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BoldProgressives.org, the website of the PAC for PCCC, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (associated with Sen. Elizabeth Warren), wants your money — and, as the fair price of reposting their interesting fundraising pitch, here’s their link for you if you’re so inclined. The first three paragraphs below are from yesterday’s bombshell report in The Intercept about a recording made of pressure tactics by Congress’s #2 Democrat, moderate -to-conservative Dem Steny Hoyer, to a progressive House Candidate to hound him out of the race:
Levi Tillemann, an author, inventor, and former official with the Obama administration’s Energy Department, moved back home to make a run against Coffman. He focused his campaign on clean elections, combating climate change, “Medicare for All,” free community college, and confronting economic inequality and monopoly power.
Another candidate for the nomination, Jason Crow, a corporate lawyer at the powerhouse Colorado firm Holland & Hart and an Army veteran, meanwhile, appeared to have the backing of the Democratic establishment, though it wasn’t explicit…
With Hoyer in Denver, Tillemann met the minority whip at the Hilton Denver Downtown to make the case that the party should stay neutral in the primary and that he had a more plausible path to victory than the same centrism that Coffman had already beaten repeatedly. Hoyer, however, had his own message he wanted to convey: Tillemann should drop out.
You should read the whole Intercept piece. The PCCC pitch continues:
They’re also doing it in a swing Nebraska district with a May 15th primary. The DCCC opposes progressive hero Kara Eastman — who is running on Medicare For All and decided to run after her mom had cancer and was paying $2,500 per pill for treatment. They’re backing Brad Ashford — a former Republican and corporate “New Democrat” who opposes many abortion rights in a district Trump only won by 1 point.
They’re also doing it in a key Pennsylvania district with a May 15th primary. The Washington Post reported: “Greg Edwards, a pastor running for a newly drawn swing seat told The Washington Post that the DCCC had approached local Democrats to ask whether he could be persuaded to seek another office. “As far as I know, they only targeted one candidate to leave this race — the most progressive candidate, the only candidate of color,” Edwards said. Greg is also running on Medicare For All.
Here’s more from the Intercept report on Colorado: “So your position is, a decision was made very early on before voters had a say, and that’s fine because the DCCC knows better than the voters of the 6th Congressional District, and we should line up behind that candidate,” asked Tillemann during the conversation. “That’s certainly a consequence of our decision,” responded Hoyer.
In all of these districts, progressive ideas are popular and give Democrats the best chance to win in November
Of course, in Orange County, “progressive” doesn’t mean what it does in most other places. It has come to mean some good things: a strong inclination to protect women’s rights and specifically reproductive rights, LGBT rights, some environmental issues, and “jobs” issues defined as slavish support for the positions of the Teamsters and Building Trades — and usually only perfunctory support (if at all) for the rest of the progressive agenda, which is largely anti-corporate, including anti-military-intervention. And so, people calling them “progressive” in OC are often perfectly happy with the DCCC and Blue Dogs — leaving those who would called themselves “progressive” in most other counties to have to identify themselves , frankly with greater precision and accuracy, as being democratic socialists. (I just prefer the term “leftist” because it’s broad enough that I shouldn’t have to quibble about particulars.)
The mask slipped a bit at last Monday’s DPOC meeting as Region 18 Director Deborah Skurnik, a “civility” advocate known for vituperative screaming tirades (and like me a supporter of John Chiang for Governor, which can be awkward), lit into various leftistish targets while trying to defer blame for what seems likely to be a humiliating slaughter of Democratic candidates in the Top Two primaries in less than 40 days. (More on that below.)
Skurnik, whose Region 18 Director race against Iyad Afalqa was protested for voting hinkiness — as was Region 17 Director Florice Hoffman’s against Mirvette Judeh, although appeals to the state party’s internal judicial body were, as usual, futile and unappealable — angrily demanded, upon pain of relentless persecution for crossing her, that delegates fall into line and personally endorse the endorsed candidates for Congress in the competitive races of CA-45 and CA-48. In 45, this means supporting endorsee Dave Min over leading rivals Katie Porter, Kia Hamadanchy, and Brian Forde; in 48, this means supporting endorsee Hans Keirstead over leading rivals Harley Rouda, Omar Siddiqi, and Rachel Payne.
This would have been a dramatic attempted extension of formal requirements for DPOC members. The DPOC Bylaws require that central committee members not endorse or work for opponents of endorsed candidates, nor disparage the nominees, but they don’t require affirmative statements from members in these areas in the face of an endorsement that a given delegate dislikes. Simple silence, as to a given race, will suffice.
(Nota bene: Given that some readers might wonder, the Orange County Young Democrats has the right to endorse contrary to the local party — and this year, it has done so at every opportunity. The choices of the party establishment seem clearly to be Mike Levin in CA-49 and either Gil Cisneros or Andy Thorburn in CA-39. And yet, on April 11, OCYD endorsed:
- Sam Jammal for California Congressional District 39
- Brian Forde for California Congressional District 45
- Omar Siddiqui for California Congressional District 48
- Sara Jacobs for California Congressional District 49)
Individual OCYD members who are also DPOC members can still be expelled from the DPOC for furthering OCYD recommendations in CDs 45 and 48 — but, as such punishment is discretionary and DPOC delegates generally don’t want to piss off the OCYD, punishing their members is unlikely. Similarly, no one was going to get ejected from the party for supporting Loretta Sanchez over Kamala Harris in the 2016 Senate primary. After all, as a party leader might ask — if party rules can’t be enforced arbitrarily, then what good are they?)
