How a progressive challenger could beat Feinstein
It’s not just Republicans — who lack a serious candidate — who were unhappy to see Sen. Dianne Feinstein announce this week that she would be seeking a sixth term. The California Left has been hoping forever that Feinstein would retire so a true progressive might replace her.
Since that’s not happening, here’s their Plan B: state Senate Pro Tem Kevin de León, the Los Angeles Democrat, challenges her.
“Kevin de León is running,” Markos Moulitsas, the Berkeley-based founder of the nationally influential progressive political site DailyKos, told me Wednesday. “I’m not telling you how I know, but he’s running.”
De León’s people were politely mum Wednesday on that assertion. If Moulitsas is right — and I increasingly think he is, based on conversations with key Democrats and operatives this week — it is now time for Feinstein’s progressive foes to put up or shut up.
But their challenge is huge: How do you defeat an incumbent senator with nearuniversal name recognition, a place in history as California’s first female senator, a net worth of $94 million and the party establishment tripping over themselves to say nice things about her? Just this
week, one of her erstwhile challengers, Los Angeles Mayor Gil Garcetti, threw a fundraiser for Feinstein and the United Farm Workers union endorsed her.
Even Moulitsas conceded, “The task is actually incredibly difficult, to the point where Feinstein would be the prohibitive favorite from the beginning.”
To many progressives, DiFi is, in no particular order, a corporatist, Iraq war-mongering, singlepayer-health-care-dubious, not-anti-Trump-enough, pro-Patriot Act, anti-Edward Snowden one-percenter. For starters. And she has got to go.
“This is a movement moment. It’s not enough to resist,” said Bill Honigman, the California state director for the national Progressive Democrats of America. “You need to offer a replacement for things that generally need to be replaced.”
And it ain’t going to be a Republican.
“I don’t think she can be beaten in a Senate race,” said former South Bay GOP Rep. Tom Campbell, whom Feinstein defeated for Senate in 2000. “Certainly a Republican won’t be able to do it.”
Given the anemia of the California GOP, it will be difficult to beat Feinstein by doing anything but running to her political left — which de León would be best positioned to do. Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, said she is “not running for Senate in 2018.” Billionaire San Francisco environmentalist Tom Steyer is still Hamleting on a run and wealthy Los Angeles entrepreneur Joseph Sanberg has little name recognition.
So, according to progressive leaders, here is the road map for how to beat DiFi: Keep saying she’s soft on Trump: Anti-Trumpism is the breakfast of champions for progressives and many feel Feinstein hasn’t touched her plate. Moulitsas and others found Feinstein’s comment “offensive” last month that Trump “has the ability to learn and to change. And if he does, he can be a good president. And that’s my hope.”
More offensive to others is that Feinstein voted for 11 of President Trump’s 22 Cabinet and other upper-level nominees, while fellow California Democratic Sen. Kamala Harris voted to confirm only four.
“It has to be a referendum on Trump because she has been conciliatory,” said Marcy Winograd, a leader of the California Democratic Party’s 1,100-member progressive caucus. “She says you have to have patience. It’s no time for patience.” Keep asking, “Where’s DiFi?” There are two things Feinstein rarely does: town halls and debates. That could be a liability in the social media Era of Oversharing, especially among voters under 30, as more Millennials (35 percent) disapprove of Feinstein than approve (34 percent), according to a September Berkeley IGS poll.
Unless things change, history may remember Campbell as the last person to debate Feinstein — and that was almost in the last millennium (2000). Feinstein hasn’t deigned to debate her last two Republican Senate opponents. In 2012, her campaign manager, Bill Carrick, shrugged off a debate challenge from Republican Elizabeth Emken, telling me at the time, “This is the sort of typical cliche move from someone (who) is 19 points down and has $25,000 in the bank and 35 percent name recognition.”
“We feel that her job is to represent California and not be a personality where it is about her and not us,” said Aram Fischer, a leader of Indivisible San Francisco, which at 4,500 members is one of the largest local resistance groups in the nation. “We don’t think that Dianne Feinstein is meeting that standard.” Keep talking about single-payer Medicare-for-all: This weekend, the National Nurses United — the Oaklandbased union with 100,000 members in California — will hold 100 grassroots actions in all 80 state Assembly districts to talk about an issue on the top of progressive wish lists. Any Feinstein challenger who talks up single payer has a chance to tap into their energy.
“That’s an indication that you have an activist base that’s getting active,” said union spokesman Chuck Idelson. Keep hoping the revolution will be nationalized: A candidate not named Tom Steyer or Joe Sanberg can’t keep pace with the bottomless bank of DiFi. But progressives feel money won’t matter as much because the race will draw national attention — and small dollar donations from progressives around the country. If a Democrat with no political resume, like Jon Ossoff, could raise a record $30 million for a special House race in suburban Atlanta, imagine what someone like de León, with a record of legislative accomplishment, could raise.
“This race will be nationalized — and I will do everything I can to make it so,” said Moulitsas, whose Daily-Kos operation has an email list of 3 million and between 10 million and 12 million unique monthly visitors. Keep focusing on your voters: A progressive candidate — particularly de León — could be attractive to a coalition of Latinos, African Americans and Millennials, Moulitsas said. “Of course, those are also the voters who don’t vote (in high numbers) in midterm elections. But long term it is the right bet. That is the future of the party.”
Combine that coalition with white progressives and stir in the energy of new grassroots anti-Trump resistance groups like Indivisible, and a progressive candidate could have enough votes to climb into the top two finishers in a June primary.
Look for at least de León to jump in. Traditionally, it would be career suicide for a fellow Democrat to take on such a well-respected incumbent like Feinstein. But the feeling among de León supporters is that even if he loses, he would be appealing to the progressive future of the party’s voters.
Running would be good for him — and good for progressives.
“It would be,” Moulitsas said, “a win-win.”