We ought to give Sheng Thao a little credit for her concession statement on Nov. 8, just three days after we recalled her from office. The former mayor exaggerated her “accomplishments” and was defensive, but at least she thanked us, the voters, for electing her.
You’re welcome, Madame Mayor. Most of us didn’t vote for you; it was ranked choice that got you there. But whatever. We wish you a happy life.
And then there’s Pamela Price. Does it surprise anyone that she still hasn’t conceded the recall two weeks after she lost by a 2:1 margin? Not only that, in her final days in office she’s still playing the victim, vengefully retaliating against cops she feels were disloyal to her, and continuing to insult the good people of Alameda County by lying that we who voted against her are “merchants of fear, hate and discord… a group of very wealthy people [who] successfully overturned a democratic election.”
Well, that’s Pamela Price for you. Angry, defiant, paranoid, untruthful, and racist.
Why such different reactions from the two politicians? I would argue that Price’s mental state is far more deranged than that of Thao. The soon-to-be former mayor is not exactly a paragon of intellectual dynamism, but she at least seems to possess a core of human decency. We didn’t recall Thao because she’s mean or evil or a horrible person. No, we recalled her because she was incompetent.
But Price? What can you expect from someone long stuck in the sludge of racial grievance? At a time when Americans long to move past the racial wars of yesteryear, Pamela Price insists on keeping the fires stoked. In her regressive view, American history is one of Black versus White. We’re not all in this together, Price believes; it’s a zero-sum game in which one side has to lose in order for the other side to gain. And in this case, it’s White people who have to lose.
White people, understandably, didn’t take kindly to Price’s war on them. Neither did Asians or most Latinos, who understand that in America, nothing and no one can stop a hard-working citizen from succeeding. In Price’s clotted vision, Black people can’t rise because White people keep them down. But we know that this is a vicious smear. If some Black people are not succeeding economically, believe me, it’s not because of White people.
But Pamela Price and her cohorts on the woke left are unable to countenance this truth. That’s why they’re unfit for public office. You can’t govern if you won’t remove the beam from your eye and see reality. And that’s all that Americans are asking for these days: for our leaders to see reality and act accordingly. It’s why Price went down to defeat, and Thao, and so many other “progressives.” Reality has a nasty habit of clobbering people on the head who refuse to see it. Price and Thao, blinded by their ignorant ideology, just got gob-smacked. Thao is beginning to understand what happened. Price doesn’t and never will. She’ll return to festering in her racialized hate zone, simmering with resentment, but at least she won’t be able to hurt us anymore.
Steve Heimoff