Skurnik supported her for demand members’ obedient compliance based on her own experience ten years ago, when she supported Hillary Clinton in the primaries over Barack Obama, yet had ultimately swallowed her feelings and came around to supporting Obama against John McCain. Good for her, although nothing we Californians do in voting for President has mattered in decades, given how entrenched we are in the electoral college — we might go red in some election, but we’d be among the last to do so, where it wouldn’t make a difference — so I wouldn’t feel upset if she’d followed her wishes and wrote in Hillary.
Of course there’s a big difference between the 2008 primary and 2018 — no one, least of all Hillary’s lawyer Lanny Breuer, had any credible argument that Obama had fixed a damn thing or cheated in any way during that process, and Obama as the non-establishment candidate would have been in no position to do so even if he had wanted to. (The leading procedural arguments for Hillary in that election were that Obama and the DNC had followed the rules. Obama had figured out exactly how and where to focus his efforts given the DNC rules of that year, largely by courting Democrats in red districts, who were given disproportionate power in choosing delegates — and Hillary’s advisor Mark Penn didn’t realize his mistake until it was too late. The DNC enforced delegate penalties against states such as Michigan and Florida who had “jumped the gun” in holding their contests — as they had been warned would happen. Pledged delegates were, in accordance with their rules, held to their pledges even though Hillary tried to get them to change their votes. In terms of procedure, giving into to any of Hillary’s demands would have constituted “cheating” — and the sorts of insider favoritism that drives people crazy about the political parties.
Hillary’s actual arguments with any arguable power were substantive ones — that she was better qualified, that he was too inexperienced, that its being “time for a woman” was more compelling than it being “time for a non-white” because there are more women than minorities. (I myself don’t endorse these notions, but they are at least more persuasive than “we shouldn’t follow the rules because Hillary has to win.”) As substantive arguments, though, the voters had already considered and rejected them — so as a democratic matter they were moot. Hillary’s supporters like Skurnick were arguing for reversing the result based on hurt feelings, not on fairness — and it’s fairness that is the sine qua non of democracy.
Contrast that with 2018 in Orange County — as well as California and the country generally. The party establishment is clearly — openly — biased against those who would try to wrest the power to determine the results of party contests and ultimately public elections from the party figures like Skurnick who have put in their time waiting to get to the point where they could muscle through the candidates of their choice.
- The elections of Skurnick and Hoffman — the latter of whom I’m getting along with pretty well these days for reasons neither of us can fathom, so I’m not saying this to be mean — were both challenged on procedural grounds, in terms of fairness in the process by which delegate-electors were admitted and the way the elections were run, to the benefit of Hillary-associated candidates and to the detriment of Berniecrat opponents. (I don’t even remember all of the details, but I know who does in case they become an issue here; I hope that rather than rehashing them we can just agree that there were controversies over both.)
- The state party Chair election was dirty — only time and cost have kept me from suing the party over it so far — and the presence of Eric Bauman (Hillary’s most effective advocate in California) as Chair has ensured that substantive reform is unthinkable and a purge of Berniecrats — and most critically changing the rules to make it far harder for Berniecrats to be competitive in the ADEM elections in early 2019.
- Most relevant, the endorsement caucuses in these districts have been accused of substantial unfairness — as was the ratification on one race, at the convention — and CDP Chair Bauman’s hand-picked internal judicial review commission is not at all inclined to seriously consider procedural challenges on grounds of fairness. (More on that in a separate post tomorrow.)
Given all of that, Regional Director Skurnick’s lambasting of any delegates still refusing to personally endorse endorsed candidates Min and Keirstead — and Lord do I wish that I had video of that spectacle to post here for you to view, but DPOC (unlike its Republican counterpart) prohibits videorecording of its meetings for understandable even if unjustifiable reasons, especially to address moments such as this — was most likely met with a hardening of attitudes against her position. (I’m going to use unusual amounts of discretion in not translating the reactions I saw around the room into words. Sadly for my party, they will become evident in time — although mostly in the non-participation that will allow leaders like Skurnick to stay in their positions.)
It’s arrogant party insiders who are most responsible for the public’s unfavorable view of both major parties, and their demand to reject democratic reforms (because that’s what procedural fairness most requires) — which were surmounted on the Republican side in 2016 with the advent of President Trump, who while no kind of real populist or even conservative still holds the key to the hearts of the utterly mad Republican electorate — which won the 2016 election in much the targeted way that Obama won the 2008 primary.
