2020 PRIMARY BALLOT
Here’s my take on our primary ballot. Happy voting!
YOU MAY WANT TO WAIT BEFORE VOTING!
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If you’re a Democrat, or planning to vote in the Democratic primary, by all means mail your ballot whenever you want if you’re voting for Bernie Sanders.
If you’re voting against Bernie Sanders, you need to wait until after the Nevada caucuses February 22 and the South Carolina primary February 29. Why? Because right now, it is unclear who (if anyone) can beat Sanders. For example, if you vote for Elizabeth Warren now and she drops out by March 3 (Super Tuesday), you’ll have wasted your vote.
The California primary ballot must be postmarked by TUESDAY, MARCH 3.
I will discuss the ballot’s lone proposition, and then offer my take on the Democratic primary candidates. The winner of the Republican primary is a foregone conclusion and isn’t worth anyone’s time.
PROPOSITION 13: SCHOOL FACILITIES FUNDING
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If you vote for this measure, you’re voting to authorize $15 billion for school and college facilities, $9 billion of which would go to K-12 public schools. You might think I would automatically support this, but I have 3 concerns.
If this is a constitutional amendment requiring the legislature to budget this amount in perpetuity, I will probably oppose it. We elect representatives to make budgeting decisions and our needs as a state may change. It is a misuse of the ballot proposition process to straightjacket the legislature when it comes to the state budget. I want to know why the legislature doesn’t budget this amount on their own. Why do they need to be forced to do it?
Who’s getting the money? What is the process for disbursement? I want to know the money is going where it’s needed to serve the students who need it most. If it’s a giveaway to La Jolla and Hillborough, then no thanks.
Can school districts use the money for football stadiums and other luxury items? I’m a football fan but I don’t want to pay for that. Safety, core academics, and reducing carbon emissions need to be our priorities.
So, I did some research. Here’s what I found out. It turns out the money is supposed to be spent on upgrading old and hazardous facilities, including mold and asbestos abatement, earthquake safety, and water quality. Administrative costs are limited to 5%—I love that. Also the money provides economic stimulus, as private firms would be hired by the government to do all the work.
It is not a constitutional amendment. It authorizes the state to sell bonds (borrow money). The legislature isn’t authorized to borrow on its own.
This is pretty straightforward, and there are guard rails: procedures for auditing and transparency.
The usual suspects line up as you would expect: the CTA (California Teachers Association) is the biggest donor in the YES camp; the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association opposes the measure. The governor, most elected Democrats, and even a handful of elected Republicans support the measure. Opponents of the measure haven’t bothered raising any money.
My three concerns are satisfied well enough here, for me.
YES on 13.
THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY PRIMARY
For anyone who cares, I’m going to take you through my thought process here. This is my opinion based on all the reading I do, based on my study of U.S. history, based on all the people I talk to, and based on my social media interactions. I recognize that your opinion may differ based on your own experience.
First and foremost, most of us on the left are making this about policy. It’s not about policy at all.
“It’s not about policy at all.”
Why not? Because:
No imaginable U.S. Senate in 2021 will pass anything too left of center, even if Democrats win control of the body and get rid of the filibuster. The best case scenario is 51 Democrats, 49 Republicans. In that event, it will take JUST TWO conservative Democrats like Joe Manchin (D-WV), Jon Tester (D-MT), and/or Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ), to name just three, who can kill anything they dislike. And there are others. So if Medicare for All scares you, it needn’t. It’s dead on arrival.
No election in my lifetime has EVER been decided on policy. If 2016 was about policy, Clinton would have crushed Trump. Presidential elections are about charisma and the economy. As of right now, this president has both on his side. If he wasn’t a brazen, unapologetic racist, misogynist, and corrupt crime lord with no respect for the rule of law, this election would be over already and your primary vote would hardly matter.
BERNIE SANDERS
I’ll be honest with you. If this election WAS about policy, I’d be voting for Bernie Sanders. I agree with most of what he says. And I’m not bothered by the label “socialist,” because FOX News will staple that label to any Democrat who ends up opposing You Know Who. Even Sanders himself isn’t a real socialist.
So? No one on the right is going to admit the nominee is not radical. If you don’t realize that, you don’t really understand with whom you’re dealing.
But I’m not voting for the senator from Vermont, and here’s why:
He has not demonstrated any ability to get much of anything done, and he’s been in Congress for what? Half a century? He is an iconoclast, someone who shines light on problems, not a leader who solves problems. I don’t believe he can convince Congress to do the things he wants done, and I don’t believe he will tarnish his brand by compromising. That attitude should sound familiar, because it’s what’s squatting in the White House right now. Maybe you have more faith in Sanders’s ability. If so, we just disagree.
