Racism Among California Democrats, and Its National Costs
Racism Among California Democrats, and Its National Costs
The West Coast prides itself on a progressive consensus violated by elected Democrats across California, who play a key role in enabling the party's dedication to Wall Street before working people.
This post is the first in a series examining the disturbing reliance of elected Democrats—from Washington DC to the Bay Area—on racism and white supremacy as a political strategy. It will also explore how that employment of racism enables policy decisions that favor capital over working Americans. Taken together with my longstanding critique of industrial militarism, it ultimately aims to offer evidence of the intersections among the evils described by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
This introductory post will examine national trends with respect to voting patterns in minority communities and the implications of the recent bipartisan decision in Washington to deny railway workers their right to withhold labor. A series of ensuing posts will closely examine San Francisco and Oakland to document a pattern in the Bay Area that unfortunately includes elected officials, as well as members of the institutional press both in the corporate establishment and well beyond it, that critically enables the bipartisan corruption apparent in Washington.
Our region has long enjoyed a renowned reputation as a progressive enclave, but that shoe fits less well with every passing year.
And while this might seem like a regional problem, it has unfortunately national implications. San Francisco wields outsized, even bizarre, influence in Washington and has recently emerged as one epicenter of a national conservative counter-attack successfully eroding progressive victories.
A few updates from this column
I recently addressed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s announcement that she plans to remain in Congress while finally fulfilling her promise to allow another (only barely less problematic) member to lead House Democrats.
That writing led to a video interview with Sabby Sabs from the Revolutionary Blackout Network. In addition to discussing that article, we also examined two others that I published this fall. One of them exposed the use of racism by Democrats to protect corrupt party leaders, while the other examined the roots of political violence in corruption indulged by the press.
Paid subscribers can access a second interview with the Broken Record Player podcast contrasting the racist and reactionary reality of San Francisco with anachronistic rhetoric about its supposed commitment to progressive principles, before a discussion about a musical revolutionary halfway around the world whose visionary performances 50 years ago have long inspired me.
Democrats’ racial hypocrisy points a gun at their own feet
One especially crucial result from last month’s mid-term congressional election was in Nevada—the state that let Georgia off the hook by securing the Democrats’ Senate majority. The youth Latino vote proved pivotal there, skewing well to the left of the Latino electorate elsewhere. That’s indescribably fortunate, but carries limited relevance beyond Nevada.
Across the country, Latino voters have trended towards the GOP in recent years, dashing visions for what some (including me) once hoped could be the basis for a permanent Democratic majority.
Instead, with gerrymandering having placed a minority of voters in control of a majority of the legislative seats, and the Supreme Court considering a case that could effectively allow gerrymandered state legislatures to control state election outcomes, we instead face the real possibility of permanent Republican majorities.
The same pattern—communities of color on whom Democrats have long relied for support defecting, or alternatively, declining to vote—also emerges when examining voting trends in Black communities. Herschel Walker forcing a runoff election in Georgia against Sen. Rafael Warnock is a painful omen indicating the GOP’s likely strategy going forward: superficial diversity and strategic racial opportunism (encouraged by the hyper-compensation of celebrities, from athletes to musicians, who believe they share class interests with conservative capital).
At the same time, the conservative strategy—embraced by Republicans and Democrats alike, from GOP Senate candidates Herschel Walker and Kelly Loeffler to Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi—also includes demonizing figures who champion racial, economic, reproductive, and climate equity.
In Georgia, Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) fended off what he & his campaign described as GOP candidate Loeffler’s “smears” in 2020, only for his ads responding to them to later become the target of compounding disinformation from Walker in 2022.
I know that pattern all too well, having myself endured a more vicious version of it at the hands of San Francisco Democrats—including many self-described “progressives” and “socialists”—who enabled Pelosi even while some claimed to oppose many of her policies.
While the Senate remains in Democratic hands, the House has shifted to GOP control despite errors that offered Democrats opportunities they could not actualize. That reflects this pattern of Democrats struggling to turn out once reliable bases, particularly across communities of color beyond Nevada.
This sad pattern stretches from New England to Los Angeles. Many voices have attributed it to a continuing failure of Democrats to show up for the policy priorities of communities of color, or more recently, labor.
