Congratulations to those brave souls who managed to win Assembly delegate elections over the weekend.  Your first state Convention, scheduled for Sacramento in April, should coincide nicely with the mass protests from folks who got IOUs instead of their expected tax refunds, the first double-digit employment numbers in the state in a generation, and essentially the near-total shutdown of state government, by design, from a working conservative majority that uses outdated and anti-majoritarian rules to destroy the state for their own ends.

I have a hard time arguing with the deep pessimism from Dan Walters today.

What, if anything, will come next to pull us out of recession and return California to prosperity? Some think it will be biotechnology, services to baby boomer retirees or solving global warming.

Lurking in the background, however, is a nagging worry that there won’t be anything, that the state’s endemically high costs, political dysfunction and long list of unresolved dilemmas, from transportation to water to education, have made us uncompetitive in a global economy. Just last week, a new federal survey found that California has the nation’s highest adult illiteracy rate.

We have tended to take the future for granted. No matter how moribund the economy may be at the moment, we think, we have the weather, the entrepreneurial spirit and the strategic location to regroup and prosper.

We may have. But then again, maybe we aren’t so special. Maybe we’re not immune to the societal afflictions that have beset other states. Maybe we are a rust-belt-to-be on the left coast, a Michigan with winter sunshine.

This is not a failure of entrepreneurship or a lack of a desirable consumer base.  It’s quite simply a failure of politics, a series of compromises and capitulations that have led the state into a blind alley.  Because legislative Democrats have never effectively rid the process of the constraints of the past, they have made the future impossible.

The biggest burst of meaningful political activism in recent history was the crusade to defeat Arnold’s special election in 2005.  That happened outside the party structure because labor felt threatened and needed to lead an effort, working together with the grassroots and the party establishment to fight back.  There was a singular mission and nobody brought their own single-issue buckets to the table.  Their public relations strategy and the activism they encouraged was nothing short of brilliant.  But it was primarily a defensive maneuver.  Now the CTA is trying to add a penny to the sales tax in a more offensive maneuver to secure funding for schools.  This is precisely the wrong way to go.  It carves out another dedicated funding source for one area while imposing a regressive tax on the state’s most burdened citizens.  Single-issue money grabs will not do the job.  Unity is the great need of the hour.

At one of the AD meetings I attended this weekend, my Assemblywoman, Julia Brownley, got up to speak.  I would call her a pretty mild-mannered woman.  She practically pleaded with everyone in attendance, saying “We need your help… the Governor is breaking this state… we need you to throw your shoes at Arnold.”  She was sending out an urgent call for the kind of unified activism that broke Arnold’s back in 2005.  It’s a heavier lift because it requires something proactive rather than reactive.  But without labor, grassroots activists and the party establishment working in concert, this is going to be the worst 2 years of all these newly-elected delegates’ lives.

There are going to be two Democratic legislative initiatives this week: a request for a federal government loan to ensure our unemployment insurance fund doesn’t go broke, and legislation putting a moratorium on foreclosures, which cost roughly $250,000 each to the greater economy in opportunity costs and property value reductions.  There is help coming in the form of hopefully $5-7 billion dollars from the federal recovery package, earmarked for state and local government relief.  But eventually, we’re going to turn to the ballot.  In June of this year, there’s going to be a host of initiatives, and we need there to be more than simply signing off on the bad budget of last year, but real structural reform, whether to do with 2/3 or expanding the budget cycle to 2 years or even the tax increases in the Democratic budget (The LAO thinks that election should happen earlier to relieve this crisis of confusion).  These MUST get on the ballot, and they MUST pass, with a coalition of every progressive in the state working toward that passage.  The survival of the state hangs in the balance.

So good for you, winners.  Now make sure you don’t get picketed during your first convention.  Because if you don’t, I’ll be the first one out there with a sign.

There’s an interesting dynamic happening in California.  At the national level, the state’s power is growing.  Californians hold the Speaker of the House and four key committee chairs, including the powerful Energy and Commerce Committee.  The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and now the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence have Californians at the helm.  Any energy and environmental policies will have to go through the committees of Californians, and they’ll have California allies inside the Administration, with the selection of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s Dr. Steven Chu as Energy Secretary and Los Angeles Deputy Mayor Nancy Sutley as head of the White House Council on Environmental Quality.  Other Californians are up for possible Administration jobs, like CA-31’s Xavier Becerra (US Trade Representative) and CA-36’s Jane Harman (CIA Director).  It’s a good time to be a California politician in Washington.

