“It’s not like we left our health care on the bus or at the club or in an Uber,” she said at a home-state rally in Torrance on Monday. “This is not about losing something. They’re trying to take our health care.”

So when Ms. Harris ducks questions about her national ambitions — she has been rumored as one of many Democrats considering a presidential run in 2020 — the implication is quite clear.

“I’m absolutely not thinking about that at all,” she said on a podcast this year, when asked by David Axelrod whether she would rule out running on a national ticket in three years.

A lawyer might point out that this is a few beats short of a “no.”

In an article today in The New York Times, I took a look Ms. Harris’s first six months in the Senate and the complicated balancing act she faces as a freshman with great expectations and backbench status in the age of Trump.