The machinations described in the earlier part of this story are exactly the sort of thing that lead most voters to retch at Democratic politics and impede most potentially powerful activists from putting in their hard time and effort to elect people who are committed not to do the right things, either procedurally or substantively, if elected. The arrogance of declaring that the refusal of people to go along with the results of what they see as a slanted — not entirely fixed, but fixed enough — system is the fault of the followers rather than the fault of the leaders is wonderful for advancement within the party and poison for making connections and motivating electoral activism outside the party. People just don’t want to volunteer time for people whom they don’t like or trust — and (at least on the Democratic side) who will put the interests of big donors far ahead of those of Big Numbers of Voters.
People don’t want to feel like chumps. The attitudes of the Democratic Party from the DNC down to the DPOC and its clubs — that it is the party leaders’ province to command and “all decent peons” province to obey — is just not going to do the job. It may work in California at the state level only because so many conservatives have fled, but it won’t work in races that aren’t big enough to be fought over the airwaves, and that can’t be won by activists too high a proportion of which are members of Young Democrats — here, by the way, being asked to carry flyers and promote messages against their own endorsements, and how do you think that is going to turn out?
It was in this spirit that I argued in the March endorsement meeting, almost alone, against endorsing Joe Kerr, despite my liking him personally. (I have no idea which candidate has the best chance to win.) There was simply too much disagreement on the ground to come to a consensus on what election materials would be distributed. Our #1 goal, as I argued — or tried to argue, I don’t recall anymore when it was that Chair Fran Sdao shuts me down — was to get people out there to support Josh Newman and the recall, and to post signs on their back (metaphorically) advertising for a candidate that they don’t prefer was simply going to lead them not to come out and work for him through the party.
“Bigfooting” — forcing people to carry and convey messages that they don’t like, and committing to endorse candidates that they oppose, because one can — may be within the rights of the party, but when the leadership has intentionally disengaged itself from the popular vote, it is STUPID, STUPID, STUPID — and if Josh Newman loses, a main reason why will be that supporters of Rose Espinoza, Cynthia Aguirre, and lame Doug Chaffee aren’t going to want to carry water for Joe Kerr. The party leaders honestly think that their earned right to tell people how to vote in the Supervisor’s race outweighs the need to defeat the recall election. (They don’t see it that way, of course, but I think that they are highly motivated not to think it through.)
I’ll have more to say about this month’s meeting — particularly Vice Chair Diana Carey’s lambasting former CA-48 candidate Laura Oatman because she didn’t withdraw from the race in time to remove her name from the ballot, and will thus continue to some degree to split the Democratic vote, although I think that this would be considered far less of an offense if she hadn’t endorsed Harley Rouda and encouraged other candidates, of whom only Michael Kotick has agreed so far, to do the same — sometime next month.
For now, I’ll just point out that if my party continues to rig the system to make it far harder for someone like Bernie Sanders to win our Presidential nomination, or for Kimberly Ellis to win the Chair’s election — and for Doug Applegate to win the CA-49 seat, and on and on — then we’re going to keep on losing in places where our overwhelming registration advantage doesn’t prohibit it. And Orange County is the prime place where that will happen. I don’t want it to happen, but tin-earned inward-looking groupthink-saturated arrogance and cluelessness-fueled hubris makes it seem pretty much inevitable.
No, wait, I’ll foreshadow one more point from that piece-to-come:
Parties can contribute much to preventing this sort of logjam in California — starting by sponsoring the repeal of the Top Two primary system, which the major parties won’t do because the disruptive effect of the minor parties more than they do each other — but it’s by being the opposite of a “bigfoot” as depicted above, both nationwide and in Orange County.
Pushing around candidates who think that the party has ripped them off is not going to work — as you’d think that the DPOC would have learned when then-Chair Henry Vandermeir failed (thank God) to hector Josh Newman to leave the State Senate race against charmless and gormless carpetbagger Sukhee Kang. (Nahh — if you really think that the DPOC leaders would have learned that lesson, reread the article again.)
The party has two things to offer: (1) the moral suasion that comes from being a fair broker and (2) the ability to aggregate money from various sources to do big things. In January of freaking 2017, at the first DPOC meeting of the cycle (held in the Teamster’s Hall), I spoke to this, suggesting that we work with candidates in Congressional races to have them let us do their viability polling, through credible organizations, in large enough amounts and with sufficient input so that each candidate could be satisfied that they had had their say. Agreeing to this, which would be supervised by professional pollsters not doing the polls and with candidate representatives submitting information as to how to conduct the polls, could have been made a requirement for being eligible for the DPOC endorsement. Part of the deal would be that, within limits agreed upon in advance, candidates who failed to pass a test of viability would agree not to file until the end of the filing deadline, and not to file if they didn’t surmount the hurdles posed. Another part, though, would be that each candidate would have gotten all of the data, to guide them in the primary (if they did run) and beyond.
“This would be expensive,” I was told — to which I said that failing to do this would be even more expensive in the end . (That was a good call; we’re only Greg Raths having run against Mimi Walters in CA-45 for this to have been pretty much my worst-case scenario going into June, and if we get shut out of all four Congressional races — the odds of which I’d once put at 1%, but which I now think is just under 10% — and becoming a national laughingstock and fiscal sinkhole this year will make our party radioactive for a long time.)
