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

[Хahar 🤔]

Newsom's past declaration that he would appoint a black woman here is an intriguing factor here. When he said this, people on this forum took that to mean London Breed because they were unaware that there are multiple black women who live in California.

London Breed, who really ought to be running instead of Lee in the first place

People on this forum are really never going to stop trying to make London Breed happen, are they?

[Хahar 🤔]

If the general is Lee vs Schiff (as is looking likely at the moment) then the general is likely Lee.

Right now, Schiff vs Porter looks far more likely

Polls this far are meaningless. Four years ago, based on polls, you could say that Matt Lieberman was likely to make the Georgia runoff as the Democrat even though he had no institutional support and no campaign. That would be stupid.

Right now, we can look at all the forces that Barbara Lee has marshaled behind her and say that she's a good bet to make the general election, regardless of what a small amount of polling a year and a half might suggest.

[Хahar 🤔]

https://twitter.com/axios/status/1648657838216978432

https://twitter.com/JordanUhl/status/1659181109119184896?t=uTsPKw6kbuiPVzIzaI80q...

One of the most revolting exploitations of identity politics I've ever seen. This wasn't sexism and these elder abusing f**king crooks know it's not sexism.

The oligarchy is alive and well in San Francisco. But I’m sure that this has nothing to do with Nancy Pelosi trying to preserve her class’s power at the expense of the progressive ideals she claims. After all it’s her opponents who are so sexist that they are trying to get someone reported by Vox to have Alzheimer’s almost a decade ago out of the senate.

Nancy Pelosi is easily the most corrupt, evil, corporate tool of a democrat and once again it shows

But that oligarchy usually props up local candidates at the expense of LA. The Machine is very much a Bay Area machine.

It's not that simple. Pelosi isn't a Sacramento politician and has no strong connections to California politics. She's backing Schiff because of her House connections, the same reason she was for Joe Kennedy.

[Хahar 🤔]

The important thing about this UC Berkeley poll where Katie Porter leads the Democratic field at 17% is that 10% chose "Someone else" and 32% chose "Undecided". This indicates what is obvious to most thinking people here, which is that voters do not have strong preferences because they have not been thinking about this election.

[Хahar 🤔]

I mean does she really though? She had a great launch yes with donors from across the country but when people from outside Cali learn about Lee especially if a national figure like Bernie endorses her, will as many people keep there donations to her up? One of the reasons she had such a successful launch too was there's no major national races going on now. As we get closer to November there will be the presidential race, the national Senate race and the house. Most national donors are gonna put Katie's Senate race at a much lower priority while all the in state organizations and donors who will be backing Lee will still have a vested interest in the race and it will be one of there top priorities.

Honestly I think this race will be over after the March Primary.  With three major Democratic candidates I think it's likely a Republican finishes in the top 2.

I think the chances of this are extremely slim. Since the top-two system was implemented, only once has there been a gubernatorial or senatorial election with multiple serious Democratic candidates where the general election did not involve two Democrats: that was the 2018 gubernatorial election, where John Cox poured a lot of money into his campaign and was aided by a Newsom campaign anxious to keep Antonio Villaraigosa out of the general election.

It should be obvious that there will be no similar Republican candidate this time. If a deep-pocketed Republican were to try to launch a longshot bid for statewide office, the obvious thing to do would be to try to seek the governorship in 2026. In any case, there's no indication that any such Republican will try to set money on fire in that way. The Republican vote in California should do what it always does in these situations, which is splinter a hundred different ways among a hundred also-ran candidates, none of whom are running real campaigns.

[Хahar 🤔]

I imagine that few people on this forum are old enough to remember Steve Garvey and most aren't big enough baseball fans to really know him, so I'll try to summarize.

45 years ago, the Dodgers were one of the best teams in baseball and certainly the most popular team in baseball and Steve Garvey was the undisputed face of the team. He liked the media and the media liked him: the way he was portrayed at the time was effusive. In an age when baseball players were growing out their hair and rebelling against management, Garvey was the clean-cut all-American boy. If at the time you had suggested to people that he would follow in Ronald Reagan's footsteps and go into Republican politics, nobody would have questioned it.

Things started coming apart in the mid-'80s as his playing career wound down. In 1981, he and his wife separated. They would divorce two years later. This led to public revelations that all through his career he had constantly been committing adultery. Later in the decade, while he was engaged to another woman, two other women bore children that he had fathered. Maybe this wouldn't have mattered in general, but the effect on a player who had cultivated the sort of reputation that Garvey had was devastating. It had been expected that he would have all sorts of business opportunities after baseball, but those never materialized. At one point in his career he was seen as a sure Hall of Famer, but in fact he never came close in Hall of Fame voting.