It’s a TERRIBLE time to be a California politician in California, as it dawns on everyone in Sacramento that the state is ungovernable and hurtling toward total chaos.  The two parties are miles apart from a budget deal, and even their biggest and boldest efforts would only fill about half the budget gap.  The peculiar mechanisms of state government, with its 2/3 rule for budget and tax provisions, and its artificial deadlines for bills to get through the legislature, which causes remarkable bottlenecks and “gut and amend” legislation changed wholesale in a matter of hours, and the failed experiment with direct democracy which has created unsustainable demands and mandates, make the state impossible to reform and even get working semi-coherently.  The state’s citizens hate their government and hate virtually everyone in it with almost equal fervor, yet find themselves helpless to actually change anything about it, and believe it or not, ACTUALLY THINK THEY’RE DOING A GOOD JOB setting policy through the initiative process, which is simply ignorant (though they paradoxically think that other voters aren’t doing a good job on initiatives).  The activist base does amazing grassroots work, very little of it in this state.  We have a political trade deficit where money and volunteerism leaves the state and nothing returns.  And the political media for a state of 38 million consists of a handful of reporters in Sacramento and a couple dudes with blogs.

Many of these problems have accumulated over a number of years and cannot be laid at the feet of anybody in particular.  But in general, the reason that we’ve gotten to this crisis point, the reason that California is a failed state, is because by and large the dominant political parties WANT IT THAT WAY.  I’m not saying that the state Democratic Party or its elected officials, for example, wants the state to be flung into the sea, metaphorically speaking, but there’s certainly a tendency toward the closed loops of insiders that prefer a predictable and stable status quo, that naturally restricts reform and leads to corruption, gridlock and crisis.  I’ll give you an example.  Last night I was on a conference call where Eric Bauman, Chair of the Los Angeles County Democratic Party, announced that he would drop out of the race for state party Chair and run for Vice-Chair, because when 78 year-old former State Senator John Burton entered the race, all his labor, organizational and elected support dried up.  Fitting that he didn’t mention his grassroots support, because it clearly doesn’t matter who they prefer.  

There is little doubt in my mind that John Burton will run the party, or rather delegate it to whatever lieutenant will run the party, in the exact same way it has been run for the last decade or so, characterized by missed opportunities to expand majorities, a lost recall election for Governor, cave-in after cave-in on key budget priorities and a failure to capitalize on the progressive wave of the last two electoral cycles.  These are not abstractions, and they have real-world effects, $41.8 billion of them at last count.  And honestly, the Special Assistant to Gray Davis didn’t represent all that much change, either.

We have an ossified party structure, and a phlegmatic legislative leadership that is unable to get its objectives met because the deck is essentially stacked against them.  The times call for a completely new vision, one that can energize a grassroots base and use citizen action to leverage the necessary unraveling of this dysfunctional government to make it work again.  The work on Prop. 8 since the election has been tremendous, but ultimately, if public schools are closing and unemployment is above 10% and the uninsured are rising and the pain felt in local communities is acute, then we have a much larger problem, one that requires a bigger movement allied with the civil rights movement to make change.

The key flashpoint is the 2010 Governor’s race.  There is currently no one in the field with the ability to break the lock that the status quo has on California and deliver a new majority empowered to bring the state back from the brink.  In an article published last month, Randy Shaw put it best.

None of the current field appears likely to galvanize a grassroots base, or to be willing to take on the “third rails” of California politics: massive prison spending, Prop 13 funding restrictions, or the need for major new education funding. Dianne Feinstein? She’ll be 77 years old on Election Day 2010, and she has long resisted, rather than supported, progressive change.

Jerry Brown just finished campaigning to defeat Proposition 5, which would have saved billions of unnecessary spending on the state’s prison industrial complex. This follows Brown’s television ads for the 2004 election, which helped narrowly defeat a reform of the draconian and extremely expensive “three strikes” law. Brown’s consistent coddling up to the prison guards union is the smoking gun showing that he is not a candidate for change.

Gavin Newsom came out against Prop 5 on the eve of the election, undermining his own “break from the past” image. He also spent another local election cycle opposing the very constituencies who an Obama-style grassroots campaign would need to attract.

With her Senate Intel. Committee post, it is unlikely that Feinstein will run.  He forgets John Garamendi, who supported Prop. 2 (!) because of his fealty to farming interests and who first ran for governor in 1982.

Shaw mentions that the state is ready for a Latina governor, and mentions the Sanchez sisters.  He’s right in part, but has the wrong individual in mind.  I am more convinced than ever that the only person with the strength, talent, grassroots appeal and forward-thinking progressive mindset to fundamentally change the electorate and work toward reform is Congresswoman Hilda Solis.  She authored the green jobs bill that Barack Obama is using as a national model.  She is a national leader on the issue of environmental justice and has the connections to working Californians that can inspire a new set of voters.  She beat an 18-year Democratic incumbent, Matthew Martinez, by 38 points to win her first Congressional primary.  She has worked tirelessly for progressive candidates across the state and the country.  In a state whose demographics are rapidly changing, she could be a powerful symbol of progress that could grab a mandate to finally overhaul this rot at the heart of California’s politial system once and for all.  This is not about one woman as a magic bullet that can change the system; this is about a woman at the heart of a movement.  A movement for justice and equality and dignity and respect.  A movement for boldness and progressive principles and inclusiveness and openness.  A movement that can spark across the state.