But to be honest, it probably wouldn’t have mattered, because to get the candidates on board DPOC would have first had to have achieved a reputation that it had done everything to avoid: it had to be trusted as an “honest broker.” DPOC doesn’t want to be an honest broker, and neither does DCCC. Both want to be “Bigfoot,” arrogating unto themselves the right to determine how everyone else acts.
But imagine for a moment that DPOC had somehow achieved such a valuable reputation, and could put together a poll for each district with enough versions to serve both as a legitimate poll and as a push poll for and against each candidate, if that’s what they really wanted to see. A ridiculously high 4,000 respondents in ought to have done the trick, giving each of eight candidates their own 500-person poll, plus a core of questions on which each candidate would have 4,000 responses, enough to allow for substantial analyses by city and subgroup. This would have cost the candidates less money than they spent on their individual, disgustingly slanted push polls, designed to get them the headline they needed for their advertisements. (I think that I answered about four — one each for Janowitz, Cisneros, Thorburn, and one in which it wasn’t obvious. It was clear each time exactly how the pollsters were going to give the candidates the bullshit that they so badly wanted to see.)
We might — we might — have been able to get candidates to do what Jay Chen and Phil Janowitz did in CA-39: drop out of the race before they signed on the dotted line as a candidate, thus irretrievably commiting to split the vote. Only really good, believable data — from an unimpeachable source — could have achieved that end. But DCCC and DPOC are both un-unimpeachable sources, ones that don’t make their decisions about viability based on what the data say that voters want, but based on their own untested (or even tested-and-rejected) theories that what voters hate most is anything that smacks of democratic socialism and that what voters want most is a perfumed pig in a poke who won’t commit to anything controversial, however much people like it — because that offends big donors.
DPOC leaders are not the main problem here; they’re mostly following the lead of both the DCCC (in Congressional races) and CDP. But at those higher levels, at least, we are led by either imbeciles or knaves whose expertise lies in claiming credit, displacing blame, and currying favor among the like-minded. It’s especially bad in California because they can be imbecilic knaves and win anyway, until they get down to a certain level of Republican competitiveness in a district (such as is true almost everywhere in OC.) There, they are center-hugging, activist-phobic, rights-and-rules-repelling jokes — whose main success, deriving from their embeddedness into the system, is to prevent the emergence of anything better.
It wouldn’t be so much of a tragedy if we didn’t need banking reform and Medicare-for-All, and a war against greenhouse gases, and so much else. But we do — and they will block candidates who favor them — and so a tragedy it is and a tragedy it will remain.
This is your Weekend Open Thread. Talk about that, or whatever else you’d like, within reasonable bounds of decorum and discretion.
Sort of reminds us of the movie Reds…..where the Commies buy out or get rid of the competition…..and take charge in spite of the will of the people. The Trotskyites were
taken out….. and there you go.
The Progressive movement does not include massive bans on all assault style firearms.
The Progressive movement does include big changes to Healthcare and Drug Pricing in
this country. The Progressive movement includes dealing with Pension and Social
Obligations to the people we have promised it to. The Progressive movement includes
Immigration Reform, including the DACA passage. The Progressive movement does
not include Republican Kingmakers buying out and making Democrat opponents turncoats. The Progressive movement includes great personal freedom protections from a bad EPA, Big Oil, Big Agra, Big Chema and protects the quality of life for all people…just for starters. The Trumpster has no qualms about taking credit for anything that goes well, including the peace in the Asian Theater. Ridiculous. We will all have to be vigilant and dedicated to making sure that every Democrat running assumes the Progressive Mantel. No Joe Manchin’s, Heidi Heitcamps, Joe Donnelly’s. These are sellouts worse than the obvious Republican dupes..being paid off. Not to worry, the Parkland kids will figure it out and let us know….”That we should be doing the Right Thing!” every time…..not just when it suits us.
As an OC newcomer, much of the county seems like ‘unwinnable’ red zones – so looking at other ‘unwinnable’ races seems a fair starting point: Doug Jones (a thoroughly moderate Blue Dog) v. Hiral Tipirneni (slightly more progressive) – one won, one ‘lost well.’ Until I see better evidence, that’s gotta be the conclusio
If progressive/moderate breaks down to numbers, minimum wage is the best measure: ‘moderates’ (Obama/Clinton) push for a $12/minimum – ‘progressives’ for $15. Yet the federal minimum remains $7.25: Reps easily play the moderates v. the progressives and get one or the other to stay home time and again. Perhaps they do the same to unions, time and again – splintering a few they can coopt so they can better gouge the ones they cannot.
“It wouldn’t be so much of a tragedy if we didn’t need banking reform and Medicare-for-All, and a war against greenhouse gases, and so much else. ”
No argument on the goals, but perhaps on the tactics. To me, the first task is getting the rules on the books out into the real world, then tweaking those rules as needed. The game now is different than it was generations ago when Dems could mount a series of progressive goals, and gradually improve upon them – now there are Republican saboteurs who get well-paid jobs and massive publicity simply by ‘killing’ good rules.