Judging from this article, it sounds as though he's just about made up his mind already. It would make sense that he would miss the limelight, and his alternative lifestyle clearly should not bother contemporary Republicans. Of course he has no chance of winning, but he's got a famous enough name that he wouldn't have to spend an unfathomable sum on paid media just to get his name out there in the way that other Republican would. His name recognition along voters under 45 would be very low, but that's less important for a Republican, anyway. If he really wanted to get to a runoff so that he could lose by thirty points, I could see him managing that, which is more than I could say of any other potential Republican.

[Хahar 🤔]

Lee being only 3% off from being the fourth-placed Democrat must be incredibly embarrassing for her.

This is a poll a full year out from the election where the top-placed candidate is at 15%. You really don't need to try to wring meaning out of this. It's okay to just let it be.

[Хahar 🤔]

I think criticizing Lee's bitter response is fair but assuming it ends her campaign is wrong; this brings her attention and could polarize the race into for- and against-Lee camps, which are both to her benefit.

I think that this is accurate. Right now this race is not occupying any public attention, so whatever publicity a candidate can get is likely to be good publicity.

More generally, I think people in this thread are failing to think like Democrats. I imagine that nobody here actually thinks it's important that a black woman hold one of California's senatorial seats, but there are obviously a lot of Democrats (and not just black women) who are sympathetic to this line of argument. If you do believe that it's specifically important to have a black woman in the Senate in recognition of the work that black women have done to save the soul of America, then obviously it's not sufficient to just have a token placeholder who will be replaced come next election. That wouldn't accomplish anything and it would be an insult to the black women of America to think that they wouldn't deserve any more than a placeholder.

Newsom has not played his hand well here. The announcement that he made would have paid off if the seat had come vacant much earlier, in which case he could have appointed Lee and gotten plaudits from black activists and left-wing activists and then let her sink or swim on her own, or else if Dianne Feinstein's health hadn't come up as a significant issue, in which case none of this would matter except that he could get plaudits for being so racially forward-thinking. As it is, he ended up stuck in that he had to speak but anything he said would offend someone. Normally he attempts to be all things to all people.

[Хahar 🤔]

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.

This is nonsense.

Newsom prefers establishment politicians instead of progressives (as shown by his earlier appointment of Alex Padilla)

This is not true. Newsom prefers politicians who are loyal to him. If you try to find evidence that he dislikes "progressives" you will find none. This is not an ideological issue because the California Democratic Party is not split into ideologically-based factions because California is not New York. Somehow people keep thinking that it is.

I'm going to have to repeat myself:

Schiff is the candidate of wealthy establishment liberals. He’d crush Lee in SoCal as she’s too economically left for a lot of those voters, and so is Porter in Silicon Valley.

In keeping with what I've said in this thread in the past, it's absolutely inscrutable what "establishment" means here. People should stop using "establishment" to mean "economically right-wing" and just say that. Those terms might be synonymous in New York but they're very much not here.

You cannot use "establishment" and "progressive" as antonyms in California. I doubt you can do it in most places that aren't New York, but you certainly can't here. Please reformat your argument so that it doesn't do this.

[Хahar 🤔]

I disagree with you so strongly right now. It is exactly like New York. Real estate interests pick nominees and inundate their campaigns with money. Pelosi and Feinstein are literally married into the class that we are talking about. The moderates in California are economically right-wing and Gavin Newsom has backed them up in every decision that matters - offshore drilling, nuclear power, NIMBYism, you name it. Gavin Newsom is basically Andrew Cuomo minus the creepiness.

I love what you have to say normally but this is wrong. If establishment and progressive aren't antonyms then why did Hillary Clinton wade into an LA city council race?

I agree that Gavin Newsom is like Andrew Cuomo in many ways, but whereas Cuomo's instinct was try to destroy left-wing activists Newsom's instinct is to co-opt them. He's happy to pal around with Ro Khanna, for instance, because Khanna has been on his team ever since his first congressional campaign and because having him around gives Newsom credibility with Bernie Sanders people. As I've said, Newsom wants to be all things to all people. In this regard the contemporary politician I would compare him to is Justin Trudeau. I'm not really talking about Newsom's policy positions here: I'm talking about how he wants to be seen, and he definitely does not want to be seen as being in opposition to the left side of the party.

I've written before about the low level of ideological distinction between Democrats in partisan elections in California. There are plenty of elections between two Democrats, but how many elections are there between a left-wing Democrat and a right-wing Democrat where both candidates campaign on an ideological basis? Local elections obviously do have more ideological distinctions, but I don't recall seeing Gavin Newsom publicly involve himself in local elections since going to Sacramento. Hillary Clinton might have waded into a city council race in Los Angeles, but she's not the California Democratic Party. She is, quite literally, a New York politician.

