanan launched a populist incursion against President George H. W. Bush in 1992. A dozen years earlier, President Jimmy Carter had endured an acrid primary challenge from Senator Edward Kennedy. Both Carter and Bush managed to hold off their challengers, but they came away battered and wound up losing their general elections.

Biden, however, is a special case, for two reasons. The first concerns the disconnect between how affectionately most Democrats view him versus their desire to move on from him. Recent surveys show that 60 percent of Democrats don’t want Biden to run again. These spigots of cold water in the polls have been accompanied by icy buckets of liberal commentary and chilly assessments from (mostly) anonymous elected Democrats in the press. By contrast, large majorities of Republicans wanted Donald Trump to seek reelection in 2020, and an overwhelming consensus of Democrats wanted Barack Obama to run again in 2012. Same with Republicans and George W. Bush in 2004, and Democrats and Bill Clinton in 1996.

Why should Biden not enjoy the same coronation? He’s done a good job in the eyes of the people who voted for him in 2020. His party overperformed in the midterms. He seems to be humming along fine—feisty State of the Union here, muscular visit to Ukraine there, and endless jokers to the right. He has achieved important things, has clearly enjoyed the gig, and appears quite eager for more. The difference in Biden’s case, of course, goes directly to the second reason for his special predicament. It begins with an 8.

Allow me to point out, as if you don’t already know this, that Biden is old. He is 80 now, will be 82 on Inauguration Day 2025, and will hit 86 if he makes it all the way through a second term. He was born during the Roosevelt administration (Franklin, not Teddy, but still).

The Delaware Corvette has flipped through the odometer a time or two. I’ve pointed this out before, in this publication. The White House did not like that story. But it was true then, and it’s truer now—by eight months, and a lot more Democrats are getting a lot more anxious.

“This is not a knock on Joe Biden, just a wish for competition,” says Representative Dean Phillips of Minnesota, one of a tiny number of elected Democrats who have expressed on-the-record trepidation about Biden’s plans. Phillips couches the absurdity of this in terms of free enterprise. “In the business world, if the dominant brand in a category had favorability ratings like the current president does, you would see a number of established brands jump into that category,” Phillips told me. “Believe me, there are literally hundreds in Congress who would say the same thing,” he said. “But they simply won’t fucking say a word.”

[Read: Why Biden shouldn’t run in 2024]

Here’s the deal, as Biden would say. No one wants to be accused of messing around with established practices when the alternative—very possibly Donald Trump—is so terrifying. But just as Trump has intimidated so many Republicans into submission, he also has paralyzed Democrats into extreme risk aversion. This has fostered an unhealthy capitulation to musty assumptions. And if you believe groupthink can’t be horribly wrong, I’ve got some weapons of mass destruction to show you in Iraq, not to mention a Black man who will never be elected president and, for that matter, a reality-TV star who won’t either.

The big riddle is: Who? Let’s assess an (extremely) hypothetical primary field. First, eliminate Vice President Kamala Harris, Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, and any other member of Biden’s administration from consideration. Such an uprising against the boss would represent an irreparably disloyal and unseemly act and simply would not happen. Let’s also eliminate Senator Bernie Sanders from consideration, because been there, done that (twice), and he’s actually Biden’s senior by a year.

Otherwise, indulge me in a bit of mentioning. Here is a hodgepodge of possible primary nuisances: Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer; Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey; Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut; Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota; former Representative Tim Ryan of Ohio; Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York; California Governor Gavin Newsom; Maryland Governor Wes Moore. This is a noncomprehensive list.

Let’s take the first Challenger X on the list, the newly reelected Whitmer, who, for the record, says she will not be running in 2024, regardless of what Biden does. She declared as much after her double-digit crushing of Republican Tudor Dixon in November. “Gov. Gretchen Whitmer says she is committed to a full second term,” reads the report in Bridge Michigan, the local publication to which she revealed her plans. The article refers to the 46th president as “aging Democratic incumbent Joe Biden.”