He surrounds himself with people I don’t want in leadership positions. Go on Twitter for 10 minutes. Watch his surrogates on television. Read what they write in op-eds. More often than not, these people lust with authoritarian impulses: silencing their opponents, exacting vengeance on their opponents, inflicting pain on their opponents. “How can he control his followers?” I am asked. That proves my point: how can he get anything done, if he can’t control the tone of his own campaign? “When you make it about civility, you’re just avoiding the issues.” No. This is not about civility, this is about leadership. He wants win by tearing institutions down, with no vision for what should replace them. He wants to win by punishing people for their political views. That is his style of leadership. That should sound familiar, because it’s what we currently have sneering in the Oval Office. How will Sanders surrogates unify the party, when up until this point they’ve demonstrated nothing but hatred for Democrats? Will they argue with a straight face that we should worry about the Supreme Court? In 2016, what was their behavior, after they helped craft the most progressive Democratic party platform in history? For many, it was a gross display of sour grapes and pouty vindictiveness because their messiah wasn’t the nominee. And it seems clear to me that the senator values loyalty above competence (sound familiar?). That is not what I want, when I think about executive branch cabinet positions. Would he appoint Shaun King as Attorney General? I don’t want to find out.
Sanders has not yet faced the Republican hate machine. They’re holding back. They WANT him to win the primary. When he does, they will unleash hell. I don’t trust him to react to it effectively.
It’s early, but Sanders has not (yet) demonstrated any ability to create a surge in turnout this cycle. I agree many voters stay home every cycle because they don’t believe the two candidates they have to choose from will make positive changes that will impact everyday voters’ lives. Part of that is stupidity—the current president is trying to worsen air pollution—but part of what’s going on is the very real sense that candidates are about the status quo, and not about fundamental change. Obama turned out not to be a change agent. And so there is a belief that Sanders might be a REAL change agent. Maybe he represents REAL change, even if, as I said above, there’s no way he can get it done. And he might drive up turnout among traditional non-voters. But even if he DID create a surge in turnout, would it be enough to offset all the many centrists who would defect, or refuse to vote at all? Would it doom centrist Democrats who won in 2018 in swing districts? I’m not a fan of coddling centrists, which the party leadership has always sought to do, believing there are many swing voters—there aren’t—but I’ve spoken to enough centrists to know that they’re not kidding around when it comes to Sanders.
I don’t trust Sanders to sign gun control legislation. He might—he might not. At best it is simply not a priority. At worst he opposes it. For me that is disqualifying.
And finally, Vermont has a Republican governor who would appoint Sanders’s replacement. Would that person be right wing? No. Would that person vote to keep McConnell as Senate majority leader, perhaps in exchange for disingenuous promises? Yes.
I know it seems like 20% of the country can rule supreme simply by being nasty. That’s pretty much what we have now. The president has done tremendous damage to our republic. But this president has accomplished very little outside his judicial appointments that cannot be undone, and quickly, because he’s passed hardly any legislation. I expect a Sanders presidency to be quite similar in that regard.
ALL THAT SAID, if Sanders is the nominee, I will vote for him, for the sake of the republic.
ELIZABETH WARREN
I want a woman to be president—badly. I like what Warren has accomplished as a senator and I like what Warren says. I like the inspiring tone of her campaign. I believe she would get things done. I don’t believe she can’t be trusted simply because she was a Republican for so much of her adult life. I may still vote for her, but her viability appears to be fading. Also:
Black Americans, broadly speaking, do not like her. Many of them believe she is weak and that she is a flip-flopping liar, fairly or not. I’m uncomfortable with the level of disdain I’m seeing for her missteps, but I trust black voters. Many of them appear to care about one thing and one thing only: getting rid of this president. The ones who do can’t be bothered about policy. I trust that instinct.
Massachusetts has a Republican governor who would appoint Warren’s replacement. Would that person be right wing? No. Would that person vote to keep McConnell as Senate majority leader, perhaps in exchange for disingenuous promises? Yes. Although I am reading that there are procedural hurdles the Massachusetts legislature could throw up to stop the governor, why take that chance? Without the Senate, a Democratic president will get little if anything done.
MIKE BLOOMBERG
I want to like this guy. He is the one candidate who gets under the president’s skin, who knows how to torture him with words. And it’s clear from the reaction to Bloomberg’s candidacy that the Republican hate machine truly fears him. They fear his money and they fear his rhetoric. And so they and the Sanders camp have turned up HILLS of dirt on Bloomberg. His treatment of women, his attitudes and mayoral policies regarding race, his opposition to workers, his very recent support of conservatives including George W. Bush and Scott Brown—the whole bag of horrors is now on display. I know the hate machine WANTS me to be turned off by this stuff. But that doesn’t make it untrue. Brett Kavanaugh’s conduct made him unfit to serve as a federal judge. I’m not going to be a hypocrite and look the other way now. Yeah, yeah, all candidates have skeletons. But this is an ARMY of skeletons. Bad ones.