Take, for example, federal clemency programs. Obama wanted prison reform – but he knew many folks in line-positions would be hunting for their ‘Willie Horton moment’ to torpedo the whole effort. The only way to start getting anything done on the bigger cause would be setting a policy, drawing vast community buy-in, testing the capabilities, a painstaking process of gradualism (which gradually ousted the self-promoting saboteurs from federal offices they held).
So too for immigration, environment, federal contractor rules, civil rights rules, banking, etc. Start the ‘revolution’ without fixing the executive, and you face backlash far greater than that which very nearly sabotaged ObamaCare in its earliest outing – and worse, the real possibility of not just gutting the enforcement ranks, but killing off entire institutions.
Here is some “Weekend Open Thread” material, unrelated to the topic of this post, though it might belong in one of the “Anaheim economy” posts.
Check this out: http:// extras.mercurynews.com/blame/
The link is to an interesting article on the market failure for providing housing in the Bay Area — but I suspect that it has some value for thinking about the subject here in OC and environs as well.
The essential point is this: when, in search of jobs, municipal governments (city or county) approve an office expansion — which includes, in our case, such things as opening additional gates for Disneyland — they generally fail to require a workable plan to ensure that there will be sufficient place to house the new employees (and, generally, their families.)
That’s how you get a housing shortage and the high — even community killing — rents and housing prices that accompany it. It happens at the local government level. (Of course, when local governments are dominated by the interests that they regulate — see, for example, Anaheim and Disney — then the employers shoulder more of the blame.)
We make a fetish of bringing new jobs to the county — and in most instances wanting to bring new jobs to ones area makes sense. But — when the consequences are that we don’t have enough housing, schools, traffic infrastructure, etc. to accommodate the workers, then bringing in new jobs can, counterintuitively, be a bad thing.
Governments are supposed to weigh that and arrange for accommodation before approving the deals. (Even libertarians should recognize that regulation is appropriate given a market failure.) And they generally do a poor job of it.
Right now, the de facto plan for additional Disney workers is, in essence, “they’ll live in Corona or Hemet and commute in” — which is nuts, and which (given the lack of effective and affordable rapid transit) hurts everyone. What should have happened, when Disney wanted to open the Star Wars gate, is that the City Council should have said “OK, but you need to figure out how we’re going to house them — which could entail Disney building (itself or through a third party) low-cost housing for its employees.” This condition is not necessarily even an economic loser for Disney; they could price such housing at a point where they’d expect to break even, including amortizing the costs of construction and maintenance, over say 20 years.
That’s how to do it. We choose not to. As a result, people get priced out of OC.
Greg: The incentives for municipalities tend to be fairly consistent: “Bring in jobs, BUT NOT RESIDENTS!” They favor ‘investor housing’ (million dollar homes and apartments relatively few people actually live in) – rather than messier, more demanding ‘family’ housing (homes that require schools, roads, sewage, etc.).
For city managers, that means ‘housing’ favoring young, single, disposable workers without children who can pay a fortune for a corner of a closet in hopes of eventually ‘getting ahead’ – who will move out if they eventually start their own family and start needing services. When cities are run like businesses, they favor extracting as much value at as low a cost as possible from their assets (tax paying residents – not children).
As a result,
-urban progressives favor overthrowing the basic system – it was set up to exploit and discard them – so rent control, wage hikes help
-moderates favor retaining the basic system, but rectifying its worst faults (maybe we can build a better freeway and cut that commute a bit?)
-conservatives favor exploiting the system as it exists
Unless progressives pull in moderates, conservatives crush them. FDR needed his Dixiecrats and Republican progressives to get anywhere – when he moved too far beyond them, he lost.
Instead of compelling Disney to build houses, I’d favor compelling them to distribute at least some of the gains from the subsidies back to their own workers. That tells moderates, “Hey, I’m not about to come after you and upset your whole job structure. We’re just gonna make right something we made wrong with these guys.” If those workers really like Disney, they’ll try to find ways to move a bit closer to it on their own – and if someone is restricting inventories to block that, that’s where my eye would focus.
You may be entirely right about the incentives for municipalities. If so, however, that is an example of “market failure” — due to its negative externalities, meaning consequences for entities other than the parties to the transaction — and as such is a prime example of where regulation is needed, which I’ve accordingly proposed. (I’m not going to address the moderates/FDR stuff just so as to not get further off point. Another time!)
You have come up with a novel argument for the minimum wage boost, though — if only it could be applied to Disney!
Agreed re market failure, and that rectifying it requires considering the interests and obligations of third parties neglected by current operation of the failed market.
But I do have another reason to prefer wages over housing as the remedy for Anaheim. Assume Disney is compelled to build 500 housing units in exchange for the subsidies/permits/etc. Who will they turn to to get those units built and placed on the market? Wouldn’t they turn to the same vendors/developers/players who are already restricting the market? Do you trust Anaheim governance to prevent that sort of market constraint from growing even tighter?
Sometimes, the hardest task in addressing negative externalities is finding the ones who benefit from them, and depriving them of some portion of the benefits they’ve reaped.
