Barbara Lee has backed out of a scheduled live debate with Loren Taylor that was to have been shown on KQED television.
According to the Taylor team, Lee complained that the debate was “unfair,” although she didn’t explain why or how. The moderator would have been KTVU’s Dave Clark, himself a Black man, and one of the most respected news anchors in the Bay Area. Taylor, for his part, has stated he remains committed to the debate.
In case there’s any ambiguity why Lee canceled, let me explain. This race is closer than Lee had anticipated. She expected she would waltz into the Mayor’s office virtually unopposed, supported by bags of money from unions, and buoyed by superior name recognition. Then, unexpectedly, Loren Taylor proved to be a far more compelling candidate and Lee a far weaker one. As I pointed out the other day, after 27 years in Congress in a safe seat, Lee long ago lost whatever campaigning and debating skills she ever had. On the other hand, Taylor is a sharp, hungry and dangerous opponent. Lee realizes that, on a stage, Taylor would eat her for lunch. This, she cannot permit to happen, so she brazenly cancels a debate Oakland voters expected and deserve.
What can we conclude? Lee is morally and intellectually unsuitable to be mayor. She has no respect for the voters of Oakland, whom she has insulted by this cancellation. We can conclude, also, that Lee doesn’t have a single solution to a single Oakland problem. All she offers are clichés, word mush that means nothing.
Yesterday I received a comment from a pro-Lee reader who wrote, “Wait until you see the +70% margin Barbara Lee wins by.” I can’t claim I have access to a crystal ball the way that reader has, but I’m pretty confident that, even if Lee wins, it won’t be by 70%. The only people—I want to make this clear—that are supporting Lee are ideological dead-enders who still buy into the woke nonsense Lee has peddled her entire career—people who think it makes sense to raise the minimum wage to $50 an hour (say goodbye to every business in town), people who bear a grudge against White people, people who want to defund the police, people who want to “decarcerate” (i.e., shut down) the prisons, people who want to tax the citizens more and more and more, people who ultimately do not value democracy.
It baffles me that Oakland has so many of these foolish people. They’ve fallen hook, line and center for wokeness, a cancer that infects the mind and for which there is no cure. Someday, history will look back at wokes such as Barbara Lee the way we today look back at slaveowners and wonder how America ever permitted these people to exist in the first place.
It’s too bad we Oaklanders will be denied the ability to watch Loren Taylor disassemble Barbara Lee live on television. It would have been fun. Barbara Lee is scared of Loren Taylor. She’s scared of the voters of Oakland. She needs to lose this election, and go where she belongs: into dignified retirement, with a healthy government pension.
Steve Heimoff