Yet Again, Democrats Side with Wall Street Before Workers
The obsequious deference of labor leaders to elected Democrats is painful to witness, especially when those Democrats then sell out labor time and time again—putting those labor leaders in the awkward position of selling out their rank & file equally often.
Having helped force the House to pass the Protecting Right to Organize Act in 2020 after Pelosi’s previous refusal to allow a vote on the bill, it’s no surprise to me to watch career & dynasty politicians reveal their true colors.
I wish others paid more attention, if only to avoid their own surprise every time this pattern repeats itself.
Most recently, Democrats in Washington joined their Republican colleagues to pass a bill blocking railway workers from striking over long denied demands for paid sick leave. That decision did several things at once: it (1) eroded labor rights established through generations of organized struggle, (2) undermined public health in the midst of a continuing global pandemic, and (3) paved the path for the return of a Republican to the White House in 2024.
First, let’s be clear: voting to block a strike is worse than crossing a picket line. Every Democrat who joined Republicans—either overtly, or through their bait & switch hijinks through which some claimed to have shown performative solidarity—should be publicly shamed, and ultimately replaced.
Many have attempted lame explanations, while conveniently pointing the finger at Republicans. Don’t buy it. Kshama Sawant, an elected Seattle Council Member with a proven track record of standing up for the working class, put it in no uncertain terms while addressing the most “progressive” among House Democrats, alongside their enablers in the Dramatic Socialites of America.
Public health is among the casualties of Democrats’ crass prevarication and dedication to business interests before their own supporters. It has long been shameful that the U.S. denies any entitlement to paid sick leave as a matter of national policy. It’s one reason that America’s public health performance is demonstrably among the worst in the world.
The proposed strike by railway workers simply sought to leverage collective bargaining principles long established in our country to seek from the market crucial benefits that our government—with the help of Democrats—has long denied.
For Congress to go out of its way to affirmatively block them from striking is far from neutral.
It is an inevitably distributive decision that puts the health and well-being of workers behind corporate profits.
Nor was it isolated. Sadly, this is part of a repeating pattern. When labor demanded a long overdue increase in the federal minimum wage, the answer from Congress was crickets. When the economy fell into recession in 2008, homeowners and renters received no support at all, while Washington bailed out Wall Street before a series of repeated (and predictably continuing) tax cuts targeting millionaires.
Nor was the latest abdication by Democrats technocratic, or necessary to avert an economic meltdown. Railroads made record profits last year amounting to $20 billion, and enjoy among the highest profit margins of any industry in the country. The cost of workers’ demands for paid sick leave, meanwhile, would have been $688 million.
Much like false claims about inflation being driven by higher wages rather than corporate opportunism, the rail industry and its defenders claimed that allowing rail workers to exercise their right to strike would create risks to the economy during a crucial time for shipping.
All they had to do in order to avert it was invest less than 5% of their profits to satisfy workers’ demands. But that was too much for Congress, which bent over backward to insulate the industry from organized labor even at the cost of public health.
Even for those Democrats who care neither about labor rights nor public health, the predictable results of last week’s sell out should still be cause for alarm. In the same way that Democrats routinely create escalating political risks for themselves by failing to show up for communities of color and alienating voters from them, they do the same by giving the middle finger to another of their most crucial bases of once reliable support.
As we look forward to the 2024 presidential primary season already underway, one takeaway from last week emerges as especially crucial.
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Analyses about Democrats abandoning their supporters are sadly accurate—but even they ultimately remain charitable. Beyond selling out labor and the communities of color on whom they rely for support, Democrats have actively weaponized strategic racism to insulate self-serving party leaders from electoral accountability and climb the party ladder.
This series will continue with a series of posts examining white supremacy among elected Democrats from Los Angeles to San Francisco and Oakland, as well as the climbing careerists and “journalists” who enable their continuing corruption.
In the meantime, paid subscribers can access below a recent interview on the Broken Record Player podcast. The discussion addressed the chasm between San Francisco’s progressive reputation and its outrageously racist reality, as well as a discussion about music focused on the life and work of Fela Kuti, the father of afrobeat and among the most committed musical revolutionaries the world has ever seen.
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