While most people were fixated on the “Donkey Kong” mention in last night’s speech by Chris Daly, what about the actual content of the speech? Immediately before Donkey Kong, Daly made his promise to Board President David Chiu:  “I will haunt you. I will politically haunt you for the biggest fumble in history.”

As Daly is termed out this week, can he make good on this promise? The answer is a yes, and big time. For three key reasons.

Chris Daly’s Relationships: If you only read CW Nevius, you might be misinformed enough to come to the conclusion that Daly is a pariah in San Francisco. But in reality, nothing could be further from the truth. Chris Daly is the most accomplished legislator on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors because he knows so many people so well that he can put together big deals, often with strange bedfellows. Tonight is the “roast” of Chris Daly, which will have as many downtown suits as SOMA hipsters. Daly can scroll through his cell phone and identify dozens of people he knows on each side of every issue. On every single issue, Daly can make Chiu’s life miserable, but Daly also has the political instincts to identify the most critical pressure points.

Social Networking: Chris Daly’s Facebook is an active community with 2,562 people that he has repeatedly used to create news that is picked up by the traditional press. Daly’s twitter is only followed by 621 people right now, but that’s mostly because Daly prefers Facebook. While those numbers may not sound huge, scroll through the names and you’ll see a who’s who of influence makers in San Francisco. Daly can change the framing and dynamics of issues before the Board, especially with early messaging. If he bought an ipad, he could easily post from behind the bar. That is some serious haunting potential.

Buck’s Tavern: David Chiu should be haunted by the mere thought of Daly now having a watering hole so close to City Hall. No matter what issue, operatives on the other side of Chiu can stop by and drop info to Daly. The nature of San Francisco’s political fissures means that in any given year, almost everyone in town will have an issue where they disagree with Chiu and agree with Daly. Plus, Daly opened the bar with Ted Strawser, who is a triple-threat with political game, online game, and event organizing mastery. Already, people are gravitating to Bucks as it fills the long vacant role of a City Hall bar. Drinking Liberally has already moved to Bucks — it is rapidly turning into the place to go for politics in San Francisco. Plus, look at the geography. Two short blocks from Van Ness & Market. In District 6, but District 5 begins across the street and District 8 is two blocks away. District 9 starts less than a dozen blocks away and Chiu’s District 3 is three stops away on the Muni underground or a dozen blocks up the hill on Van Ness. Location, location, location. There’s a reason Willie Brown ’99 and Matt Gonzalez ’03 both ran their campaigns out of a building two blocks away.

Those are the three major givens and three huge reasons why Daly can haunt David Chiu. But he could also easily go further. I’d be surprised if Daly didn’t consolidate his new watchdog role into an actual organization. He can raise far more money at the bar then it would cost for him to start a PAC, set up a website, and start building out his list.

Chris Daly can easily haunt David Chiu. And from what I’ve heard, it’s On Like Donkey Kong!

In the month of June, with the Constitutional Deadline to pass a budget, the CDP did one move on the budget. And it was pathetic. There was no Theory of Change, no path for what they were doing to result in passing a budget quicker, or passing a more just budget. It was quite honestly one of the most pathetic online moves I have ever seen by a state party — anywhere in the country.

And then they got defensive. They started censoring comments at Calitics, giving a ‘0’ rating to disappear any criticism. They censored, again and again and again and again.

I’m trying to figure out how the California Democratic Party could have failed so completely, I think it might have gone something like this:

California Democrats deserve at least basic competence. There was nothing of the sort with a stone’s throw of this whole fiasco. First, there was the sin of omission, by not engaging in any actions that could have helped pass a just budget. Next, there was this pathetic move, that just made the CDP look incompetent (phone calls to 4 legislators is all they accomplished during the last week before the budget ran out, with half those calls coming from consultants or their mothers?). Third, any preteen can explain to you that trying to censor online just results in more people seeing what is trying to be hid. Forth, they didn’t quickly realize that their move was a blunder of epic proportions and react with something that would have helped.

And this isn’t just about the budget, with the CDP lacking basic competence online, how are they going to help Jerry Brown or Barbara Boxer or Gavin Newsom or Kamala Harris?

California Democrats deserve better.

I believe I used a Prodigy email address to sign an online petition calling on congress to “censure President Clinton and move on” back in 1998. As I’m sure you know, out of those efforts rose the organization MoveOn, which sent emails to my Yahoo account for years and to my gmail for the last six years or so. It has been one of my favorite organizations, through their ups and downs, for a decade.