What might it look like if Whitmer did make a run at said “aging Democratic incumbent”? The how dare you types would be unpleasantly aroused. Words like ingrate, disloyal, and opportunist would be hurled in her face. She would be blamed for creating a turbulent situation for the self-styled “party of grown-ups,” and at a time when they can credibly portray Republicans as an irresponsible brigade of nutbags, cranks, and chaos agents. Whitmer would also, implicitly, be accused of not “waiting her turn.” Just as Obama was in 2008, when he opted to skip the line and sought the Democratic nomination, even though the groupthink memo at the time stipulated that it was Hillary Clinton’s turn.

But perhaps the pushback would not be as rough as Challenger X expected. In all likelihood, it would occur mostly in private or anonymously. Biden would be somewhat obliged to project calm and indifference in public. “The more the merrier,” the president and his surrogates would say through tight smiles. Nobody would benefit from any appearance of resentment.

[David A. Graham: The catch-24 of replacing Joe Biden]

Challenger X could earn goodwill by campaigning with class and expressing unrelenting gratitude to Biden. She could simply nod and shrug in response to the various admonitions. Emphasize her own credentials and the grave threat posed by Trump, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, or any other Republican. Say repeatedly that she would do whatever was necessary to help and support the president if primary voters nominated him again.

For any Challenger X, the main selling point would fall into the general classification of representing “new blood,” a “fresh start,” or some such. These terms would serve as polite stand-ins for the age issue rather than smears about Biden’s mental capacity. Another thematic argument would involve popular American ideals such as “choice” and “freedom.” As in: Democrats deserve a “choice” and should enjoy the “freedom” to vote for someone other than the oldest president in history—the guy well over half of you don’t want to run.

Challenger X would almost certainly receive tons of press coverage—probably good coverage, too, given that the media are predisposed to favor maverick-y candidates who inject unforeseen conflict into the process. When the voting starts, maybe this upstart would overperform—grabbing 35 percent or so in the early states, say. Maybe they wouldn’t surpass Biden, but could still reap the good coverage, gracefully drop out, and gain an immediate advantage for 2028. Or maybe Biden would take the hint, step away on his own, and let Democrats get on with picking their next class of national leaders. To some degree, the party has been putting this off since Obama was elected.

Quite obviously, Democrats today have a strong craving for someone other than the sitting president. (Also obvious: That someone is not the current vice president.) Many voters viewed Biden’s candidacy in 2020 as a one-term proposition. He suggested as much. “Look, I view myself as a bridge, not as anything else,” Biden said nearly three years ago at a campaign event in Michigan, where he appeared with Harris, Booker, and Whitmer. “There’s an entire generation of leaders you saw stand behind me. They are the future of this country.”

Some mischief-maker should give Democrats a path to that future starting now. Voters bought the bridge in 2020. But when does it become a bridge too far?

Iraqi citizens and their grievances need to be taken into account in this new attempt to change the Iraqi constitution.

This is an edition of Up for Debate, a newsletter by Conor Friedersdorf. On Wednesdays, he rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.

Question of the Week

Young women are struggling. “Nearly 1 in 3 high school girls reported in 2021 that they seriously considered suicide—up nearly 60 percent from a decade ago—according to new findings from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,” The Washington Post reports. Drawing on the same study, Axios notes, “About 30 percent of teen girls said they had seriously considered attempting suicide, up from 19 percent in 2011.” What is going on? Whether you have young women in your life who have shaped your perspective or other experiences with this topic, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Send your responses to conor@theatlantic.com.

Conversations of Note

When Jon Ronson published So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed in 2015, I hoped his numerous illustrations of online mobs meting out cruelty in the guise of holding others accountable would persuade the masses that joining digital pile-ons does more harm than not––both because the facts of various matters so often prove different, or more complicated, than they at first seemed and because even in cases where an individual deserves some punishment or sanction, zealous hordes are incapable of proportion. The hate of uncoordinated vigilantes who purport to hold others accountable can add up to so much punishment that their targets wind up pondering suicide.

