A postmortem on the Golden State left
A tale of two strategies
There were two camps: Courage California Institute and groups that aligned themselves with it on one side and the Left Unity Slate on the other side.
The former camp contained progressives who want to reform the Democratic Party while the latter camp contained leftists from third parties and independents.
DSA chapters straddled the fence between the two camps with some endorsing Dems in certain races and the Left Unity Slate in other races.
Courage California: A Trojan Horse to lure lefties back to the Democrats
Courage California contains various interest groups like the Working Families Party, the California Progressive Alliance, the Richmond Progressive Alliance and local Indivisible chapters.
The fact that CCI is an ActBlue organization and is composed of Vote Blue No Matter Who organizations explains its terrible endorsements like Gavin Newsom, Karen Bass and Assemblyman Ash Kalra, who killed single payer healthcare.
If progressives had any balls, here's what would have happened after January 31:
- Kalra would have been publicly shunned for not revealing which Dems were barriers to AB 1400
- Progressive Democrats would have used their leverage to publicly potentially jeopardize the party's supermajority
- Progressive groups would've threatened to reach out to the Left Unity Slate and support their candidates instead of Dems by withholding endorsements
Instead, Kalra was actually endorsed by these groups, progressive Dems folded like a cheap tent around the establishment, and the CCI involved groups have been silent about strategy since.
What this tells me is that progressives are only fighters to a certain extent. That there are no Kshama Sawants in California is not only telling but troubling.
What should be next for the Left Unity Slate?
After its candidates finished anywhere from fourth to ninth, the Green and Peace & Freedom Parties need to gather other leftist parties and independents to become a threat to the Democrats' legislative supermajorities, and they should arrange a pact to not run against each other if they have been officially picked by the slate.
Also, the Left Unity Slate must demonstrate just how different it is from the passive progressives by taking forceful action.
Los Angles is a template
It was a bad day for progressives as most of them were beaten by establishment candidates.
As for the mayor's race, Gina Viola performed better than expected given some self-styled leftists were urging Angelos to vote for Congresswoman Bass to avoid a "spoiler" scenario.
Despite the best efforts of groups like People's City Council-Los Angeles to keep the momentum of mid-2020 going, the propaganda from the media and the police industrial complex has created a massive backlash that has not only resulted in support for more police funding but also an attack on homelessness rather than addressing why people are homeless in the first place.
The voters in Los Angeles City and County don't even seem to care that the Sheriff's Department has numerous gangs. With the effort to revert back to the 1990s, these results should finally put to bed any idea that liberals are leftists. I mean you had class solidarity among the rich when the likes of Snoop Dogg, Katy Perry, Kim Kardashian and Gwyneth Paltrow endorsed mayoral frontrunner Rick Caruso.
Other tidbits
A Republican got more votes than Shahid Buttar for second place? In the 11th Congressional District? In fucking San Francisco? Nancy Pelosi is jumping up and down that she has token opposition in the fall.
In the 4th Congressional District, Jason Kishineff finished dead last out of six. It's a bad sign. He ran as a Green in 2018, as a Democrat two years ago and now as an independent. Nobody in the nation's supposedly leftmost state wants to rock the boat against the biggest establishment Democrats.
Certain DSA chapters refused to support communist candidates (Long Beach) because they were anti-imperialists while DSA leadership is pretty much wedded to the State Department position.
In other areas (San Diego), diehard socialist parties and DSA chapters promoted each other without any issues.
