California Senate 2024 - Schiff (D) vs Garvey (R)

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Porter would be the more moderate/centrist option...
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I don't think Porter would fit the establishment's definition of moderate/centrist - she supports both Medicare for All and the Green New Deal, both of which would be considered "too radical" by the establishment (recall that the vast majority of Democratic Senate candidates that were endorsed by Chuck Schumer and/or the DSCC up until 2020 portrayed themselves as moderate/centrist by, among other things, opposing both of these things).

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Porter would be the more moderate/centrist option...
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I don't think Porter would fit the establishment's definition of moderate/centrist - she supports both Medicare for All and the Green New Deal, both of which would be considered "too radical" by the establishment (recall that the vast majority of Democratic Senate candidates that were endorsed by Chuck Schumer and/or the DSCC up until 2020 portrayed themselves as moderate/centrist by, among other things, opposing both of these things).

Which is why I wouldn’t be surprised if she, like Elizabeth Warren, flames out under scrutiny. She’s not a natural fit for progressives with Lee in or moderates with Schiff.

In the case of Warren, she had a history of cozying up to the military industrial complex, along with accepting big money donations from special interests in her Senate campaigns in 2012 and 2018. Those things raised red flags among progressives, and thus her repeated pivoting during and after her 2020 Presidential campaign made sense when the aforementioned factors were taken into consideration. Do you have evidence that Porter has done things similar to what Warren did in her past political campaigns?

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A plurality wants DiFi to step down early.

https://twitter.com/Politics_Polls/status/1661703223084818433

I wonder if Nancy Pelosi thinks 52% of California Democrats are misogynists.

She isn’t making that statement out of personal beliefs; she’s using it as a cover for Feinstein to stay on in order to increase the chances of her preferred candidate (Schiff) winning the upcoming election.

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A plurality wants DiFi to step down early.

https://twitter.com/Politics_Polls/status/1661703223084818433

I wonder if Nancy Pelosi thinks 52% of California Democrats are misogynists.

She isn’t making that statement out of personal beliefs; she’s using it as a cover for Feinstein to stay on in order to increase the chances of her preferred candidate (Schiff) winning the upcoming election.

Yeah but one would have to imply the other, right? She would never say the quiet part loud is what I'm saying.

I know she would not publicly state what appear to be her true intentions; if the misogyny card is not available, she could easily find other cards to play (for example, she could say "Feinstein was duly elected to serve a full term, so let her serve out her term" or "Feinstein is a seasoned political veteran, so let her serve out her term," among other things).

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https://twitter.com/BarbaraLeeForCA/status/1701041279839375670
These comments by Barabara Lee expressing her dissapointing with the descion are both sour grapes and seem to express a contemptous attitude towards the idea that voters should be able to pick their representives and the concept of senators representing all their counstituents not just the ones they share demographics charectersitcs with.

It's one of the most entitltied things i've seen written by any major us politican.

Yeah, that's a bad statement which makes her sound like a bitter person with an inflated sense of entitlement. It won't make her many new friends.

I agree and it basically ends her candidacy, but she’s also right. So Newsom’s goal the whole time was to nominate a black figurehead to pander while still supporting a white former blue dog behind the scenes? Typical of him.

This is all wonderful news for Senator-elect Katie Porter though anyway. The party is trying to rig it for Schiff, but she has crossover appeal and will win progressives handily.

Not Rigging the race for Lee is rigging it for Schiff ? This is an incredibly dubious line of reasoning.

Here's my explanation for the "rigging it for Schiff" part:

The major power brokers involved here (i.e. Newsom, Pelosi, etc.) prefer Schiff because he is a pro-corporate & pro-establishment politician, as opposed to Lee & Porter who are both progressives. If Feinstein were pushed out, the logical choice to fufill the "black woman" pledge would have been Lee, but since Newsom prefers establishment politicians instead of progressives (as shown by his earlier appointment of Alex Padilla), he has also refrained from using political capital to force Feinstein out early, just like Pelosi.

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Who would Karen Bass endorse in a Porter vs Schiff matchup?

It's likely the entire California Dem caucus would come down for Schiff if it's down to the two of them, with the exception of maybe a few like Ro Khanna. Porter doesn't have a great reputation with her fellow Dems, and she and Maxine Waters in particular have a poor working relationship.

The idea that that Porter could beat Schiff with crossover voting in the general is interesting, but it would likely require her keeping it close among Dems. I'm not sure how many Republicans are going to go "I hate Schiff, so I'm going to vote for the feminist to his left who sounds a lot like Elizabeth Warren".

Let me remind everyone of the partisan composition section of the exit poll from the 2018 Senate race:

Party ID	Feinstein	De Leon	Other/No Answer
Democrats (50%)	63	34	3
Republicans (20%)	35	59	6
Independents (31%)	47	50	3

As you can see, De Leon won self-identified Republicans not because of his ideology (he was to the left of Feinstein), but because he was Feinstein's opponent. Porter could certainly do likewise against Schiff just by being his opponent.