I was initially cautious about CA’s other senator, Kamala Harris, but her record to date has been quite satisfactory. She treats the Trump would-be authoritarian regime with open, incisive skepticism.
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From a purely strategic perspective, I do have my concerns about losing Dianne immediately before the all-important 2018/2020 elections - but from an ideological perspective, I’m kind of tempted to accept the risk in order to start cleaning the Republicans-lite from the Democratic Party.
Hillary crashed and burned largely because she looked and felt a lot like Dianne - a largely conservative candidate who thought that by occasionally paying lip service to low-impact, low-priority planks they could ignore the planks that big business (especially big finance and big military/surveillance) didn’t care for so much, but are becoming increasingly “single-issue vote” items for progressives, e.g. wealth inequality, abusive corporate-friendly laws, insane educational costs, burdening of the shrinking middle class with a disproportionate share of the tax burden (so the wealthy don’t have to pay their fair share), and so on.
Now that the GOP is probably on its last legs, especially if the Dems take over for the Census redistricting and do something about all the horrifying disenfranchisement laws the Republicans have been sliming onto the books for decades now, we have to be aware that all those dirty corporate dollars will be funneled straight into the Democrats’ pockets, and that will be too tempting by half for many people.
We’re going to have to be very aggressive in terms of holding the Dems to a tight set of standards for the foreseeable future, especially if the “blue wave” hits hard and knocks the Republicans down and out.
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I seem to recall that there was this big issue that prompted bombastic declarations just last week, on this very board; politicians who accepted donations from the NRA should not be supported by any means–it’s weird, because both HRC and DiFi have had very consistent stances on gun control (DiFi was the architect of the original 1994 assault weapons ban), but unless we’re in the immediate aftermath of some gun massacre, nobody really seems to give a shit.
It’s almost as if self-described progressives change their criteria for what counts as good-faith representation without regard for ideological consistency…
To be honest, and at risk of attracting massive flaming in the current political climate, I DGAF about gun control right now.
In terms of absolute social costs, it’s low. It’s worth addressing after things that really will kill a lot of Americans, like lack of access to health care or declining wages pushing more Americans into poverty or near-poverty.
You know, things that are harder to get worked up about and send inflammatory tweets over, getting easy “wins”, but that will turn us into a third-world nation relatively quickly if we don’t address them ASAFP.
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You mean like this:
And this:
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Just be glad they didn’t call her a “Democrat senator.”
She cracked down on escorts and declined to prosecute a particular bank. I’m sorry she doesn’t follow your particular policy agenda, but I’m tired of Republicans winning because Democrats eat their own.
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It’s also worth noting, in this context, that part of what enabled De León’s rise through the ranks in the State Assembly and State Senate has been constant working of the state party apparatus and executives. Feinstein’s career trajectory hasn’t depended on them, so she hasn’t made a habit of attending every precinct/city/county/state Dems meeting she can in an attempt to advance her career. The people who made this endorsement decision (or non-decision, as the case may be) are the same people who have aided De León’s career in the past.
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100% agree.
I’m okay with primaries that might push candidates to the left. But at the end of the day, our first and foremost concern is getting and keeping the arsonist Republicans out of the government until they’ve shown they can be trusted again. Which might be never.
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