Or is that just the wishful thinking of Steve Tavares, who publishes the daily East Bay Insiders newsletter, normally a reliable source of reporting?
Methinks it’s the latter. Steve’s big scoop is that, from Mamdani’s election in New York City to “the upset victory of progressive Seattle Mayor Katherine Wilson,” the signs point to “a renewed effort by the left” that seems to be gaining momentum.
I say, no, no, no. For one thing, Seattle and New York City are hardly representative of anything that’s happening “across the country,” except, maybe, housing unaffordability. The combined populations of Seattle and New York represent just 0.27% of the population of the U.S. For Steve to claim this represents a national trend is just bad, or maybe hysterical, reporting.
But Steve is right about one thing: Oakland “offers a cautionary tale” to this fable of a tidal wave of progressivism. As he explains, “After years of progressive leadership—and now under the direction of one of the nation’s most prominent progressive figures [i.e., Barbara Lee]—Oakland is drifting toward the political center.” As I’ve pointed out numerous times in this blog—for instance, here and here--Oakland’s centrist moves are a direct result of the horrible mismanagement of the woke radicals (with the exception of Jerry Brown) that ran the city for a generation. This failure of leadership resulted in what Steve properly calls concerns about “public safety, poor road conditions, homeless encampments, massive budget deficits and an overall lack of cleanliness.” In a normal city, any one of these problems would have resulted in a revolt, as voters fired their leaders and elected more responsible ones. But Oakland has never been a normal city. Instead, the common sense of citizens has repeatedly been mugged by the paranoia and racism of the extreme woke left’s lust for power, stoked and funded by union money.
The left, which still has plenty to offer, happily survives, in the victory of LGBTQ forces for equality, in the peaceful protests against the emerging Trump fascist oligarchy, in women’s demands to control their own bodies, in a still-strong environmental movement despite the administration’s attacks on it, in objective science, and in support of the traditional American foreign policy of fairness and free trade. Thank goodness the American people have enough sense to stand up for those blessings. But the American people do not want the excesses of wokeism, and especially the manic racial fetish that lies at the bleeding heart of progressive ideology.
As it founders, the old left is fighting desperately to hold on to the shreds of power. They’re clever, and thanks to those unions, well-funded. Then, too, they have a rather ignorant but loyal base—people of color, college students, itinerant hippies and druggies, union drones, limousine liberals—whom they can count on to reliably supply at least 30 percent of the vote to whatever candidate the unions support. That goes a long way to guaranteeing victory. But, as we’ve pointed out for years, even union money and propaganda can’t convince voters that they don’t see what they plainly do: the dysfunction, filth, depravity, crime and disrespect for societal norms that characterize so much behavior in Oakland. A conservative, it is said, is a liberal who’s been mugged. Well, Oakland liberals have been mugged for years by the violent, asinine policies of the likes of Desley Brooks (never heard of her? Google it), Carroll Fife, Nikki Bas (now thankfully exiled to the Board of Supervisors, where political careers go to die), Rebecca Kaplan (the has-been still sucking on the teat of the political payroll, but thankfully depowered), and Libby Schaaf, the intellectually-deficient cheerleader who presided most directly over Oakland’s disastrous collapse and did nothing to stop it. These disreputable bureaucrats ran our city into the ground, to the point where it became undeniable, even to the staunchest liberals, who finally had enough and have demanded, at long last, accountability from their electeds.
This is a good, indeed a great thing. So why would Tavares call it a “cautionary tale?” That phrasing implies there’s something sinister or dangerous about what’s happening here. On the contrary: Oakland is finally waking up—yes, ironically getting “woke” about the disasters the woke movement of socialists tried to foist on us, and almost got away with.
As for Seattle and New York, I know little about Seattle politics, so I’ll pass. As for Mamdani, I’m excited about him. I’m glad he won. A lot of my relatives in New York hate him, because they’re well-to-do and are afraid he’ll come after their money. That’s their problem. I like his looks, which isn’t the only reason to vote for someone, but it’s nice to have someone who’s easy on the eyes on the evening news. As for his “communist” policies (which is what Trump and Bill Maher call him), that’s just McCarthyism revisited. Rich people always call people “communists” who want to raise their taxes. We don’t really know what Mamdani’s going to do yet, beyond his campaign promises of free busses, universal childcare, rent stabilization, and city-owned supermarkets—all of which sound pretty good to me. But he’s off to a good start, and everyone should give him a chance.
So hooray for Oakland for taking a modest turn toward moderation. It’s not enough, as far as I’m concerned. But it’s more than we expected, or could have hoped for given our [collective] stupid behavior of the past. Steve Tavares, keep up your good reporting, please, but do try to leave behind your biases, or at least the clickbait headlines.
Steve Heimoff