The progressive wing of the Democratic Party may be years ahead of the reality that might just become the overall direction of the American body politic. A time when even college-educated Americans may face extreme difficulty finding well-paying jobs… as artificial intelligence moves increasingly into what have traditionally been upscale college-education-required jobs. This has already brutally impacted the manufacturing sector and is increasingly moving into oil rigs and farm tasks, is about to slam into trucking… all blue-collar jobs that are in the process of “adjusting.” But even white-collar work – like financial analysis, retail and wholesale sales and tracking, insurance (including healthcare), legal research and even surgery – is in the early stages of that artificial intelligence slam. That’s not what worries Americans today, however.
Now is not their – the progressives’ – time. The nation is reeling from inflation (which may appear to be an American problem, although it is a global reality that US politicians cannot fix alone), regulation from COVID surges and the notion that we are heading in the wrong direction. While younger voters face absurd post-secondary education costs and life-delaying student debt, unaffordable housing and a society that still seems to ignore their worst-fear-climate-change concerns, they are not sufficiently cohesive to mount a successful progressive challenge to their elder’s fears of too much government and too much government spending. The battle between moderates and progressives is tearing the Democratic Party even more than the Trump vs No-Trump wars in the GOP-turned-into-the-Trump-Party that are tearing that party apart.
Liberal California is the canary in the Democrat’s coal mine, as local approval polls for California’s elder stateswomen, Senator Diane Feinstein, and California-born VP, Kamala Harris, hit unfathomly abysmal levels. The evidence is mounting: the ultra-liberal bastion of San Francisco – Nancy Pelosi’s congressional district – is rebelling against its progressive faction. And if this is happening in this exceptionally bright blue district, it is a seminal reality that faces the entire Democratic Party in the approaching midterm primaries/elections. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, be prepared!
The canary sang brightest in a recent recall filed against SF school board members, President Gabriela López, Alison Collins and Faauuga Moliga… who were ousted in a recall election on February 15th. Extremely leftist, they were the only board members who had been in office long enough to be legally removed. All gone having made decisions that no longer, in the minds of angry parents, served the best educational interests of their children. Mark Barabak, writing for the February 17th Los Angeles Times, pointed out some of this school board’s distracted decisions:
“In a place that prides itself on social justice and forward thinking, members of the school board outdid themselves by moving to strip the names of, among others, Presidents Washington and Lincoln and Sen. Dianne Feinstein from 44 public schools… The intent was to remediate the country’s history of injustices: George Washington owned slaves, Abraham Lincoln oversaw the slaughter of Native Americans, and Feinstein, as mayor in 1984, replaced a Confederate flag that had been vandalized at City Hall with a new one. The result was outrage.
“In another instance of misplaced priorities, board members spent hours debating whether a father who was white and gay brought sufficient diversity to a parental advisory committee. His appointment was ultimately nixed, but there was no recovering the time that was wasted.
“Perhaps most antagonizing, the board moved to end merit-based admissions to Lowell High School, one of the city’s most sacred institutions, where Asian American students are the majority. (The move catalyzed the district’s Asian American community, long an important force in San Francisco politics.)
“Old comments surfaced from Collins, in which she stated Asian Americans used ‘white supremacist’ thinking to get ahead and were racist toward Black students. She apologized, then sued the school district and five fellow board members, seeking $87 million in damages, for removing her title as vice president. A judge summarily rejected the case…
“All of which was too much for this famously tolerant city as students struggled with distance learning and public schools remained closed even as schools in neighboring communities reopened.” Parents wanted to get their children back into physical classrooms, to upgrade educational standards and priorities ahead of all else. San Franciscans are not any less liberal than they were, but the question of focus and priorities drove the recall, led by Mayor London Breed with heavy financial support from equally angry local millionaires.
As Barabak noted: “What happened [in the recall election] was more a foreshock, a warning — as if Democrats needed any more of those — that November’s midterm elections could be very bad indeed, as parents unsettled by two years of pandemic-related upheaval vent their frustrations at the polls…
“Liesl Hickey, a veteran GOP strategist, is calling 2022 the year of the angry K-12 parent… ‘They are mad,’ Hickey told the Cook Political Report’s Amy Walter, ‘and they want to hold someone accountable’… That’s what bodes poorly for President Biden and his fellow Democrats… Midterm elections are almost always a referendum on the party in power, and the voters most likely to turn out are those who are angry and wish to make known their discontent.
“Public schools may be back to regular business by the fall. Inflation may be tamed, and store shelves and car showrooms may be brimming with the inventory they now lack… But it’s a good bet that parents won’t be forgiving or forgetting what’s taken place over the last two plague years, and in that way San Francisco’s recall election may be the early rumblings of a much larger shake-up to come.”
It’s not as if the Dems can afford losing urban votes now; they lost the countryside a long time ago: “Beyond losing votes in virtually every election since 2008, Democrats have been effectively ostracized from many parts of rural America, leaving party leaders with few options to reverse a cultural trend that is redefining the nation's political landscape.” Steve Peoples, Associated Press, February 17th. Rural Republicans vs urban Democrats. Red alert, Dems… fix it or lose it. And fast!!!
I’m Peter Dekom, and sometimes obvious political realties must postpone the passionate desire for change that can often backfire and produce the opposite result.
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