The Democratic National Convention turns out to be a tale of two Californians – Vice President Kamala Harris becoming her party’s standard-bearer; Governor Gavin Newsom left out of the speakers’ lineup (other than a two-minute cameo during the roll-call vote).

Hoover senior fellow Lee Ohanian and distinguished policy fellow Bill Whalen, both contributors to Hoover’s California on Your Mind web channel, join Hoover senior product manager Jonathan Movroydis to discuss in the Golden State including Harris and Newsom’s reversals of fortune, the Golden State’s struggles with job-retention, plus whether a Harris presidency can succeed where a Newsom governorship seems destined to fail (she wants to build three million new homes nationally in her first term; Newsom is far behind on his downsized goal of 2.5 million new California homes by the decade’s end).

As Kamala Harris attempts to succeed where fellow Californian Richard Nixon fell short in 1960 – win the White House as a sitting vice president amidst a complicated economy – she takes a page from the Nixon presidency and wades into what government can do about the high cost of goods and services (specifically, food prices). Economist David Henderson, a Hoover Institution fellow and a I Blog to Differ commentator, explains what Nixon attempted a half-century ago and what Harris suggested in her pre-convention economics address. Henderson also explains the difference between price controls and curbing price-gouging plus the economic consequences of the federal government imposing its will on the free market.

For the past two weeks, after Hezbollah rockets struck a Golan Heights town and Israel forces retaliated with strikes on targets in Beirut and Tehran, the world is bracing for further violence in the Middle East, fearing the conflict will escalate into a regional war. Meanwhile, the Biden Administration presses for a cease-fire agreement in Gaza.

Hoover Institution fellow Cole Bunzel, who studies history and contemporary affairs of the Islamic Middle East, makes sense of Iran’s retaliatory timeline, discusses Israel’s options both militarily and diplomatically, and notes that a lame-duck American president (again) is trying to broker a Middle East peace arrangement amidst an election year; plus the prospects of a “mega” deal involving a US-Saudi bilateral treaty, Saudi-Israeli normalization, and possibly a road to Palestinian statehood.