Willie Brown’s confession lands like a verdict on an entire political life. He saw in Kamala Harris a brilliant advocate, a meticulous legal mind better suited to the precision of arguments than the chaos of executive power. To him, the attorney general’s office and ultimately the Supreme Court were not consolation prizes but the truest expression of her gifts, a quieter path to historic influence. Instead, she chose the bright, brutal theater of electoral politics, where every misstep is magnified and every strength must survive the glare.

Now, stripped of office and inevitability, Harris stands at a crossroads her mentor predicted but could not prevent. The glamour of the national stage has faded into doubts, polls, and second-guessing. Yet Brown’s alternate future still lingers: a different kind of power, earned not by rallies and rope lines, but by the force of her judgment, if she dares to redraw her own story.