Sky's Adventures Behind the CA Dem Party Curtain - Hey, we made New Yorker Mag!

Politics & News
46

i am certainly not talking about AC in general, because i don’t know in depth of what that is. I was projecting someone i know personally who went bernie-bro => anyone-but-trump => anarchist-camp-in-nevada-desert. i assume he isn’t affiliated with you, but just like any other party, it’s a tent for all sorts of people who call themselves whatever.

NYS dems who decided to caucus with GOP are unfortunately not a big outlier, because manchin/sinema/vandrew exist. still there are blue states where this doesn’t happen. is it an establishment thing? i’m not an insider, i don’t know for sure. it isn’t in all occurrences. at least i don’t think it happened in WA or VA last cycle. i get people here like to dunk on spanberger, but that’s a far cry from what happened in NYS. 2008-10 in VA was interesting. you had actual progressives voting against ACA over abortion because of constituents. i hated it, but i respected them.

you should definitely create a thread. i will wait to put my opinion on state vs gov’t.

i do appreciate that as mod you cannot ignore my posts anymore.

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Anarcho-socialists, anarcho-communists, anarcho-primitivists, municipalists, anarcho-syndicalists, mutualists are all in a tent and all of them see “Anarcho-capitalist” as a contradiction in terms and not in the tent at all. That’s not to say they have nothing in common, but they’re not in the same tent.

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48

So you approve of JAQing off as a form of trolling? I thought we all hated that here.

Also, they aren’t playing politics. They are playing “activism.” There’s a difference, and its unfortunate that these gaslighters don’t seem to understand that.

What they’re really good at is playing the victim and projecting.

I actually said in my post that we let them loose to make mistakes, or did you miss that part? It’s not me harassing them for their mistakes.

I would be more inclined to take the outside haters at face value if they weren’t using in real life the very same bad faith tactics we have complained about here for years. Concern trolling, JAQing off, playing the victim, projecting, gaslighting…it’s very recognizable if you’re there in the moment. They have driven off good members of the club already because of their bullying.

51

If the 2016 primary didn’t have arbitrary rules put in place by the dem party leadership, and the process was completely transparent, do you think there would be fewer issues today?

54

let me rephrase. How would you have felt if the process in 2016 had been completely transparent and 100% up to the voters (no dem party interference/shenanigans) and Bernie had lost?

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56

lol fine, but my argument to the zip code enforcer group was that it’s better to let the voters decide than have the leadership create more rules about the process that are unnecessary and limiting/exclusionary.

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57

I’m not dead!

It’s time! The big weekend is here! Expect this thread to be more active as I participate in the first all-virtual CA Dem Convention.

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(Sending these seems like a waste of $$ but hey, it also came with a nifty “Stop the Recall” sticker, so whatever)

First, some catching up news.

  1. The East County Young Dems club has suspended operations because they couldn’t get a 2/3rds majority on either side of the debate over their bylaws. I’m not a fan of “young dems” in San Diego right now. Not because of their politics, but because of their bullying tactics. But we’ve had that discussion here.

  2. I am now the Interim VP of a new East County chapter of the San Diego County Veterans’ Dem Club. We are still working out bylaws and meeting rules, but after witnessing the ECYD debacle, we’ve determined to not allow any bullshit. Our first big challenge is member recruitment. We plan to get shirts and go to community events in East County, including the cruise night I mentioned in the GOP Insanity thread where people still fly Fuck Biden flags. Should be fun.

  3. I am also now an alternate to the San Diego County Democratic Party Central Committee. Visualize me rubbing my hands together in glee. Our county party has ZERO rural representation, they have like, 2 people in leadership positions over the age of 40, and while that is fine in and of itself, they also display disgusting ageism when it comes to interacting with older members of the party. They also consistently fail to consider how their policies might hit different in rural east county. Hell, they fail to consider that there might be Democrats in rural east county at all. I totally plan to push the member for whom I’m an alternate to consider these issues, and push for them myself when he is not able to do so.

My Calendar for the next 4 days (so far)

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Anyway, the convention starts tomorrow. There is an entire online app that they’ve set up to handle this, and it seems pretty slick so far, but we’ll see what happens when the rubber meets the road.

Yes, the Rural Caucus is meeting at 7:30 AM. I mean, what the fuck, man? I guess they assume everyone is a farmer who wakes up early? Good thing I went to the store today and stocked up on snacks and caffeine.

Let’s do this!