For individuals, “let he who is without sin cast the first stone” is an undervalued rule. For media institutions, who purport to act in the public interest and rightly consider accountability in their ambit, I‘d posit a special responsibility to refrain from initiating or amplifying false or misleading stories––and where coverage is later proved to be misleading, to revise unjustly unflattering portraits of individuals as prominently as they published them.

Alas, even in cases where targets of public opprobrium are especially rich and famous––which is to say, possessed of more ability than most of us to counter false or misleadingly one-sided information––coverage that seems likely to tarnish a person’s reputation is too often far more prominent than coverage that seems likely to burnish or revive it.

For example, in “Armie Hammer Breaks His Silence,” the journalist James Kirchick revisits the case of an actor whose career was destroyed when he faced accusations of extreme sexual misconduct. Although Kirchick’s reporting doesn’t resolve anything definitively, it includes significant facts that readers of the original coverage ought to know as updates, as they give very different impressions of what might have happened. As yet, however, publishers of bygone coverage have not updated their articles. (Kirchick has expounded on his reporting process for Meghan Daum and The Fifth Column.)

And at The Free Press, Megan Phelps-Roper is launching a series, “The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling,” that will probe the vilification of the famous author of the Harry Potter books. Rowling is portrayed by some as a transphobic bigot whose views are egregiously beyond the pale––and were that true, opprobrium would be appropriate. Bigotry against trans people is indeed odious. But do Rowling’s actual words validate the ways that she has been characterized? Cathy Young, Kat Rosenfield, Brendan Morrow, and the Blocked and Reported podcast have all found significant evidence of dubious attacks––and at least one Rowling attacker retracted his claims rather than defend them in court.

Less famous subjects of vilification are far less likely to have anyone following up to vindicate them (commentators on the populist right are throwing around accusations of “grooming” children as widely and frivolously as any character assassins in American life). However, Nicole Carr of ProPublica proved an exception to that rule last year, telling the story of Cecelia Lewis, an educator wrongly hounded out of a job and followed to another during a moral panic about what participants erroneously thought of as critical race theory.

Whether a person is famous or obscure, blameworthy or blameless, they deserve, at the very least, scrupulous accuracy when their behavior is described to mass audiences. Folks on the right and left who fall short of that mark are more alike than they think. As long as their carelessness is so frequent, the case against pile-ons is airtight.

Joe Biden’s Criminal-Justice-Reform Failures

At The Marshall Project, Jamiles Lartey argues that the administration has failed to clear a low bar that it set:

Last May, President Joe Biden sat with family members of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor in the White House as he signed an executive order he called the “most significant police reform in decades.”

One of the more notable promises in the order was setting up a “National Law Enforcement Accountability Database,” that would collect detailed information about officers who committed misconduct. The deadline to launch it was Jan. 20, the same day that five Memphis police officers were fired for the beating death of Tyre Nichols—a killing that has once more ignited national debate about policing. The Department of Justice has yet to announce the database, and did not respond to multiple requests for comment on its status.

Deadlines for other initiatives in Biden’s order, like new standards for credentialing police departments, appear to have also come and gone without acknowledgement or public results.

On Art and Supposed Harm

In a New York Times column about the censorship of art and “the anxious philistinism that can result when bureaucratic cowardice meets maximalist ideas about safety,” Michelle Goldberg writes:

I’m not naïve enough to believe that if the left rediscovered a passionate commitment to free speech, the right would give up its furious campaign against what it calls wokeness. But I do think that if the left is to mount a convincing response to what has become a wholesale assault on intellectual liberty and free expression, it needs to be able to defend challenging and provocative work.

