The Democrats’ almost non-existent bench for 2020 creates opportunities for instant stardom in a party that is still reeling from losing what it was sure was a gimme in 2016.

Some of the most breathless speculation has been about the junior senator from California, Kamala Harris:

Sen. Kamala Harris is using her newfound progressive stardom to raise money for her Democratic colleagues — and amplifying buzz about the California freshman as a prospect for the party’s 2020 presidential nomination in the process.

In the first six months of 2017, Harris has raised more than $600,000 for a dozen Senate colleagues — including $365,000 from small-dollar online contributions, her aides said. The email list Harris has used to raise the bulk of that money is 10 times the size it was at this time last year, during her Senate campaign. She’s used that list to raise money for incumbents up for re-election in the 2018 cycle, including Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill, Montana Sen. Jon Tester and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren. Harris is also planning a travel schedule in the fall to raise money for Democratic Senate incumbents as well as the challengers for seven Republican-held House seats in California that the party is targeting.

Some of Sen. Harris’s popularity may be due to the fact that the Democrats are just thrilled to see someone under the age of seventy show up anywhere. Any charm she possesses certainly eludes me. I didn’t see it when she was my attorney general, and she certainly hasn’t gotten better as my senator.

Harris may be riding a wave of popularity but Dianne Feinstein — the senior senator from California, and oldest member of the Senate — just issued a bit of a “get off my lawn” regarding her new colleague