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58

OK, So the party leadership elections are over.

The incumbent chair, Rusty Hicks, won re-election. Meh, whatever. Like I said before, neither candidate really lit the world on fire with me.

So those emails have stopped, thank god. But do I get a break?

HAHAHAHAHA fuck no. Now it’s emails from candidates already asking me to vote for party endorsements. Like, people running for CD-1 campaigning for me down here at the far ass end of the state to vote for the party to endorse them.

Not to mention, campaign declarations are low this year because our new districts probably won’t be out until fucking JANUARY. May I remind you that the primary is supposed to be in March of 2022 (this can always change and might be a matter of discussion at the convention)…and no one even knows which Congressional seat is going away yet.

Don’t worry though, because this party is run by Northern Californians, all those districts are safe. Sure, the borders might change a bit, but a San Diego County district is going to be the one on the chopping block. Insider rumors have mentioned the 49th, the 50th, the 52nd, and the 53rd all being the potential lost seat. I mean, what would make sense would be for the 50th, 51st and 52nd to expand and eat up the 53rd, but politics is a messy business.

Here’s a map of the current lines. The purple is the 53rd, and the dark green is the 51st (which extends to the AZ border).
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Another option would be to get rid of the 49th, expanding the 52nd , 50th, and a couple of the Riverside/Orange County districts.

Both of these options might actually be good for the 50th, since it would inevitably add more dem voters. You can’t just push the borders of the 50th eastward to sequester republicans to that district because it would lower the population too much.

Bottom line, NorCal pols say fuck San Diego, and I’m glad I’m not on this redistricting commission.

This doesn’t even touch on population shifts within the state for State Assembly and State Senate redistricting. We still have no Dem candidate for AD-71 because no one knows where the line will be, and unlike Congressional races, CA state law says you must live in the assembly district you run to represent.

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59

is there some way to partition the 50th and add its pieces to the surrounding districts in order to get rid of a Republican seat?

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That’s another option, yes.

That may actually turn the 51st red, though. Imperial County is pretty Trumpy.

You can pretty much draw a line from the “cleveland national forest” icon to Temecula, and that’s the majority of the population of the 50th. Not sure how to even it out among the others without screwing up the 51st.

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Have you seen any maps for what California redistricting would look like if you could gerrymander it to maximize Democratic seats? What does San Diego County look like in those?

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Haven’t really seen much yet. CA uses a “bipartisan” commission, so in theory there should be no partisan gerrymandering at all. I’m sure the commission takes into account party registrations too.

Basically, any expansion of CA-50 westward has a great chance to flip the seat blue. Any expansion eastward or northward probably keeps it red. None of the other seats would really be in any danger of flipping, though if the 49th gets eaten up by the red districts to its north and northeast, that could be an issue if the 50th doesn’t change at all.

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Do you gain anything from flipping the 50th blue and turning it into a competitive district if you lose a safer blue district in the process?

How open are you to the 50th becoming redder if it creates gains elsewhere on the map that benefit Democrats overall?

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I see what you’re saying. I’m open to it, of course. It sucks, but if it means losing an R seat elsewhere, that’s fine by me.

I’m trying to visualize what that would look like without losing the 49th or 53rd. I suppose the 51st could go away and the 50th gets a lot of that area, but who knows.

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The way to think about it is that even in a heavily pro-Democratic partisan gerrymander, there are still too many Republicans to have all blue districts. You’re going to need at least one heat sink to draw off Republican votes and help the surrounding districts.

So, start from scratch and imagine where you would put a district south of the LA area that would be as red as possible. You might need more than one Republican containment district.

Here’s an outdated look at what a partisan gerrymander could look like for 53 seats in 2018, which crafts a 47-6 split.

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I kind of wish I could choose two criteria on that tool, because I think they generally try to follow county borders as much as possible.

Perhaps that’s where I’m tripping up. Maybe the commission will ditch that effort and come up with something similar to the “favor dems” map.

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There are number-crunching nerds who try to figure this stuff out to come up with the best possible maps, given assumptions about the commission’s self-imposed constraints. I know they exist, so I don’t bother to do it myself.

If the state party doesn’t have analytics types to figure it out, or access to people who do, that would appear to me to be a problem. Trying to get Dems to modernize how they operate seems like your sort of thing, so maybe you might enjoy looking into it.

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68

Same. That’s the commission’s job. Honestly, It would probably just make me angry, and I don’t need that right now.