Which is why I simply can’t fathom the blunder they made yesterday, thrusting themselves into the California Attorney General’s race to fluff former Facebook Chief Privacy Officer (best oxymoron ever) Chris Kelly. In the final days of the campaign, no less.

MoveOn’s fluffing of Kelly began yesterday morning when staffer Marika Shaub posted a link on MoveOn’s FB Group, “Facebook, respect my privacy!” Shaub urged the 180,000 members to share a note from Chris Kelly with all of their Facebook friends and later MoveOn sent an email to an unknown number of members of MoveOn’s giant list with Chris Kelly’s message (I received it twice).

As I long-time Moveon member and devoted supporter, I was shocked that MoveOn’s current leadership seems to have so little understanding of the dynamics and history of the battle for privacy. It was only back in 2007 that MoveOn went to war with Facebook, scoring a major victory for privacy by leading the organizing to shut down the infamous “Beacon” program. MoveOn was attacked repeatedly in the press by…Chris Kelly — who was not defending privacy, but defending Beacon. In fact, Kelly made so much money eroding privacy at Facebook that he’s dumped over $12,000,000 into his attempt to buy the California Democratic Party nomination for Attorney General.

If, like MoveOn apparently, you have forgotten how Chris Kelly fought MoveOn to defend Beacon, follow me after the jump. If you remember the history better than MoveOn, feel free to check out how Chris Kelly’s campaign is already using MoveOn as a validator — against attacks on Beacon, in the LA Times.

Here’s a reminder from The New York Times Chris Kelly fighting MoveOn to defend Beacon:

MoveOn’s demands could be satisfied by making the Beacon feature “opt in.” Right now, users who don’t want the information displayed need to opt out after purchases at each participating external site.

However, Chris Kelly, Facebook’s chief privacy officer, said MoveOn is “misstating the way this process works.”

He said the purchase appears only in the news feeds of confirmed friends and on the individual’s profile (users have control over who can see their profiles), not to the “world.” Mr. Kelly also pointed out that two ways to opt out, at the point of purchase on the external Web site, via a box that pops up, but fades away in under a minute and the next time they sign into their accounts. If users ignore the notification, the purchase information will be displayed, but nothing happens until the user signs in.

Chris Kelly was mocked for this over on ABC News’ site:

The argument made by Facebook in support of this is disingenuous, and uses that old trick I learned in my PR days of isolating one error in the opponent’s claim and using that to dismiss their entire argument. In this case, Chris Kelly, Facebook’s “chief privacy officer” (one of those new corporate titles that’s going to come back and bite companies) told the New York Times that MoveOn is “misstating the way this process works.” In particular, he said, the purchase is only shared with confirmed friends and on the user’s own profile, not to the “world.” At the same time, he does confirm, that if the user ignores the notification and fails to opt out, the purchase information will be automatically displayed.

And this coming from the Chief Privacy Officer of Facebook.

Chris Kelly’s attacks on MoveOn to defend Beacon made the hop across the pond, getting picked up by The Times:

A Facebook spokesperson said that MoveOn.org was “misrepresenting how Facebook Beacon works”.

He said: “Information is shared with a small selection of a user’s trusted network of friends, not publicly on the web or with all Facebook users. Users also are given multiple ways to choose not to share information from a participating site, both on that site and on Facebook.”

Earlier this year, Facebook shrugged off privacy fears when Chris Kelly, the group’s chief privacy officer, told The Times: “We have always said that information [submitted by users] may be used to target adverts.”

“Shrugged off privacy fears”?

Of course, Chris Kelly was mocked, MoveOn was right:

So far, about 13,200 out of over 55 million members have joined MoveOn’s protest group and Facebook is standing by the statements of chief privacy officer Chris Kelly, who told The Wall Street Journal that the company has been transparent with users and that it welcomes feedback from those who have concerns. According to the Journal, Kelly acknowledged that the company could change its policies based on customer reactions but that so far he says reaction has been “fairly muted.”

While the Beacon scandal was the most extreme example, the fact of the matter is user privacy was continually eroded at Facebook during the time Chris Kelly was in charge of privacy. Play with this interactive chart, click on the different years to watch what happened to privacy at Facebook.

Chris Kelly got amazing rich eroding privacy at Facebook, which MoveOn honorably fought. Until yesterday, when out of incompetence over the history of their own campaign and cluelessness over progressive politics in the largest state, they came to the aid of Chris Kelly during the final days of his $12 million vanity campaign.

