Meanwhile in California: "Will Buffy the Bernie Slayer Win in Pro-Sanders District?"

While not directly applicable in our antebellum neck of the woods, this essay remains instructive. There are swamps, there are jungles, and there's the AdamBot.

Flush With Cash: Will Buffy the Bernie Slayer Win in Pro-Sanders District?, by Steve Early (CounterPunch)

In a political culture shaped by big money, entrepreneurial candidacies, single-issue campaigning, and union dis-unity, you can run but not hide from crowded fields of Democrats. In many current primary races, they are all claiming to be “progressive,” even as they raise and spend millions of dollars competing against each other—money that might have been better spent on actual movement building?

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Our East Bay constituency has one of highest levels of Democratic Party voter registration in the state. Two years ago, residents of Berkeley, a slice of Oakland, Richmond, and several adjoining communities chose Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton in AD 15, while Clinton won the statewide presidential primary.

These local results may not herald a permanent Sanders-inspired “revolution,” however. When the first stage of an election to replace our current Assembly member is completed next month, one of the top finishers could be someone who was nicknamed “Buffy the Bernie Slayer,” when she directed Clinton’s 2016 California primary campaign.

In our state’s “jungle primary” system, legislative candidates are lumped together—regardless of party affiliation– in the first round of voting. Buffy Wicks’ first-time run for office benefits from a crowded field of twelve (which includes a single token Republican) and, most importantly, national Democratic Party donor networks. Wicks is a newcomer to AD 15. She had little local name recognition and no track record of service on any city board, council, or commission before announcing her candidacy.

But she did direct the pro-Hillary Super-PAC, Priorities USA Action, serve in the Obama Administration, and work on both Obama presidential campaigns. Her past experience as a high-powered political operative makes her a magnet for the wrong kind of money in politics today.

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In Hillary Clinton fashion, Buffy markets herself as the candidate of “Progressive Values, Real Results.” (Hillary, not surprisingly, hasn’t appeared in any Buffy material so far.) In a just released video, Wicks instead boasts of her “100 organizing meetings in living rooms across the district” and legion of volunteers. She explains how she is “trying to run [her campaign] like a real grassroots movement” because that’s the only way to bring about “sustained change in the community.” If you go out and build such a movement, she says, “that lives far beyond any election cycle and far beyond election day,” citing as examples, the 2004 presidential primary campaign of Howard Dean and Obama’s more successful effort four years later.

Of course, with regards to two of the most important grassroots movements in California at the moment—for single payer healthcare and expanded tenant protection—Wicks is MIA or worse.

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 ... I’ve put my time and/or money into the “corporate free” AD 15 campaign by Jovanka Beckles. This two-term Richmond city councilor is a black Latino Lesbian Teamster county worker, with a real track record of movement building and little inclination to become part of “business as usual” in Sacramento.

As I reported in Refinery Town: Big Oil, Big Money, and the Remaking of An American City, Beckles and her Richmond Progressive Alliance (RPA) allies overcame heavy corporate spending against them in 2014 and 2016, because they championed refinery safety, rent control, campaign finance reform, and independent politics in Richmond.

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Draining the political swamp in Sacramento is no easy task, under any circumstances. The costly left-liberal free-for-all in the East Bay may end up adding to that challenge, instead of helping networks like Our Revolution overcome it. But the AD 15 race does demonstrate what too much candidate-driven campaigning and independent spending—combined with not enough real organization building—can produce, even in Sanders country, when municipal reformers all try to move up at the same time.

"Dianne Feinstein Isn’t Too Old—but She Is Too Out of Touch."

We know all too well.

Dianne Feinstein Isn’t Too Old—but She Is Too Out of Touch, by Miles Howard (The Nation)

It’s not her age that should disqualify her from reelection. It’s her political distance from the rising Democratic base.

Dianne Feinstein is the oldest sitting senator in America. She entered Congress in 1992 (when I was 4 years old). Today, at age 84, she is running for a fifth term in office, and a lot of people in the Golden State are unhappy about it—enough to deny Feinstein the state Democratic Party endorsement at this past Saturday’s convention.

Feinstein spent a great deal of that convention serving scrambled eggs to the delegates and giving speeches about her decades of legislative experience—which suggests that she still doesn’t get why her reelection bid hasn’t been embraced by all. Her primary opponent, State Senate President Kevin de León, put it bluntly during the convention when he proclaimed that “it’s time for a new generation to lead.”

He’s right.

 ... As with all aging politicians, it’s not Feinstein’s numerical age per se that is the problem. Rather, it’s her political distance from a Democratic base that is becoming younger and more progressive. Millennials and Gen Xers—who outvoted Baby Boomers in 2016 and will likely do so again this November—are a demographic that Democrats must turn out in high numbers. And the inconvenient reality for Feinstein is that her politics are not shared by this rising electorate. Her record of service, while impressively storied, contains highlights such as voting for the 1994 crime bill, voting for the Iraq War, giving the NSA carte blanche to spy on citizens, and recently writing a bill that would have required local authorities to comply with ICE.

Feinstein has made the case that her experience should be considered a powerful asset. But, with good reason, younger voters are skeptical of that argument. In American politics, decades of service in public office is often confused for a kind of civic meritocracy. Henry Kissinger, who should be considered a war criminal, still gets invited to black-tie dinners and Ivy League campuses. Hillary Clinton, a politician with dodgy judgment, was hailed as “the most qualified presidential candidate ever.” By this logic, someone like Feinstein should have been a shoo-in for the party’s endorsement.

But today’s young voters are looking for more than just experience for the sake of itself. These voters hold progressives views in high regard, but also consistency and integrity when it comes to those views—leaders whose politics, party affiliation, and actions are closely interlinked and non-contradictory ...

Krugman on "The Obamacare Shock."

Clear and absent sensationalism. That simply won't do. Perhaps Al Mohler can explain it better.

The Obamacare Shock, by Paul Krugman (NYT)

 ... So yes, it does look as if there’s an Obamacare shock coming: the shock of learning that a public program designed to help a lot of people can, strange to say, end up helping a lot of people — especially when government officials actually try to make it work.

They spit, we swallow ...

Just the same, this is an excellent movie.

Keith Olbermann's Prop 8 Special Comment: It's "About The Human Heart."

First viewed at the Huffington Post.