The Grey Lady herself, The New York Times—bastion of liberalism—published an opinion piece the other day, entitled “Even Democrats Like Me Are Fed Up With San Francisco,” written by a rich venture capitalist, Michael Moritz, who among many other credentials is a major philanthropist and a financial backer of the Lincoln Project. Moritz’s central point in the essay is that Democrats “have become our own worst enemy” due to “the tyranny of the minority” that has seized control of the Democratic Party.
Moritz points his finger at “a small coterie who knows how to bend government to its will.” This coterie is comprised of far-left “progressives” who have turned their backs on the Democratic Party’s traditional goals—"respect for human rights, plenty of housing that’s within reach for most people, care for the mentally ill, fair pay, high-quality public education, a dignified retirement”—in favor of policies that, intentionally or not, undermine those traditional goals, and moreover perpetuate “the fentanyl epidemic, homeless encampments, housing that is unaffordable for most, deteriorating school systems and high tax rates.” It’s not that progressives come right out and say they’re in favor of fentanyl, or encampments, or unaffordable housing, and so on. But these evils are the result of their progressive policies.
Progressives refuse, for instance, to aggressively crack down on open-air drug use and dealing, thus enabling it to continue ruining our cities. They refuse to tell campers that they are not permitted to squat on public property, which leads, logically enough, to more squatters on public property. They insist on perpetuating San Francisco’s insanely bureaucratic barriers to new housing construction, in which any individual person, at any point in the approval process, can object to and bring to a halt any project to build affordable housing. They will not permit the city to alter the confiscatory taxes on businesses that have driven so many companies out of San Francisco and Oakland and continue to do so.
Moritz’s brief contains many specific instances of how progressives have managed to get a chokehold on more sensible policies, mainly by sponsoring voter referendums that are passed by well-meaning but naïve voters. These initiatives—some 312 in since 2000—have bloated San Francisco’s government bureaucracy so much that many small businesses, including increasingly big ones like Charles Schwab, have simply fled the city in favor of cities that do not torment them.
Mortitz maintains that he is “optimistic” about San Francisco’s prospects, due to his belief that the city’s Democratic Party can resist being “held hostage by the political classes.” I wish I could share his optimism. As a resident of Oakland—a city considerably further left than even San Francisco—I see our city descending deeper and deeper into the madness of wokeism. Whether it’s the growing power of Carroll Fife, or the pro-criminal attitude of Pamela Price, or the racial animus of Cat Brooks, our city is losing its grip on reality, and hence on public safety. It blows my mind that Oakland is sinking into darkness, and so many voters seem fine with that. The same thing happened in Germany in the early 1930s, with results that we now know in retrospect were catastrophic.
Moritz’s op-ed piece was sent to me yesterday by an old friend, like me a Jewish kid of the Sixties, and a lifelong Democrat. He resonated with Moritz’s premise that he hasn’t left the Democratic Party; the party has left him. It’s so sad to see the party of FDR and JFK, of Lyndon Johnson and Bill Clinton and Obama, hijacked into a caricature of wokeness. One question that haunts me: if the Democratic Party has indeed succumbed to a nihilistic wokeism that makes it no longer viable, then what are we left with? The answer is scary: MAGA.
Steve Heimoff