At this weekend’s California Democratic Party convention in San Diego, three likely attendees have some answers they owe to the assembled delegates. Why, in this election year, would any Democrat in the state legislature ally with far-right Republicans to undermine President Barack Obama’s re-election chances by attacking one of his signature projects?

The project in question is the California high speed rail project. High speed rail, like all forms of non-automobile transit, have been targets of Republicans since the 2010 elections. Tea Party Republican governors in Wisconsin, Ohio, and Florida all killed their states’ high speed rail projects and rejected free federal money to build them in order to make an ideological statement that rail is bad and to cast the Obama Administration in a bad light. This despite the fact that the Florida HSR system, for example, would have been profitable according to two independent audits.

In 2011 House Republicans voted to defund high speed rail. Here in 2012 they have gone even further, passing a truly extreme Transportation Bill that would defund most forms of mass transit in America.

They’re doing this partly in service to their ideological values, but also in part to try and undermine President Obama. Republicans believe they’ve been able to turn “green jobs” into a scandalous idea thanks to the Solyndra issue. They would love to make high speed rail into a new Solyndra, casting the president as wasting tax dollars on something that doesn’t work.

Republicans have zeroed in on the California high speed rail project, the last one left standing after Florida’s governor killed the project a year ago, in order to make that anti-Obama argument. They want to claim that the California HSR project won’t generate ridership, won’t generate profits, that it’s some sort of “train to nowhere” and is generally a bad idea.

None of those claims are true.

• California high speed rail is expected to generate ridership and profits – just like every other HSR system in the world. The belief that it won’t is really what drives most high speed rail critics and opponents. It’s the equivalent of denying global warming – the evidence to the contrary is overwhelming. An independent peer review found the ridership numbers to be sound. The facts are in and they are clear: people will choose trains over planes when given the choice. Riders have flocked to HSR from planes around the world and in the Northeastern United States. Japan and France, Spain, Russia, Taiwan, even the Amtrak Acela. And California compares favorably to those globally successful routes.

• As to the “train to nowhere” argument, that’s nonsense. The segment from Fresno to Bakersfield is just the first place where construction begins. Nobody plans to build high speed rail there alone and call it done. Every major piece of long-distance transportation infrastructure was started in pieces. Interstate 5 took 19 years to complete in the Central Valley. The plan is to build from downtown San Francisco to downtown Los Angeles and Anaheim. You’ve gotta start somewhere, but nobody is crazy enough to just stop with a small section in the Valley.

The only issue with California’s HSR project is that the funding to build the entire system from SF to LA hasn’t yet been identified. But that’s a solvable problem, especially if one rejects Republican arguments and instead pushes Congress to fund high speed rail. After all, politicians should be in the business of solving problems, not ignoring them.

So where does the State Senate come in to the discussion? Despite the above facts, Senators Mark DeSaulnier, Alan Lowenthal, and Joe Simitian – all Democrats – have been recently repeating the right-wing criticisms of HSR, undermining President Obama in the process.

In a recent report in the Contra Costa Times, all three Senators were quoted making many of the same criticisms of Obama’s HSR plan as Tea Party Republicans made:

They voiced concerns about plans to start in the Central Valley with a 130-mile link that will not attract enough riders and could become California’s version of the Alaskan “Bridge to Nowhere.”

“This is an albatross potentially,” Lowenthal said.

Lowenthal has been attacking HSR for years, and has wanted to kill this project despite its known benefits. What is particularly interesting is that Lowenthal is running for an open Congressional seat in the Long Beach area, CA-47. Lowenthal would be in an excellent position to help bring more federal dollars to California, help the state get off of fossil fuels and improve transportation by federally funding HSR. Instead he’s joining Republicans to attack the project. Is that an appropriate thing for someone who aspires to become a Congressional Democrat to do?

DeSaulnier, who I like and respect a lot, has his own criticisms:

Instead, they are pushing to begin in urbanized areas. “You need to spend the money where the need is and where it will attract private-sector funds,” DeSaulnier said. “You need to put it where the ridership is.”

As it turns out, the California High Speed Rail Authority does plan to spend money in urban areas. But DeSaulnier here is really repeating the “train to nowhere” argument. The project is merely beginning construction in the Central Valley. To help connect to the coastal areas and tap into the highest ridership levels, we need people like DeSaulnier to step up and help fund that part of the project, rather than take shots from the sidelines.

Senator Simitian’s claims are among the most objectionable of all:

“Whether they are federal funds or not, they should be used wisely,” Simitian said. “Whenever someone tries to hustle you into a quick decision, that should give you pause. I feel like we’re getting jammed by the threat of losing the federal funds.”

As he points out, the state should not “make a $100 billion mistake to save $3 billion” from Washington.

This is very similar to talking points made by Tea Party governors like Scott Walker in Wisconsin and Rick Scott in Florida when they rejected their HSR systems – that somehow they were saving money. Of course, we know that the cost of not building high speed rail would be far higher than HSR – at least $170 billion to expand freeways and airports to handle the same amount of demand that HSR would handle. And unlike freeways, HSR would pay its own operating costs without adding more carbon to the climate.

Governor Jerry Brown defended HSR in his State of the State address and just this week Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood came to California to show support for HSR. Yet these three State Senators appear willing to go against their fellow Democrats – in an election year – and for what? For the prize of siding with Republicans to destroy something that can help California build a better future?

So if you’re a California Democratic Party delegate in San Diego this weekend, and you happen to run into Senators DeSaulnier, Lowenthal and Simitian, you might want to ask them why they’re ignoring the facts in order to side with Tea Party Republicans against President Obama. I think we’d all like to hear the answer.