MORE LIKE THIS PLEASE: San Francisco Voters Fire Three School Board Members.
One of the most definitive conclusions about the recall is that the “blame Donald Trump” strategy just will not work anymore for embattled Democratic politicians. Yes, it helped Newsom survive his recall last September, but it backfired on McAuliffe and proved to be an exploding cigar in San Francisco. When asked by the Chronicle why she should not be recalled, Collins immediately replied: “People need to follow the money and see that billionaires are coming in and trying to dictate how we should do democracy.” So much for that.
Mayor London Breed will now appoint the three new SFUSD board members to replace the recalled incumbents. Much of the city’s focus is already turning to the next recall election, that of controversial District Attorney Chesa Boudin. There is a palpable feeling that the aggressive, abstract, race-based jargon of progressive elites will no longer suffice in even Democratic places where voters have become motivated to act on the very many governing shortfalls visible to the naked eye.
“I’ve always thought of myself as progressive, but I don’t use that label anymore to describe myself,” [recall co-organizer and SFUSD parent Siva Raj] told me Monday. “Because when I see the people who call themselves progressive, and I especially see the elected leaders calling themselves progressive, they don’t seem to stand for any of the values that I believe what progressive should be. It is not progressive to stand back and do nothing while the most underprivileged kids in our city have struggled and suffered the most….It is not progressive to put your own political career above the interest of the people you’re supposed to serve. That is not progressive. All that I can see is that the movement that perhaps started with a lot of idealists in the ’60s and the ’70s and ’80s, is now filled with opportunists who only care about using progressive language to advance their careers, but have no interest, no desire, to actually solve the real problems that our kids are facing today.”
To be fair, an obsession with racialist identity politics and burning down functioning institutions were hallmarks of the original “Progressives,” but it’s good to see there are limits to what even San Francisco parents will tolerate.