I agree with Cody in being confused about the identification of Newsom with NIMBYs. On the issue of housing, the California government under Newsom has not gone as far as I would like, but it has gone a lot farther than I expected. I also recall that in the only recent election I can remember where there were two Democrats on the ballot and their differing positions on housing were the primary issue (the state senatorial election in San Francisco between Scott Wiener and Jackie Fielder in 2020), the candidate who used socialist iconography was not the YIMBY in the race.

[Хahar 🤔]

Newsom has appointed a significant number of people to statewide office in the past few years:

-Senate: Alex Padilla (Kamala Harris’ replacement)
-Secretary of State: Shirley Weber (Alex Padilla’s replacement)
-Attorney General: Rob Bonta (Xavier Becerra’s replacement)
-Senate: ? (Dianne Feinstein’s replacement)

That’s a lot of people. And if he selects Shirley Weber as Feinstein’s replacement, he’ll also get to appoint Weber’s replacement as Sec of State.

Yes, you've identified Newsom's MO: by creating cascading vacancies when he fills positions through appointment, he gets to fill state government with officeholders who are personally beholden to him. Appointing Weber would accomplish this and she would certainly check off the right boxes. It's the decision that most obviously makes sense for him.

The one issue is that Weber was elected to a full term as secretary of state less than a year ago. She has more than three years left in office and I think that she would be eligible to run again in 2026. If she were to accept an appointment from Newsom, she would be giving that up in exchange for about thirteen months in the Senate. Maybe the prestige of being a senator would be enough for that to be worthwhile for her, but I don't think it's an obvious decision.

[Хahar 🤔]

And if that seat MUST be held by a WOC, why not London Breed and not somebody who’s almost 80 years old and would probably only serve a single term?

If Feinstein resigns or dies, who does Newsom appoint (likely an African-American woman)?

I'd imagine Lee, who would go on to run for a full term, and unlike current circumstances the theoretical incumbency advantage would help her win. But given her age it could also be London Breed, who really ought to be running instead of Lee in the first place.

I’m gunning for London Breed to be the placeholder, young, a woman of color, Mayor from the same city DiFi was once mayor of. It’ll be perfect

Sorry dog, I don't know why this is so important to you but you're going to have to give it up.

[Хahar 🤔]

I really don’t get the hate for Lee. Newsom said he would appoint a black woman, but not a candidate for Senate. He said he would appoint a black woman in a bold face pander now the chickens are coming home to roost. There aren’t many black women in CA politics, and most of them had already lined up to support Lee in her actually campaign, so it makes sense they want her to be appointed. He’s trapped himself in a paradox and is getting called out for making promises he can’t keep.

This is what politics is, Lee’s supporters aren’t acting abnormal, especially when what’s at stake is a senate seat that’s yours for as long as you want it in the nation’s most populated state.

There's a committed core of posters here who hate Barbara Lee and want Katie Porter to win and are always looking to seize on anything they can to criticize Lee and get supporters. If you've been reading this thread, then you know who they are; the most obvious example is jdb. This is stylistically equivalent to the criticism that you would see from Elizabeth Warren supporters of Bernie Sanders and his supporters. (Schiff's appeal is to cable news viewers, which is why his supporters are essentially absent from this forum.)

Beyond that, I think that what I said before still applies:

I think people in this thread are failing to think like Democrats. I imagine that nobody here actually thinks it's important that a black woman hold one of California's senatorial seats, but there are obviously a lot of Democrats (and not just black women) who are sympathetic to this line of argument. If you do believe that it's specifically important to have a black woman in the Senate in recognition of the work that black women have done to save the soul of America, then obviously it's not sufficient to just have a token placeholder who will be replaced come next election. That wouldn't accomplish anything and it would be an insult to the black women of America to think that they wouldn't deserve any more than a placeholder.

The identity-based argument for Barbara Lee doesn't appeal to anybody on this forum. It doesn't appeal to me, either, and I plan to vote for Lee for policy reasons. The problem is that people in this thread are taking their distaste for that argument and assuming that it is universal: that large numbers of voters will both care about this and react in the same way that they are. I think that both of these are incorrect. We know that identity politics has very strong appeal within the Democratic electorate. We also know that, based on polls, most voters are not thinking about this race at all, let alone following minor events such as this one. In practice, this is unlikely to swing any significant number of votes.