A Business Contagion

In The Atlantic, Annie Lowrey argues that layoffs at one company tend to spur layoffs at other companies for various reasons that may have nothing to do with a financial imperative to carry them out:

When executives see their corporate competitors letting go of workers, they seize what they see as an opportunity to reduce their workforce, rather than having no choice but to do so.

Shedding employees when everybody else is doing it avoids drawing public scrutiny to or creating reputational damage for a given firm, for one. A lone business announcing that it is downsizing is likely to be described as mismanaged or troubled, and may well be mismanaged or troubled. However merited, that kind of reputation tends to hinder a company from attracting investment, workers, and customers. But if a firm downsizes when everyone else is doing it, the public seldom notices and investors seldom care.

Copycat layoffs also let executives cite challenging business conditions as a justification for cuts, rather than their own boneheaded strategic decisions. In this scenario, the problem isn’t that corporate leadership poured billions of dollars into a quixotic new venture or hired hundreds of what ended up being redundant employees. It’s not that the C-suite misunderstood the competitive environment, necessitating a costly and painful readjustment. It’s Jay Powell! It’s a COVID-related reversion to the mean! Who could have known?

In addition to being simpler for executives to explain to their shareholders or the board, large-scale copycat layoffs are easier to carry out and better received by employees than selective or strategic layoffs. Managers let staffers go instead of firing them, blaming economic conditions rather than detailing their direct reports’ shortcomings. Morale might take less of a hit if the remaining workers fault the broader business environment instead of their bosses.

Another possible reason layoffs are contagious is that executives might take other firms’ hiring and firing decisions as a kind of market intelligence. Even when a company’s own financials appear sound, it may interpret a competitor’s layoff announcement as a sign of worsening conditions.

Provocation of the Week

In Unherd, Thomas Fazi explains why he is worried about World War III:

By providing increasingly powerful military equipment as well as financial, technical, logistical and training support to one of the warring factions, including for offensive operations (even within Russian territory), the West is engaged in a de facto military confrontation with Russia, regardless of what our leaders may claim.

Western citizens deserve to be told what is going on in Ukraine—and what the stakes are. Perhaps the wildest claim being made is that “if we deliver all the weapons Ukraine needs, they can win,” as former Nato Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen recently asserted. For Rasmussen, and other Western hawks, this includes retaking Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014 and which it considers of the utmost strategic importance. Many Western allies still consider this an uncrossable red line. But for how long? Just last month, the New York Times reported that the Biden administration is warming up to the idea of backing a Ukrainian offensive on Crimea.

This strategy is based on the assumption that Russia will accept a military defeat and the loss of the territories it controls without resorting to the unthinkable—the use of nuclear weapons. But this is a massive assumption on which to gamble the future of humanity, especially coming from the very Western strategists who disastrously botched every major military forecast over the past 20 years, from Iraq to Afghanistan. The truth is that, from Russia’s perspective, it is fighting against what it perceives to be an existential threat in Ukraine, and there is no reason to believe that, with its back against the wall, it won’t go to extreme measures to guarantee its survival. As Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, put it: “The loss of a nuclear power in a conventional war can provoke the outbreak of a nuclear war. Nuclear powers do not lose major conflicts on which their fate depends.”

During the Cold War, this was widely understood by Western leaders. But today, by constantly escalating their support for Ukraine’s military, the United States and Nato appear to have forgotten it, and are instead inching closer to a catastrophic scenario.

That’s all for this week––see you on Monday.

Murder of 22-year-old Tiba al-Ali has renewed calls for laws addressing gender-based violence.

Congressional lawmakers are trying - again - to repeal 2002 law critics say gives too much power to the US president.

It took one of the most powerful earthquakes in a century, but the world’s attention has finally returned to Syria, a country devastated by 12 years of civil war; divided among government, militia, and foreign powers; and home to millions of internally displaced people.

