Off We Go, Holding Our Noses Again

Our California primary ballots are sitting on my desk, unopened as yet, as we wait for one of the Democratic candidates to emerge as a clear favorite. The Golden State’s “jungle” primary has scrambled the field, making it possible for two Republicans to face off in the November general election. If that happens, we may have to decamp to Mexico or Canada. I have enough worries and fears about the authoritarian takeover of this country; a Trump-aligned governor might break my spirit.

Having never watched Fox News, I’m not familiar with Steve Hilton. A bit of research revealed that his parents emigrated to the UK from Hungary, changed their surname and divorced when Hilton was young. He worked in policy roles in David Cameron’s government, did time at a think tank or two — visiting scholar, resident scholar, fellow, etc, — and was involved with a Silicon Valley start-up before landing a gig on Fox. He’s one of those people that leverages connections to move from one post to the next. He’s been described by former colleagues as a “refreshing but wacky thinker.”

Democrat Tom Steyer is worth a couple of billion dollars. He grew up in New York City, went to Yale and then joined Goldman Sachs. These facts alone are disqualifying in my view, given the damage done to this country by alumni of Yale and Goldman Sachs, from the misguided War on Terror to the mortgage fraud of 2008 and the decades long tax holiday for the Billionaire Class. Steyer went on to establish a San Francisco based hedge fund that invested in coal mines and private prisons, and accumulated capital by dispossession. It’s also true that Steyer and his wife engaged in philanthropy and climate initiatives and gave money to Democratic candidates. I grant these mitigating factors, but for me the bottom line is that no person accumulates a billion dollars without engaging in exploitation of human beings, policies, legal loopholes or the environment.

Steyer talks a good game. I give him credit for sitting down with Mehdi Hasan on Zeteo. Still, I don’t quite buy it, especially because he intones one of the oldest cons in the book: trust me, I’m an outsider. So said Donald Trump in 2015. In 2020, Steyer sunk $253 million of his own fortune into a quixotic presidential bid, and now he’s spending another $130 million or so on the governor’s race. I always return to an old adage: those who seek power with unwavering attention are usually unfit to wield it. If it comes down to the wire and the choice is between Hilton and Steyer, my hand will be forced — as it has been so many times before — to choose the lesser evil.

And what of Xavier Becerra, Stanford grad and long time public servant? When it comes to his resume Becerra checks all the boxes. Served in Congress for twenty-four years, was the Attorney General of California, and the Secretary of Health & Human Services in the Biden administration. The question I ask is this: who did Becerra sell out or betray? Working people, the environment, consumers? Did he routinely support increases for the American war and surveillance machine? A few people I’ve talked to told me Becerra has a skeleton or two in his closet related to the oil industry, but that’s not unusual in California. I did read about some allegations of impropriety with regard to campaign finances, but these register as small beer when compared to the Trump Regime’s wholesale grifting schemes. Is Becerra qualified? Technically yes, but in the same way Joe Biden was qualified in 2020, even though he was at that time too old and feeble to accomplish the two tasks the moment demanded: pull the country and the economy out from under Trump’s pandemic failure, and protect our democracy from Trump and MAGA. Biden mostly succeeded at the first and failed abysmally at the second. Remember Merrick Garland, the Cowardly Lion Biden selected for Attorney General?

What’s a citizen to do? A right-wing, Trump-aligned hack, a billionaire, and a career politician with as much charisma and dynamism as a wet paper bag. Voters are like sardines swimming through a sea of hungry sharks and whales. In some cases, the votes we cast are summarily tossed out by state courts, as happened recently in Virginia; six of the nine justices of the US Supreme Court believe that racism no longer exists in the South; the gerrymander assault green-lighted by the high court is in top gear, working double-overtime to disenfranchise as many Black voters as possible. And hanging like a Sword of Damocles over November is the Trump Regime’s unequivocal intention to meddle, obstruct and interfere. Before a single vote has been cast, cries of “fraud” and “foreign influence” and “illegal ballots” can already be heard. If a Blue Wave materializes as history and Trump’s rising unpopularity predict it will, Fox News and the right-wing echo machine and Trump himself will shift to overdrive, the FBI will be heavily involved, and the DOJ will likely file all kinds of nutty lawsuits. We should expect chaos. Even if Democrats win by big margins, will Little Mikey Johnson seat them?

I’ll wait another week or two before opening my ballot. And then, as I’ve done for many years running, I’ll pinch my nose and vote. One day before I take my leave of this mortal coil I hope to vote for something rather than against something.