I know that Solis is interested in the Vice Chair of the Democratic caucus if Becerra takes the job in the Obama Administration.  Congresswoman, your state needs you desperately.  Please consider running for Governor and leaving a legacy of progress in California.

When Josh Richman, the fine reporter for the Oakland Tribune, called me for comment yesterday on the breaking news that Don Perata transferred $1.5 million dollars the day after the election from an IE account intended to elect Democrats to the State Senate and wage initiative campaigns into his personal legal defense fund, my initial reaction was “I’m not surprised.”  My slightly longer reaction is captured in the article:

David Dayen, an elected Democratic State Central Committee member from Santa Monica, blogged angrily this summer about his party’s contribution to Perata’s legal defense fund, contending the money would’ve been better spent on legislative races. The same goes for Leadership California’s money, he said Wednesday; despite a Democratic presidential candidate carrying California by the largest margin since 1936, Democrats netted only three more Assembly seats and none in the state Senate.

“Every time I asked the California Democratic Party about getting more active and involved in local elections, they said the state Senate and the Assembly control those races “… and we don’t have a lot of flexibility. So Perata, at that time, and Nunez or Bass had the authority to run those elections,” Dayen said. “Now we see what happens when you vest power in these closed loops – suddenly self-interest becomes more important than the good of the party.”

He believes this is why Perata didn’t step aside as Pro Tem earlier, as Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez relinquished his post to Karen Bass in May: “Darrell Steinberg was sitting there ready to go “… and we were all like, ‘What the hell is going on?’

“We speculated it had to be that he still needed the leverage to make the calls to raise money for himself.”

I want to expand on that.  The behavior of Don Perata can be directly tied to the continuance of a status quo that has failed and is failing California families.  At no time is the way elections are run – without transparency, without accountability, without meaningful checks on the potential for corruption – questioned by the powers that be.  It is enabled through a shrug of the shoulders and the words “that’s the way things are.”  What Perata did was perfectly legal, although that is subject to change, as the state Fair Political Practices Commission votes today on making such transfers illegal.  But as Michael Kinsley famously said,  “The scandal isn’t what’s illegal; it’s what’s legal.”  The bigger scandal is that there’s no desire or even interest at the top to see that change.  And why not – it suits them just fine.

California has 63% majorities in both chambers of the legislature, has just seen a 61% share of the vote for a Democratic Presidential candidate – and yet this state is completely, inescapably and hopelessly beholden to right-wing interests, as a function of a backwards set of governing rules that have climbed the budget hole over $40 billion dollars, without any reasonable hope of getting out of it.  It’s been beyond clear for several years now that the ultimate solution will come at the ballot box, and yet the state party has entrusted the most crucial elections, the ones that could net a working 2/3 majority in the Senate, to someone more concerned with saving his political hide.  And so Hannah-Beth Jackson, who came within 1,200 votes of flipping a Republican seat, reads a story like this in shock and anger.  And the citizens in SD-12, promised a recall of Jeff Denham; and those in SD-15, expecting a candidate in their majority-Democratic district to take on Abel Maldonado; they are similarly angry.  Money they had every right to expect would go to help them now goes to help one man.

(By the way, the alibi from the defenders of Perata on this doesn’t scan at all.  First of all, nobody begrudges him from raising money in his own defense – the problem lies in taking that money from an account intended for campaign work.  And second, if this is a “political witch hunt,” as they say, why would he need this lump sum of money 75 days from the time when a Democratic Administration with no inclination to prosecute Democrats on allegedly bogus charges is about to be installed?  It’s either a witch hunt about to end or a going concern.  The alibi is pathetic.)

But the larger point is that the status quo, the closed systems at the top of the Democratic leadership, the lack of transparency and accountability, create the crises we see in our state, or at least disable anyone from reacting to them.  And this is not likely to change.  John Burton is going to be the next state CDP Chair.  He’s been in politics for 205 years, and he’s basically muscled out the competition for the job.  Does anyone think that a lifelong pol, with a long history of backroom deals, the guy who was Arnold Schwarzenegger’s cigar-smoking buddy (that seems like a good profile for the opposition party chair), gives a damn about urgently needed reform?  He’s making sweet little noises about turning red areas blue, but there’s absolutely no hope that he will provide any change from the insular, chummy, mutual backscratching society that exists in Sacramento.  Grassroots activists should be furious that, in the wake of seeing countless opportunities wasted and crises lengthened, we’re boldly taking off into the future with a Party Chair who was first elected in 1965.