So far, most of the images of the devastation have come out of Turkey, where the 7.8-magnitude quake struck early Monday morning, followed by another quake of 7.5 magnitude. Nearly 6,000 deaths have been reported there so far. Syria’s total death toll stands at about 1,900 people. But the pain of those living in the country’s rebel-held northwest, including cities such as Idlib, is particularly acute. The earthquakes came after years of ruthless bombings by Russian and Syrian government forces. Northwest Syria, where nearly 3 million internally displaced people live, is already cut off from the international community, and much of its infrastructure—including hospitals, a favorite target of Russian planes—has been completely or partially destroyed by the war. The quakes have made the plight of these Syrians unbearable.

Monday’s disaster also offers a reminder of how desperately Syria needs international aid, even if it’s hard to deliver. Although assistance is flowing into Turkey, the logistics and politics of aiding Syria, especially vulnerable areas in the northwest, are much more complicated given the ongoing conflict and international sanctions against the Assad regime. The Syrian and Russian governments are already seeking to politicize disaster aid by calling for an end to sanctions on the regime, and are likely to use this opportunity to try to regain control over the northwest. The United States should act quickly, and even unilaterally, to deliver aid to northern Syria while keeping Damascus’s and Moscow’s diplomatic and military moves in check.

[Read: Early photos from the earthquake in Turkey and Syria]

Even before the earthquake, the Syrian and Russian governments tightly controlled the flow of aid across the border from Turkey. The Syrian government has long insisted that aid for areas controlled by opposition forces must flow through Damascus. And Russia has repeatedly vetoed United Nations efforts to increase supplies and ease their delivery to the rebel-held area via the Syrian-Turkish humanitarian corridor at the Bab-al Hawa crossing.

That road has now been wrecked by the earthquake, and the existing humanitarian supplies in the pipeline could last only three to five days. Damascus is receiving some disaster relief from Algeria, Iran, Iraq, and the United Arab Emirates, as well as from the United Nations. But no one is rushing yet to Syria’s northwest because of the challenges of reaching the area and the political obstacles. Syria’s ambassador to the UN has appealed for help from other countries and international-aid agencies while making the case that aid to the country’s northwest still should be delivered only through the Syrian government. This means that the lives of those who have fled the Syrian regime for rebel-controlled areas might again be in Bashar al-Assad’s hands. On social media, some pro-Assad accounts have been advocating against aiding the rebel areas.

Considering the scale of the earthquake damage, one could argue that the international community should allow all efforts to aid Syria—including by channeling assistance through Damascus, in exchange for which the Assad government should allow unfettered access to opposition areas via the northern border. But the Syrian regime will almost certainly resist such a move, and will delight in seeing the rebel areas suffer even more. And it will misleadingly attempt to depict the aid going to Damascus as a sign of international support for the Assad government.

Charles Lister, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington, D.C., told me that although the Turks are understandably focused on their own rescue efforts, there are other border-crossing areas through which the United States could deliver aid to Syria’s northwest unilaterally but with Turkey’s permission or in coordination with the Kurds and other local forces. The U.S. military also has a presence in parts of northwest and northeast of Syria that it could use to air-drop some aid, though this is the least ideal option given the winter weather and the lack of precision in airdrops. The military could also use its base in the northeast of the country as a hub for organizing humanitarian aid, crossing into rebel areas again in coordination with the Turks and the Kurds.

[Janine di Giovanni: When justice is out of reach]

In recent months, the UAE and Jordan have made overtures to Assad, who visited Abu Dhabi last year. But the United States has resisted and warned against such a rapprochement. Since the earthquake struck, the U.S. has pledged aid to people on both sides of the border while ruling out dealing with the Assad government. The White House has yet to offer many specifics on how it will assist northwestern Syria, however. President Joe Biden said yesterday that “U.S.-supported humanitarian partners are also responding to the destruction in Syria,” a statement echoed by the State Department spokesperson. USAID Administrator Samantha Power tweeted today that she has spoken with Raed al-Saleh, the head of the Syria Civil Defence, the volunteer humanitarian group also known as the White Helmets that operates in the rebel-held area, about how USAID could provide urgent assistance to Syrians there. The White Helmets have done heroic work for years, pulling people out of the rubble of bombed-out houses, buildings, and hospitals. Their 3,000 volunteers are now deployed in full to search for survivors but are reportedly running out of fuel.