Arguments that Barbara Lee has somehow alienated the Democratic establishment also appear to me to be backwards thinking, an attempt to find a justification for the conclusion that this must be bad for her. What I see is prominent established Democrats like Maxine Waters and Ro Khanna being the ones calling for Lee to be appointed to the senate. What exactly is the establishment supposed to be if these people aren't part of it?

[Хahar 🤔]

I think your bias in favor of Lee is clouding your analysis of the race a bit.

It could be, but if you can find anywhere that I've shifted my view of what's important in the race then I'd like to see it. Even before Lee entered the race it was clear in my view that the most important thing to win an election in California is institutional support, and I don't know why I would change that view now. The number of prominent Democrats who have come out and said that they believe that Barbara Lee should be appointed shows the strength of their support for her. What reason would there be to change my view of the race now: a handful of polls taken before the start of the campaign wherein most of the voters are undecided? Unless there's real campaigning or important figures start shifting allegiance, there's nothing but noise.

If Lee actually were appointed, do people think she would win the primary? It seems to me like CA voters are pretty sick of having an octogenarian senator. And appointed Senators lose primaries all the time.

Do you have reason to believe that California voters are sick of having an octogenarian senator, or is that just how you would personally feel? The last time they had a choice, California voters overwhelmingly reelected an 85-year-old to the Senate, and in the 2020 Democratic primary the top two candidates by a huge margin were Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden. I'm sure you know that age is rarely a barrier to being elected in this country and I'm not sure why it seems to you that all of a sudden things would be different in California.

My view is that Lee has a strong chance of winning the election even without the benefit of incumbency and that being an incumbent would significantly help her chances. Clearly others agree or else there wouldn't be any resistance to her being appointed.

[Хahar 🤔]

I’ll expand on the point I made earlier about Newsom’s future after this

Two important parts of being president is only making promises you can keep, and being able to balance the various interests groups when it comes time to fill your cabinet and the federal government. The latter point is especially important in garnering support for a presidential run. Newsom has shown incompetence in both regards by fencing himself into numerous conflicting promises, which put him in a position to piss off just about every demographic in the state. He appoints Lee, the Schiff and the Pelosi establishment crowd are fuming. Don’t appoint Lee and he pisses off every black politician in the state. And as far as either group is concerned he’s promised to do what they want, but it’s impossible to do both. It makes him untrustworthy and hypocritical.

If he can’t handle this I can’t imagine many groups will feel comfortable supporting him in a run for president. His presidential ambitions are on life support.

Counterpoint: It is absolutely absurd to think that anyone in five years will remember or care about this. Are you listening to yourself?

[Хahar 🤔]

I’ll expand on the point I made earlier about Newsom’s future after this

Two important parts of being president is only making promises you can keep, and being able to balance the various interests groups when it comes time to fill your cabinet and the federal government. The latter point is especially important in garnering support for a presidential run. Newsom has shown incompetence in both regards by fencing himself into numerous conflicting promises, which put him in a position to piss off just about every demographic in the state. He appoints Lee, the Schiff and the Pelosi establishment crowd are fuming. Don’t appoint Lee and he pisses off every black politician in the state. And as far as either group is concerned he’s promised to do what they want, but it’s impossible to do both. It makes him untrustworthy and hypocritical.

If he can’t handle this I can’t imagine many groups will feel comfortable supporting him in a run for president. His presidential ambitions are on life support.

Counterpoint: It is absolutely absurd to think that anyone in five years will remember or care about this. Are you listening to yourself?

Voters won’t give a damn, but politicians and organizers remember who their friends are. You can’t run a campaign when the people who would organize for you in states you have no connections don’t trust you. If Clyburn or Pelosi spreads word that Newsom can’t be trusted he’ll struggle to gain people on his side. Voters forget after five years, politicians don’t.

If you go to a mechanic and they make you pay threw the nose after not fixing anything, you’re not gonna go back they’re and tell people you know not to either.

Well, you know, he's got EMILY's List on his side now.

[Хahar 🤔]

Very serious proposal by a canididate that's definitly got a good shot at winning according to all the "real" california politics understanders in this thread.

Why do you think that all the "real" California politics understanders are saying this? Is it because they're stupid?

[Хahar 🤔]

California is a state with a stacked progressive bench, sure, but it's also a state with a shrewd Democratic establishment that knows how to say just the right things to just the right people (unlike the NYDP which seems to rely entirely on brute force and complacency).

Unfortunately I have to say this yet again:

A challenge I'm going to make to the posters of this forum is to stop ever comparing California to New York. You can make comparisons to any other elections or any other politicians in any other state, but just don't use New York. Give it a try! If nothing else, it'll make people's analogies more creative.