It is true that many black Americans don’t care about Bloomberg’s past if he can beat Trump. If he’s the nominee, so be it. I can’t support him in the primary, not even if he’s the only one who can beat Sanders.
A note about Bloomberg’s money: shouldn’t I care that he can buy his way into an election? Sure I should! But until Americans care enough about socioeconomic inequality and campaign finance reform to vote accordingly, why should Democrats handicap themselves? I fear it will require a pile of money in order to get money out of politics. This is the chessboard we play on. Surrendering the queen is not the smart move.
So, that leaves the following candidates. I don’t know which one will earn my vote. I voice my concerns about each.
WHATS-HIS-NAME STEYER
Until this guy actually wins some votes, he isn’t worth paying attention to. I didn’t say the same about Bloomberg because the hate machine is on Bloomberg like flies on dung. No one seems worried about Steyer. That could change and if so he’s got my attention and I can evaluate his character. (His positions don’t matter to me so long as he would sign almost any legislation coming from a center-left Congress.)
AMY KLOBUCHAR
I really worry about two things here: (1) her hideous treatment of her staff; (2) her centrist evangelism. Would she veto bills designed to curb climate change? Maybe. Would she leave 10 million Americans uninsured? She might. She’s that centrist. I said policy doesn’t matter, so I won’t let that be the deciding factor. But I don’t want Trump Republicans nominated as judges and appointed to a Klobuchar cabinet just so she can appear Reasonable. Obama tried that and got NO COOKIES. It’s not okay. It’s not what the country needs right now. Pay attention to California, where things get done, the nation’s bills get paid, and Republicans have absolutely ZERO to say about it.
PETE BUTTIGIEG
Many say he can’t win because he’s gay. I’m not sure I buy that. I don’t think there is one adult voter who would vote for Trump ONLY BECAUSE Pete is gay, and no other reason. Those people are voting for the orange hellbeast anyway. Some might not vote at all—true—but again I think one thing Pete has going for him is his imitation of Obama’s inspiring, uplifting message. Sometimes, he seems more willing to act boldly than Amy. Other times, he seems like a reincarnation of the contemptible John Kasich (R-OH). Would he veto a bill designed to curb Facebook’s insidious ubiquity? Yep, he might. He’s in bed financially with a lot of those kind of people. It makes me nervous. I don’t know which Pete is the real Pete.
JOE BIDEN
And, that leaves us with Joe. If black Americans in South Carolina give him a resounding win, he’s probably my guy. I worry because he doesn’t seem as sharp as he once did. Remember when he debated the fraud Paul Ryan (R-WI) in the 2008 campaign? He kicked butt! But that was 12 years ago. Please understand, I don’t mean that as an ageist insult. ** I ** am not sharp enough on my feet to run for president. But, Joe’s taken a ton of heat from the hate machine and weathered it enough to remain in the race. Nobody’s talking about that, are they?
He generally surrounds himself with people who care about helping people, who care about restoring America’s honor. His warts are all out there and frankly they aren’t nearly what some other candidates bring to the table. He’s somewhat less of a centrist evangelist than some of the others, enough that I trust him not to veto things that could emerge from a fairly conservative Senate.
Is he exciting? Nope.
Is he a change agent? Nope.
If he’s the nominee, will they ever shut up about Hunter, even though the current president does worse than anything Hunter Biden ever did EVERY SINGLE HOUR? Nope.
I’m not sure being Not Trump can win. I know many who think not.
Look, I forgot someone:
TULSI GABBARD
Trust me on this: if this person is chosen as anyone’s Vice Presidential running mate (most likely Bernie’s), I will not vote for president. This is an extremely dangerous pro-Russia authoritarian, and if it’s between putting her a heartbeat away from the Oval, or re-electing Trump, in my view there’s no difference and the republic is already dead. Because if she is ever president, she will end the republic. She is Sarah Palin with a brain.
Who votes “present” on impeachment? She did.
Who appears on Hannity all the time to talk about how awful Democrats are? She does.
I think she drops out at some point, hopefully not so soon as to begin a Putin-bankrolled third party challenge designed to kneecap whichever Democrat advances.
Best case scenario is that she ends up on FOX News where she clearly wants to be. Won’t Hannity be surprised to find a knife in his back and Tulsi in his prime time slot?