The logistics will be a nightmare. But the United States and the international community must push to provide immediate short-term assistance to Syrians living in opposition areas, and then think creatively about how to improve long-term prospects for Syrians without absolving the regime. If there’s one lesson from this earthquake beyond the necessity for preparedness in an area that sits on a fault line, it is that the deep wounds in this region cannot simply be cauterized and then ignored, as Washington has done with Syria. Syrians have been abandoned and forgotten for far too long already.

Tiba al-Ali, 22, was killed by her father, despite attempts by police to mediate a dispute between her and her family.

Senator Dianne Feinstein hasn’t yet announced whether she’s retiring, but the race to replace her has already begun. The 2024 contest will be the first wide-open Democratic Senate primary in California since 1992, when Feinstein, who is now 89 years old, was first elected to the seat.

The field is quickly getting crowded: U.S. Representatives Adam Schiff and Katie Porter have announced their candidacies, and Barbara Lee is expected to join them. The state’s Democratic strategists aren’t ruling out other contenders eventually jumping in as well, although most expect Feinstein to retire rather than run again.

As it stands, the contest will offer voters a choice between three distinct eras of Democratic thinking: Porter, 49, embodies the pugnacious anti-corporate populism associated with Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren; Schiff, 62, is a more mainstream liberal, shaped by Clinton-era centrism; and Lee, 76, is an uncompromising leftist and living link to the most confrontational elements of the 1960s social movements.

With or without Feinstein in the race, a Democrat is almost guaranteed to win the Senate seat in 2024. California hasn’t elected a Republican senator since Pete Wilson in 1988, and Carly Fiorina in 2010 has been the only GOP Senate nominee in this century to reach 40 percent of the statewide vote.

California Democrats haven’t seen a Senate primary as energetic as the one now developing since 1992, when the party actually battled through two of them. Not only did Feinstein win the nomination for Wilson’s Senate seat, which he’d vacated after beating her for governor in 1990, but Barbara Boxer, then a U.S. representative, beat two Democratic men to win the nomination for the Senate seat left open by the retirement of Alan Cranston. Both Feinstein and Boxer then won in November—and served together for nearly the next quarter century.

This time, the three principal contenders are separated along lines of gender, ideology, and geography. Female candidates have often had an advantage in California Democratic primaries because, as in other states, women account for close to 60 percent of Democratic voters. Given that Governor Gavin Newsom appointed a man (California’s then–secretary of state, Alex Padilla) to replace Kamala Harris in the Senate after she was elected vice president, some Democratic operatives believe that some voters of both genders may prefer to maintain at least one woman senator.

“Would the California Democratic electorate buy replacing two women with two males? I hate to put it that crassly, but that is going to be a factor,” Garry South, a Democratic consultant, told me. But if Lee joins Porter in the race, voters who want to elect a woman may split between them, diluting any advantage.

[Read: The Democrats’ new spokesman in the culture wars]

The same split might recur on ideology. Porter’s supporters already are working to portray her as a more committed progressive than Schiff. Adam Green, a co-founder of the Progressive Campaign Change Committee, which has endorsed Porter, told me there is a difference between the two not only on ideology but also in boldness.

Many Democrats would share Green’s basic assessment. Schiff, a former assistant U.S. attorney, was first elected in 2000 as part of the backlash against the House GOP’s impeachment of Bill Clinton. Following the September 11, 2001, attacks, Schiff voted both for the PATRIOT Act and to authorize the Iraq War. Over time, he migrated more into the liberal mainstream, and since Democrats recaptured the House majority in 2018, virtually every member of the House Democratic caucus has voted for all of the party’s key initiatives. That means there’s little space between Porter’s voting record and Schiff’s. “It would be hard to get a piece of paper between them on most major issues,” South told me.

