State’s liberals bent on moving Dems to the left
Progressive Democrats are flexing their political muscles in California, pushing hard for their increasingly liberal agenda and doing their best to shove aside any candidates who could be viewed as moderates in one of the nation’s bluest states.
“Young, diverse, progressive candidates are how we’re going to win in California, not through milquetoast corporate Democrats,” said Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. “Voters are fed up with the current system and want to know someone will challenge the rigged political system and rigged economic system.”
But for Democrats desperate to flip conservative-leaning congressional districts now held by Republicans, there’s concern that the party’s move to the left may be taking them where most California voters don’t want to go.
A January statewide poll of 1,000 residents done by the Public Policy Institute of California found that only 18 percent of California’s
likely voters identified themselves as “very liberal,” compared with 31 percent who styled themselves as “middle of the road.” Among only Democrats, the progressive number rose only to 28 percent.
“You have to have the middle to win,” said Mark Baldassare, CEO of the institute and a pollster in California since 1980. “Getting to the middle is critical to success in California.”
But for the activists who filled the San Diego Convention Center for the California Democratic Party convention last weekend, that was a concern for another day.
Progressives showed their power as their delegates blocked what typically would have been a routine endorsement for 25-year Sen. Dianne Feinstein and pushed former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa into fourth spot in the party’s endorsement for governor, despite recent polls showing him running a close second to Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom.
The results of last Saturday’s vote, with only 37 percent supporting a Feinstein endorsement “is an astonishing rejection of politics as usual,” Democratic state Senate leader Kevin de León, who is challenging Feinstein, said in a statement. “California Democrats are hungry for new leadership.”
It’s not just Democrats who will vote on Nov. 6, however, and there are plenty of questions about whether all Californians are looking for that new leadership. The PPIC January poll found that Feinstein had a 47 to 17 percent lead over de León among all likely voters and a 67 to 19 percent margin with likely Democratic voters.
“Feinstein running for reelection represents a seriousness,” such as her service on the Senate Intelligence and Judiciary committees, said David McCuan, a political science professor at Sonoma State University. “But she may be out of step with the changes going on in the California (Democratic) base.”
That’s why Feinstein was shocked at the loud boos and harsh progressive attacks when she suggested in a San Francisco speech in August that Trump, with changes in attitude, had the potential to be a good president and that she was willing to work with him.
And when Republican Doug Ose, who dropped out of the governor’s race earlier this week said that with no GOP candidate in the Senate race, “I will be wholeheartedly supporting Dianne Feinstein,” that wasn’t seen by progressives as a strong and welcome bipartisan appeal, but rather as a sign that Feinstein’s policies score well with Republicans.
In the past, Democrats “have been willing to give a bit on things we care about to get things done,” said John Vigna, communications director for the state Democratic Party. “Now we’re testing whether that dynamic is still there.”
The endorsement results shouldn’t have come as a surprise to anyone who has been paying attention to Democratic politics, both in California and across the nation, where the 2016 presidential primary battle between former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and progressive Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders is still being fought.
On Friday, for example, a trio of progressive groups challenged the Democratic National Committee for what they said was the strategy by mainstream Democrats “to court moderate Republicans and the billionaire class instead of the progressive wing of their own party,” said Saikat Chakrabarti, executive director of Justice Democrats, a group founded by veterans of the Sanders campaign.
“We will not create the world we believe in unless elected officials are willing to take clear, unequivocal stands for progressive values,” added Heidi Hess, co-director of CREDO Action, a progressive organization.
In California, progressives have worked hard to take control of the state party. Last year, Eric Bauman, a longtime party officer from Los Angeles, barely held off Kimberly Ellis, a progressive activist from Richmond, in a bitter, raucous battle for party chair.
This year, former Sanders supporters, many elected as party delegates at the local level, used their growing clout to push hard against mainstream candidates like Feinstein, Villaraigosa and even state Attorney General Xavier Becerra and back their own hopefuls.
“We’re now seeing a more confident way of progressives using their influence,” said Vigna, the party spokesman. “While the anger is still there, it’s being used in a positive direction.”
Progressive leaders are quick to deny any suggestion that a strongly liberal agenda is a disadvantage for Democrats running in Republicanfriendly districts.
People across the state want change, but not the change they will get from Republicans — or even moderate Democrats, said Green, whose Progressive Change Campaign Committee has 140,000 members in California and 1 million nationwide.
“What moderate Democrats get wrong is that feeling that Democrats need to moderate their message” to win GOP districts, he said. “It’s just the opposite. We need to tear more into economic policy issues,” the kitchen table concerns like housing costs, health care, wages and soaring credit card debt.
The progressive push is having an effect on even relatively moderate California Democrats. While Villaraigosa, for example, is working to run his campaign for governor to the right of Newsom, the former San Francisco mayor, he’s also arguing that he’s a progressive — but his own type of progressive.
The Villaraigosa campaign “is saying to California that you have to define ‘progressive’ as economic progress for more people,” said Eric Jaye, a consultant for Villaraigosa. “Antonio sees himself as a progressive, but it can’t be just a slogan or a litmus test. It has to be about progress.”
The battle for the future of the California Democratic Party is only going to get louder heading into the June 5 primary and the November general election, with progressives and their mainstream counterparts each convinced they have the answers the state needs.
California Democrats are “in the middle of evolution, and no one is sure how it will turn out,” Vigna said.