Californians don’t want an Attorney General doing for Justice what Chris Kelly did for privacy. It would be nice if MoveOn were leading the charge against Chris Kelly, instead of giving him cover to defend himself against ads criticizing Chris Kelly for his role in the Beacon scandal…when he fought MoveOn.

Punishable by two-four years in prison:

Labor and environmental groups have asked California Attorney General Jerry Brown to investigate whether Republican state lawmakers are engaging in illegal vote trading during budget talks.

“It’s a serious question and we’re reviewing the matter carefully,” Brown responded Thursday.

The California Labor Federation, State Building and Construction Trades Council, Sierra Club California and the Planning and Conservation League wrote to Brown on Wednesday – and sent a copy to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, too – citing reports that the Legislature’s GOP leaders are withholding votes on a state budget while attempting to win votes on unrelated matters.

[…]

It asserts this violates California Penal Code Section 86, prohibiting lawmakers from giving or promising to give “any official vote in consideration that another Member of the Legislature shall give this vote either upon the same or another question.

Join the Facebook Group to stand with unions and environmentalists in asking that Jerry Brown investigate.

Research 2000 for Daily Kos. 1/5-7. Likely voters. MoE +/- 4%

Boxer (D) 49

Schwarzenegger (R) 40

It isn’t likely that there are a pair of socks thick enough to warm Arnold’s cold feet and his 51% unfavorable is only likely to grow as he has joined the Republican legislators in stonewalling a budget. But, the fact that 31% of California Democrats have a favorable view shows how much work the CDP has not done. Hopefully, despite John Burton’s close friendship, the CDP will remedy that number.

As for Boxer, she is under 50% in a head-to-head, but the poll didn’t test her re-elect number. Her net favorable is only two points, which is also a concern. With only 2/3 of Democrats holding a favorable view, she needs to shore up her base. Her best age group is the under 30 crowd with a net +8, but she is nowhere near the range of the Barack Obama youth surge.

I would have also liked to have seen numbers on Steve Poizner and Meg Whitman as they are far more likely to be the nominee. What are you seeing in the numbers.

UPDATE by Dave: Actually, the huge mistake of this poll is not running numbers on the guy who’s going to actually be the Republican nominee, Chuck DeVore.  He just secured the endorsements of practically the entire GOP State Assembly and over half of the GOP partisan officeholders in the state.  And it’s January ’09.  There is no chance that Arnold Schwarzengger, loathed by his base, can beat DeVore in a closed primary.  None.  Ain’t gonna happen.  There’s only one head-to-head worth polling, and that’s Boxer/DeVore.  Poizner and Whitman are running for Governor.  The field is cleared.

I know, we aren’t even a full week into 2009 but it is going to be very difficult for anyone to get any dumber than this:

Schwarzenegger to veto budget bills

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will immediately veto the Democratic plan to reduce the budget deficit by $18 billion and urge lawmakers to use his January proposal as a template for implementing midyear cuts, according to Schwarzenegger communications director Matt David.

The move forces leaders to start over in their efforts to close a budget deficit estimated at $40 billion over the next 18 months. It jettisons — for now — what Democrats hailed as “the only game in town” — because it included tax increases approved without Republican votes.

For those keeping score at home, the budget was passed on December 18 so by “immediately veto” he really meant “sit on his ass for 20 days and then veto” the only game in town.

Schwarzenegger is simply incapable of governing and his Republican legislators are zealots who are going out of their way to harm the state, not help.

UPDATE by Dave: Steinberg tells the SacBee ed. board that the Governor got cold feet:

Between Sunday night and Monday, something else occurred unrelated to the specifics of the issues. It is cold feet, you know. He met with Republican leaders on Monday morning. I think he is back in that place where he believes he can get Republican votes for revenue and therefore doesn’t have to do this unorthodox majority vote thing. We have been sort of going down that road for five or six years. It hasn’t resulted in a single vote.

Arnold thinks he’s so AWSOM that he can convince the same people who have stomped on his stomach for 5 years to come around.  Or, more likely, he didn’t want to make the anti-tax zealots cross and risk a court battle.  There is no chance his budget can pass – it has even more tax increases in it than the work-around budget, and a substantial portion of it is, essentially, “hope for private investment.”  This leads us even further down a road to ruin.  Don’t expect any tax refunds, folks.