Porter, a former law professor, still clearly embodies another strain of Democratic energy. Influenced by Warren, whom she studied under at Harvard Law School, Porter has become famous for dismantling hostile witnesses during congressional hearings while scribbling furiously on a whiteboard. Porter is a more logical fit for the activists and voters seeking a crusading progressive champion than Schiff, whose style is more cerebral and contained. (It’s telling that Warren has already endorsed Porter, while former Speaker Nancy Pelosi says she’ll back Schiff if Feinstein, as expected, doesn’t run.)

But for Porter, efforts to frame Schiff as insufficiently liberal, even implicitly, will be complicated by his prominent roles in Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial and on the January 6 committee. For many voters, those credentials are likely enough to establish his liberal bona fides.

And Lee may further hinder Porter’s ability to consolidate liberal voters. A former chair of the House Progressive Caucus, Lee was the only House or Senate member in either party to vote against the use of force in Afghanistan immediately after the 9/11 attacks. She also voted against the Iraq War authorization, which Schiff supported. Her unbending liberal profile will inevitably attract some voters on the left.

The final line separating the three contenders previously has been the most decisive: geography. Both Porter, who represents a seat in Orange County, and Schiff, who holds a district in Los Angeles, are based in Southern California, while Lee represents a district centered on Oakland and Berkeley. There’s a long history of candidates from Northern California beating those from the south in statewide Democratic primaries: Boxer, Feinstein, Harris, and Newsom all defeated opponents from Southern California.

“Northern Californians have had a tendency to be very loyal to their candidates,” Mel Levine, a former Democratic representative from Los Angeles who lost the 1992 Senate primary to Boxer, told me. But many observers doubt that Lee can consolidate support in the Bay Area nearly as much as those predecessors. That’s partly because of her militant politics and her age but also because she hasn’t had to advertise much over the years to win her reliably Democratic district, which has limited her name recognition.

[David A. Graham: Dianne Feinstein is the future of the Senate]

Exactly how much voters know about Porter and Schiff is uncertain, too. Traditionally, House members are largely invisible to California voters. Schiff and Porter have assets that were unavailable to earlier generations of congressional representatives: Both are superstars on MSNBC and CNN and have built robust online grassroots fundraising networks. But many California strategists doubt that their national exposure will translate into anything more than the most cursory awareness among voters in the state.

While California voters “paid attention to the Trump impeachment, were they watching Adam Schiff on the floor? Probably not,” Rose Kapolczynski, a California Democratic consultant, told me. “Have they been watching Katie Porter and her whiteboard in hearings? Probably not. All the candidates are going to need to expand beyond the MSNBC/Democratic Twitter base to reach those millions of voters who are not paying attention now and probably won’t be paying attention until next year.”

As they run against one another next spring, the Democratic contenders also must keep an eye on the November election. Since 2012, California has selected its Senate nominees in an open primary, which puts all the candidates on a single ballot, with the top two finishers advancing to the general election in November. If two Democrats emerge from the primary, the general election could be decided by the millions of Republican voters who then would be forced to choose between them.

Most California experts I spoke with give Schiff a slight edge (among other things, he has much more money in the bank than his competitors), but all expect a dynamic, and unpredictable, contest. What’s virtually certain is that the race will end with a new Democratic senator likely to quickly emerge as a rising star in the party. For years, many Democrats have grumbled about Feinstein’s eroding physical and mental capacity and reluctance to confront Republicans. Whatever else happens along the way, there’s little chance anyone will say the same about California’s next senator.

After years of drought, winter rains have brought some respite to the famous UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Eating out seems to have been as popular 5,000 years ago as it is today, with archaeologists in Iraq uncovering an ancient tavern dating back to 2,700 BCE.