As for the moderates/FDR stuff, I’ll enjoy the conversation. I was trying to link two related but distinct observations of yours together: one on housing, one on the Democratic establishment. I believe there’s a link that can be made, but probably failed to do so effectively here.
http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/opinion/the-conversation/sd-false-claims-california-bill-ban-bible-sales-spreads-online-20180426-htmlstory.html
I’m not arguing that Republicans should vote for John Cox for Governor, but Travis Allen is truly an irresponsible scumbag, as these “DEMS ARE BANNING THE BIBLE” rumors he’s fanning attest. Anyone who endorses him — which is a pretty small number — should be ashamed.
Still clearing out saved tabs that were once intended to become full-fledged articles. This one fits in with the theme of the above post, though!
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/democratic-bot-network-sally-albright_us_5aa2f548e4b07047bec68023
I continue to be surprised about people’s impression that Dave Min is less desirable as a potential Representative. The reason Dave is popular — leasing to his winning straw polls and squeaking through with the endorsement — is because starting a year ago February, I saw him for the first time out among people (it was our first really huge Indivisible meeting) asking questions, listening, introducing himself. Before it was time to sign on officially as a candidate, he had already attended dozens of local meetups and coffees and every time, he had a larger group with him, ready to volunteer. Dave tended to listen more than talk. My own impression is that he is every bit as “progressive” as the other candidates, and Democrats have gotten to know him personally and believe in him, but he has taken the measure of the electorate, and without compromising his principles, he is running to win in the District as it exists, not as we all wish it to be. So, he says “universal healthcare” and not “single payer.” Of course they are not synonymous, but certainly one doesn’t cancel the other out — and the reality is, that just holding on to ACA will be quite an accomplishment, at least until 2020. “The Dad agenda” sounds pretty square, but it will appeal to many Irvine voters.
I can understand that people have their own favorites, and would have liked them to get the endorsement. In the 45th, I think it might have been better not to have an endorsement, and I would be against Indivisible endorsing in the 45th, although I think they should in the other Districts where there is no guarantee that a Democrat will be on the November ballot. Indivisible endorsements may be more valuable than Democratic ones.
To another topic. I’m certainly glad to see I’m not the only John Chiang enthusiast. I have been waiting for years for John to run for governor, and now it is so disappointing to see the person who is most qualified to be a really solid governor — someone who was actually featured in the New Yorker as one of their profiles in political courage — so far down in the list. I give Gavin Newsome kudos for kick-starting the Gay marriage movement, but aside from being Mayor of SF, what is his practical experience? His office is one where the only role is to be on boards, and it seems he doesn’t even bother to attend meetings! John Chiang has taken every “boring” office he has held and turned it into a job that benefits the people of California, whether its holding workshops for non-profits on how to turn in their financial reports when he was on the Board of Equalization, returning money to people that they left in savings accounts, and battling TurboTax so low income people could do their taxes free, or just lately, being the first to try to find a way for Marijuana businesses to do their banking. When we lose John in government it will be a huge loss, in my opinion. As the LA Times said in a recent editorial, John Chiang is a work horse rather than a show horse. California is still a work in progress, and a work horse is exactly what we need, especially as we battled Trump to hold on to what we have achieved.
Sharon, I’m not allowed to criticize endorsed candidate Min without endangering my Central Committee membership, but I presume that I’m allowed to explain why there’s so much objection to him. One issue is ideological and the other is temperamental.
Ideologically, Min in generally held to be the most conservative of the major candidates: while Katie Porter (whom I don’t support either) was a Liz-Warren-aiding proponent of stronger banking regulations while working on Capitol Hill, Min was reportedly working against them. He’s supposedly not only favored by but affiliated with Blue Dog and corporate financial interests. This may come as a shock to some, but I don’t necessarily oppose “nominating” (de facto, not de jure) a candidate who takes less progressive positions and doesn’t necessary jump to the tune of leftist activists in terms of nomenclature. (I don’t always fall into line on nomenclature either. For example, I have criticized the term “sanctuary” for DACA and others here and elsewhere partly because it’s needlessly off-putting and partly because it’s a blithe promise that we can’t, and don’t even really intent to, keep — and thus invites a false sense of security among its intended beneficiaries.) I think that progressive positions on such issues are actually more popular than our party’s default pantomiming and do-nothingism, but for Min to disagree on that would be a simple policy disagreement rather than for anything to get agitated about. It’s the Lou Correas, Jose Solorios, Jordan Brandmans, and Tom Dalys — who given their districts easily COULD take more progressive positions but don’t (because that’s not where the donor money is), for whom I have contempt.
To me, the bigger issue with Min is temperament. He and Porter are routinely accused of meanness and nastiness of a kind that is never alleged of Forde and Kia. The reports — from Forde, Kia, Octavia Tuohey, and others — of his using physical force to block people who were actually or merely suspected of trying to collect signatures at the convention to reverse his endorsement is something that I think that the party should have taken very seriously — but didn’t because Chair Bauman blocked it, an act that I have been appealing (perhaps pointlessly, given CDP procedures) within the state party’s bureaucracy.