I am frustrated at the lateness of everything, because I have a friend who is interested in running for AD-71, but she lives right on the border of another district, and she is hamstrung right now…can’t officially start a campaign, can’t legally fundraise, etc. She’s a viable candidate, too. She somehow managed to come within 5 (five!!!) votes of winning a seat on the Santee city council. As a Democrat. In Santee (lovingly referred to as “Klantee” by the locals). If there is a campaign I’d dream of running, it’s hers, but we just…can’t right now.

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Here we go! Today’s schedule:

12:00-1:00 pm: Organizing in Spanish-Speaking Communities. This is on one of the virtual stages, so I’ll just be listening in. It’s going to be in Spanish, with live English translation (whatever that means). Lots of Latinos in CD-50 and AD-71, so I don’t want to miss this.

2:00-4:30 pm: “JEDI” Training (Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusivity). Who knows. I signed up to see what it’s all about. I know what I want it to be about, but it’s the CA Dem party…

4:00 pm: Take my dog to the vet. Yes, at some point I’m going to have to see how this weird virtual app works on my phone so I can take my dog to the vet. Yikes.

7:30-9:30 pm: Women’s Caucus. This is the only caucus I haven’t gotten an email/agenda from. It’s probably just gonna be Christine Pelosi speaking, but I’ll check it out anyway.

I have publicly stated that my priority for this convention is to be loud and proud about rural issues and representation in the party (or lack thereof). I need to come up with some standard questions/talking points for these caucus meetings that address those concerns.

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First session done. As I expected, there were some technical difficulties at first, but they got worked out and it was a decent, if not too heavy, conversation. The panel was in Spanish, and the live English translation didn’t get going until about 10 minutes in (I think they were trying to figure it out). I had to refresh several times.

One gripe: The English host started off right away using “Latinx” which bugs me to no end. Obviously none of the Spanish-speaking guests used it, because it’s stupid and lame and has no intelligible pronunciation in Spanish. And Dems wonder why people think we’re the party of faculty rooms and urban elites…

Fortunately, the people who spoke first in the intro segment were very conscious that the audience included non-native speakers, so they spoke very clearly and slowly enough (in relatively unaccented Spanish) for this stupid Castilian-trained gringa to understand most of it.

The panelists included our new Senator, Alex Padilla, Congresswoman Linda Sanchez, and most importantly, Dolores Huerta, who, as expected brought the real information and truth about organizing Latino communities.

Also fortunately, the translator kicked in for Dolores, who definitely didn’t try to suppress her accent, so I had more trouble understanding her. Thank goodness I got the translation, because as expected, she was obviously the smartest person in the room when it comes to organizing in Spanish-speaking communities. She wasn’t afraid to call out the party for their faults in this area, as well as offering suggestions:

  1. We wait too long to start. Latino communities (like many minority communities in this country) need to trust the people organizing them, and two weeks before an election is not enough time to build that trust.

  2. We don’t reach out to community members for help. Part and parcel with point 1 is that building trust requires help from “the inside”, so to speak. Finding people that are part of those communities who are willing to step up and be activists or super volunteers is a step that most Dem campaigns fail to do.

  3. Tactics that work for young/urban people often don’t work as well in these communities, because they just don’t have the same access/tech knowhow/time to participate. My own opinion here: I think this may be a big part of why dems got hammered in Latino communities in 2020. All-digital campaigning just isn’t as effective in these spaces as door to door and face to face campaigning

  4. Along with point 3, and from personal experience, house meetings are an incredibly effective organizing tool in these communities. It goes back to trust-building. That’s why we must start early. If we start 18 months out, that gives us time to organize and hold more house meetings to reach more people.

  5. Voter registration drives in Latino communities HAVE to be more than just filling out forms for as many people as possible. We have to slow down and spend time with each person we’re registering to explain the entire process and help them build trust in that process. Dolores sad that many Latinos are afraid they won’t do it correctly when their ballot comes, so they just don’t do it at all. If we take the time to teach them, once they vote successfully one time, many of these folks become voters FOR LIFE.

  6. Dolores also listed off a bunch of concrete things Democrats have done for Latinos throughout recent history. I really hope there’s a transcription or recording of this available because I didn’t get most of them and that would be a valuable tool to have when talking to these communities.

Anyway, short break now before I begin my JEDI training. Hopefully I learn that mind trick so I can tell people that Trump is not the droid they are looking for.

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