California politicians want a bigger say in who will be the nominee for president from their respective parties.  To that end, they have moved their presidential primary from early June to March 3.

The impact of the move will be gigantic.  Many Democrats have been complaining for years that Iowa and New Hampshire are not "representative" of the electorate as a whole.  Reading between the lines, Democrats didn't like the idea that middle class-white people had such a large influence on who would be running for president.

While California is certainly more "diverse" than either of the early primary states, it is also far more left-wing – radical, even – than the rest of the electorate.

In effect, Democrats will be giving enormous – perhaps decisive – influence to the far left wing of their party.

Wall Street Journal:

California's calendar change is one of several developments reshaping Democrats' primary process.  Following the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary – two predominately-white electorates that are the traditional vetters of presidential candidates – at least six of the next nine states on the 2020 calendar will take Democrats through a swath of states where black and Hispanic Democrats dominate primary elections, including Texas.

The anticipated size of the presidential candidate field could also upend traditional primary dynamics.  President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton won the 2008 and 2016 Democratic nominations due to consolidated support from Southern black women.  In 2020, two African-Americans are planning campaigns, and other would-be candidates have spent parts of the last year stumping with such high-profile black gubernatorial candidates such [sic] as Stacey Abrams in Georgia and Andrew Gillum in Florida.

The geography for primaries will likely mean the voters critical to winning the presidential nomination will be considerably different from the electorate that carried the party to sweeping victories in the 2018 midterm elections, when Democrats flipped 40 House Republican seats and regained the chamber's majority.

While 2018 congressional candidates focused on health care and targeted educated suburban voters, candidates in 2020 must appeal to a far more diverse group in the nation's cities.

"There will be a need to discuss issues of racial inequality," said Matt Barreto, the co-founder Latino Decisions, a polling firm.  "People are disgusted with the way that they are being talked about in such hostile racial language. ... It has to do with being respected and being wanted in the Democratic community."

The emphasis will now be on early, early fundraising and organization-building on a scale not seen before.  It is ruinously expensive to run a statewide campaign in California with so many major media markets.  Choosing 40% of the delegates to the convention in the first three weeks of the campaign will probably mean a lot of dropouts even before the Iowa caucuses.  Making a splash in the debates will be critical to a candidate's viability.

The move favors candidates with the best name recognition and rewards candidates who can corner the largest number of big donors.

And Senator Kamala Harris.

The California senator will be the primary beneficiary of the earlier primary.  It won't matter as much where she finishes in Iowa and New Hampshire with her home state primary looming over both of those contests. 

It will be interesting to see candidates moving farther and farther left in order to do well in California while perhaps turning off Democratic voters in the South and the heartland.  Any way you look at it, the Democratic nominee to take on Donald Trump will probably be the most liberal candidate in the party's history.