Is there a reason that you wouldn’t consider those temperamental issues serious? Does it matter to you that among the people accused of harassment and blocking people’s paths are two women and one man in a wheelchair? If the idea is that yes it’s bothersome but we shouldn’t discuss it because Mimi Walters has people discussing this blog, I would invite you to apply the same logic to complaints against male candidate for sexual harassment and violence. One should not be expected to shut up about the likes of that, consequences be damned. Agreed?
The saddest part of this whole affair is that Barnie was not and is not a Democratic party member. I loved the old guy at first but his phallocratic self-righteous followers refused to support the Dem candidate. No wonder the DPOC rightly dumps the author from any leadership role. I am sure history will record the election of Tramp as partly due to ancient self- righteous college lefties still acting as if they were Trotsky.
You’re an idiot as well as an anonymous coward.
Bernie is not a party member, which doesn’t matter because the party is devoted to preventing the nomination of his like, even in opposition to its own rules. If you don’t know this, you’re not paying attention.
Bernie is, however, a highly respected and effective member of the Senate Democratic caucus, and represents a critical part of the Democratic electorate — which is what matters most.
I endorsed Hillary in swing states. What people did with their own votes in California didn’t matter. Bernie’s presence or absence in the race didn’t matter as well, as the mass numbers of people who thought that Hillary was inauthentic and skeevy were not going to vote for her at all, as is clear from the number of people in swing states who wrote in Bernie’s name on their ballots even though he was begging them not to do so. Many people see their vote as an expression of their deep commitments — sort of like how many people feel about whom they will have sex with. Telling them to just take what they’re offered doesn’t work — especially when the offer comes without the lubricant of respect for their opinions.
The DPOC dumped me from my Vice-Chair position — against its own rules and with not even a nod towards due process, naturally — because I was the only person there raising effective opposition (mostly in the form of trying to get the organization to follow parliamentary rules) to its despotic Chair. If that offends you, then you are part of the reason that the party is held in such low esteem that it couldn’t even beat Donald Trump. If history books are published by those with the most money — as it usually is — then of course it will blame everyone except those actually responsible.
Use your real name next time. Unlike Liberal OC, we don’t allow nasty anonymous attacks here. I’m not going to make an exception for attacks on myself, except perhaps when they come from people who — unlike you — shouldn’t know better.
OK, I’ve reviewed your comment history. You clearly know how to comment without being an asshole — and it looks like you’re mostly mad about the refusal to fall into line over Dave Min, in a race that seems to have driven everyone involved instane — so I’ll retract some of the vitriol above. Go back to being critical without being an asshole and you’re welcome here. If not, and if you don’t use your real name, you can still stay — but some of your comments might not. Maybe put the stupid shit into its own comment so the worthwhile commentary doesn’t get tossed out with the black water.
“I am sure history will record the election of Tramp as partly due to ancient self- righteous college lefties still acting as if they were Trotsky.”
It might. History is still grappling with whether Nader played a meaningful role in bringing Bush Jr to power – facts have been gathered, opinions still diverge. My personal history? I stayed out of that fight, and just about every other, until this year because there’s too much at stake.
Whatever history says, unless Democrats unite behind a candidate in the 39th, they’ll likely face a choice between a 90% Trumpist v. a 110% Trumpist. We can all feel irate about the past; the question is, what to do about our present and future?
Greg, you have misquoted my comments. I said it is inaccurate for anyone to be congratulating Laura Oatman and Michael Kotick for getting out of the Congressional race because their names appear on the ballot. Most voters will not know they have dropped out, thus they will dilute our ability to procure one or both of the top two spots for the November election. All they did is suspend their campaigns. Candidates such as Phil Janowitz are the ones who should receive our praise for putting the greater good over their personal egos.
Diana: Candidates such as Phil Janowicz deserve credit for prudence and the good sense to see the light when it makes the most difference. But the others who pull out can still do some good, even though you’re surely right that most voters will just see a wash of names, and have no idea which means what (and probably vote based on the party first, then based on the # of signs they’ve seen). If only more of them read the Orange Juice Blog!
Diana, are you under the impression that the candidates who have now withdrawn could necessarily have chosen to exit the race at ANY time before the end of filing at 5 p.m. on March 9? Or, put otherwise, when it the LAST moment that you believe each of the candidates COULD have removed their name from the ballot — as opposed to, as the only other option, suspending their campaign? As of what point does your criticism of them go into effect? And do you know whether they had the information about the composition of the field at that point that we have now?
If you know the answers to those questions, then you’ll know that your criticism of them is unclear — except insofar as it is ex post facto.
Suspending one’s campaign is not AS GOOD AS not being on the ballot, but it is certainly better than nothing — and at some point it is the best that one can do. I wish that two hopeless candidates in CA-39 — Sam Jammal and Mai Khanh Tran — would suspend their campaigns right now. It’s far from perfect, but at least it would be BETTER than what we likely have it store — and I’d give them my heartfelt thanks for doing so.
