am i losing my fucking mind. did every pundit just get together and decide this never happened 
of course Iowa and New Hampshire are wildly unrepresentative of the country, and their voting first is completely arbitrary. they also voted in the last two competitive primaries for the first black nominee, the first female nominee, and (pending) the first Jewish nominee
finally, there is no state that, were it the first to vote in the primary, Harris had the slightest chance of winning. that includes her home state, where she last polled half of Bernie's support.
but if you actually do want a state that's demographically similar to the country as a whole (and are not just cynically using this to pretend the primaries are rigged against the well-connected senator from the most populous state) the answer is Illinois (where Harris was at 3%)