The future of California is a mystery right now, because there is a crisis of leadership and an unwillingness to reform.  At the very least, activists should look to electing Hillary Crosby as State Party Controller so that someone in the room will have a reform message that can spark a modicum of change.  But until the fundamentals are altered, we will lurch from one disaster to the next.

From my sfgate blog http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/… :

Saturday night at the Democratic EBoard.  Fires are raging all around. Outside, it is eerily calm, with only a hint of the earlier Santa Ana winds and smell of smoke in the air, while the TV tells us the fires are right here in Anaheim.

We are across the street from Disneyland. Will they shoot off their customary fireworks tonight? I would expect not.

On TV the whole left sid of the stucco house in Anaheim Hills, where the NBC crew is stationed, has collapsed. It is the hotttest day on record.

Believe in global warming yet?

Firestorms

Sunday morning; the firestorms are still raging, the triangle fire I think of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire of 1911. Out my window, a huge plume of smoke rises into the blue.

New fire in Yorba Linda; we think of Oakland in 1991.

Firefghts

After the fizzle of the Death Penalty plank, the biggest excitement is the race for Chair of the Party. The candidates are John Burton, recruited by Barbara Boxer, arriving with a long list of elected officials supporting him, Eric Bauman, who has been running for a while, working hard to break into the red districts in LA, and surprisingly sans endorsement list; and Alex Rooker, current co-chair and the only woman.

Too soon to call; the vote is at the April Convention in Sacramento.  I am torn.  Although I “beat the Burton machine” to elect a Marin Count Supervisor, I embraced it to work with Senator Carole Migden last year. And there is no one with a longer track record for supporting progressive causes. The greasy underside to machine politics is the well-oiled gears and pulleys that determine elections, the flow of money to favored candidates, not always the best for the seat they seek, the high school quality of in and out crowds.  I walk a line.

Another race already gaining traction is the decidedly un-machine like race of Hilary Crosby for Controller, challenging the incumbent.  She is a terrific candidate, smart, funny, and lived in Cambridge during my time. Her campaign is based on transparency and an open process, obviously protecting the integrity of the budget process.

Go Hilary!

Fear of the Republicans getting all our secrets is rampant.  Newsflash: They already have them.  We the people, the rank and file of the party need in on the secret.

In the Rules Committee, a simple request that has been on the table for years, failed again; and that is to request Democrats seeking Party endorsement to read the Platform. Not agree to it; just say, yes I know what my Party stands for.

Again, there were those who said, this will give the Reps ammunition. Guess what, they have it; they’ll use it; they’ll make it up. Let’s arm our own candidates with knowledge and the strength of principle.

Good thing I’m not running.

Looking east from San Francisco or LA or even Sacramento, with the right kind of eyes, you can almost see this cycle’s high water mark, where the Obama tsunami peaked and crashed back towards Chicago.

Homages aside, the real lesson is what has happened since the election. The 20th century, focus grouped to not offend, top-down media campaign run by the No on Proposition 8 campaign will be in the same historical chapter as the Hillary “in it to win it” inevitability campaign. They had big money, but in a post-broadcast environment it was junk without strategy.

So with the California Democratic Party in desperate need of dismantling and rebuilding, let’s look at the the Long Tail which should have been the natural principle behind No on Proposition 8. Every candidate for the CDP should be focused on translating CDP strategy to take advantage of this dynamic in California.

Yesterday’s protests on a California initiative had larger crowds in a lot of places outside CA than in California. That is the Long Tail.

So apply that in state. Unfortunately we had a disaster of redistricting after the 2000 census to protect incumbents. So focusing on the “head” doesn’t compare to focusing on the “tail” to pick up seats. By definition due to the redistricting, you have far more allies outside of a district in play than within.

And for major issues like marriage equality and the gubernatorial campaign, we have more allies outside of California than within. The next leadership needs to realize that 350 cities in 8 countries and all 50 states held protests yesterday about one of our initiatives, put together in a week online. That is the Long Tail.

How do candidates plan to harness the Long Tail? How do they plan to be nimble enough to take advantage of it? How do they plan to nationalize the gubernatorial campaign (hint: it won’t happen if DiFi is the nominee)?

Now isn’t the time to do the same thing and raise more money — unless we want to lose. Now is the time to leverage the Long Tail and make big moves. It allows us the Obama model for field. And yes, we can take advantage of the Long Tail for redistricting.

I think Long Tail distribution is so important that I would hope everyone running for CDP office would explain how they plan to maximize the potential.