Only one publication in the county other than the Registrar’s Office itself was keeping close track of this information AT THE TIME IT WAS HAPPENING, WHEN IT MATTERED — and you’re commenting on it. I’d tell you specifically what we did here at the time, but that would give away the answers to the above questions — and I’m sincerely curious as to whether you know the answers.
By the way: Janowitz also lost $160,000 and his teaching tenure by pursuing his campaign — and by dropping out he lost any chance to recoup that money by winning. (He had a better shot than Jammal and Tran do.) He needs a hell of a lot more than praise right now; I hope that you’ll use your power and connections to help make him whole, given your justified appreciation of his nobility.
Except that what Phil did wasn’t brave, it was SMART.
He had the baggage of Erik Taylors sex scandal that would do him in (and still might affect swing voters).
I don’t understand why people don’t get this or want to address the ugly truth, that is out there.
It could have been both brave and smart. I think it was both — but because he wouldn’t have had the money to compete in November even had he won, not because he first hired and then fired Erik.
If we presume that Erik was substantially engaged in wrongdoing, then Phil really had no way of knowing about it ahead of time — and when he did found out about it he quickly took appropriate action. That was not going to hurt him — if anything, that sort of “zero tolerance” policy would have been appealing.
But I don’t presume that Erik did anything outside of the law OR the norms of political office behavior. First, I don’t know what you mean by a “sex scandal” — the only “sexual” acts I know of presumably occurred between him and the women who fell in love with him after discarding her well-connected political boyfriend. Most of the rest involved an alleged “hostile work environment” created by alleged sharing of lewd and profane jokes with staffers and volunteers — yet I’ve seen no evidence definitively (or even persuasively) tying those act to him. (There were anonymous online accusations, sure. If you know of more, you’re welcome to contact me.) And I hate to burst anyone’s bubble, but those sorts of things have happened among Young Democrats and in political and campaign officers for a long time, before the sudden consciousness-raising of last year. (The head of the OC Young Dems seems to have acknowledged this, but hasn’t responded to requests for specific clarification — perhaps because someone’s objective of punishing Erik had been accomplished and there was no taste for actually getting into that issue.) Campaign flings are commonplace, and they don’t happen based on someone asking the candidate for formal permission to court another staffer; they usually come about from an environment of sexualized banter. Anyone with campaign office experience or Young Dems experience want to deny that? (I will say that the few times that I’ve run a campaign office, I’ve taken the male staffers aside and told them that I would destroy them if they pulled any illegal shit on anyone involved with the campaign, volunteers included, and I’ve told females that they could report anything improper to me directly or to a specific female staffer if they preferred. Presuming that all such violation would be male on female was admittedly somewhat sexist of me, as its not all that happens, but it’s what I was most concerned about.)
The one accusation seemed more than normally awful involved detaining some young woman, but he has denied it and I’ve heard NOTHING beyond rumor substantiating it. Overall, my own sense — certainly I’m not speaking for the party one bit — is that DPOC and OCYD did not acquit themselves well in whatever investigation occurred there. This will lead to Chumley and his anonymous troll farm accusing me of anti-woman bias — because I’m a big fan of the #metoo movement but not a big fan of the #IBelieveHer movement because I’m an attorney and I know VERY WELL how much women AND men will lie when it suits them — but they would NEVER apply that supposed criticism to accusations against anyone whom they liked, so they are safely ignored. I believe in due process. I believe that Phil, as an employer, did not owe Erik “due process” given that his continued presence might have affected his campaign (given an organized drive to harm Erik), although I may have other critiques of his response that I won’t share here.
I’d be HAPPY to talk to you by phone or email about the “ugly truth, that” you contend “is out there” — but while it’s ugly, I’m not convinced that it is truth — and I suspect that there are other truths behind the efforts to ruin him that are ugly themselves but that (depending on who your friends are) you might not to see published. I’ve not pursued this story thus far, having thought “what’s the point?” after Erik’s firing — although, given that Mike Levin is running for office, maybe I should rethink the relevancy of the history of sexual hijinks within OCYD a decade or so ago — but I’m open to doing so. I’ll write you, unless you ask me not to do so, so that you know how to contact me.
And thanks for writing. I know you ended up unpublished for a while, but that was not due to my actions.
Finally, I didn’t “quote” your comments at all — note the absence of quotation marks — I merely “characterized” or “paraphrased” them. I don’t think that I MIScharacterized them, either — although I’m curious to know why I think you did.
The part where I say that I thought you’d be less bent out of shape about her if she had endorsed Keirstead rather than Rouda was not a “characterization” of your comments at all, but a “commentary” on them.
I’m glad that Rachel Payne got out of the race yesterday, by the way — even though she had a pathway to victory and dropping out before finding out if she would have won must have absolutely killed her. YOU want to spit in her face — as you did Laura Oatman — for not having done it back on mumble-mumble date, when it could have meant that she wouldn’t be on the ballot.
Do you ever wonder why so many people other than the ones at meetings have such contempt for the local party and its officials? Could it perhaps involve a tendency to kick people in the ass on one of the worst days of their lives?