Eating Their Own in the Golden State

February 19, 2023

History shows that leftists always end up eating their own, as they continually jockey for the top rung on their political ladder. This week’s target is the odious Congressman Adam Schiff. He has been a congressman for 22 years and this year has decided to run for the seat being vacated by Senator Dianne Feinstein, whose staff, apparently without her prior knowledge, has announced she will not run again in 2024.

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He is a consummate liar and misused his perch as the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee to spread disinformation which could not until recently be proven falsehoods, hiding them under a cloak of secret intelligence information, claiming Donald Trump had colluded with the Russians to win the 2016 election. He was Nancy Pelosi’s pick to head the Ukraine impeachment charge against Trump, which failed.

Rolling Stone observes that he is a heroic figure to many Democrats. 

To a certain cadre of loyal MSNBC viewers, Adam Schiff is the platonic ideal of a Democrat. The California congressman supports universal health care. He eschews corporate PAC money (these days, at least). He’s an understated former prosecutor who takes his job seriously even as Washington often descends into fundamental unseriousness. Look no further than his management of then-President Donald Trump’s first impeachment as proof.

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You’d imagine in blue state California, he’d be a shoo-in.

Unfortunately for Schiff, in the days of DEI, he apparently is the wrong color and sex. Suddenly, establishment Democrats who support Schiff are not so keen on identity politics, although others remain so, as long as the identity for this generational seat in a uniparty state, is a woman, and — even better – a black woman.

The anti-Schiff sentiment is fomenting at the beginning of the “insiders primary,” as Rose Kapolczynski, longtime campaign manager for former Sen. Barbara Boxer, calls it — the behind-the-scenes chatter among the donors, consultants, and activists who lend credibility to nascent campaigns. Some Democratic donors have been strategizing on how to ensure the two women in the race, Reps. Katie Porter (D-Calif.) and Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) — both liberal stalwarts in their own right — persevere against Schiff. Progressive activists have launched a nascent disparagement campaign, carried out in the open on Twitter and in private over group chats, that knocks Schiff’s past positions on healthcare and criminal justice reform. Others have publicly undermined Schiff’s pro-democracy brand by highlighting reports that he hadn’t been as eager to impeach Trump as he claims.

As for the concerns about identity politics, too much focus on them have “gotten us in a lot of trouble,” California Assemblymember Tina McKinnor, a Black progressive who represents Inglewood and endorsed Schiff. “People who look like me may not carry my progressive values. I want the best person for the job.”

Where was he when the goofy Kamala Harris was selected at the Left’s insistence for the post of Vice-President?

Why has Schiff’s entry into the 2024 Senate race ignited such a tempest? Well, in California’s uniparty state this post is a generational sinecure. For almost 30 years both of California’s Senate seats have been held by women: Barbara Boxer held one of them , succeeded by Kamala Harris. Dianne Feinstein held the other.

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The anti-Schiffniks may actually win, aided not only by the DEI crowd but as well by the ridiculous ranked voting the Democrats have embraced.

Electing Women Alliance plans to hold events for both Lee and Porter and has been encouraging donors to give to both campaigns. They’re strategies oriented toward California’s “jungle primary” system that advances the top two vote-earners, regardless of party, to the general election “to ensure a woman would hold this seat,” says Stacy Mason, EWA’s executive director. “We find it unconscionable that two men could represent California in the U.S. Senate after the historic role this state has played.” 

Others view Lee’s candidacy as an opportunity to send a Black woman to the Senate, a body with none at present and only two in its entire history (Harris and former Illinois Sen. Carol Moseley Braun). “California provides a unique path to sending this woman to the Senate that Florida and North Carolina couldn’t do [in 2022],” says Aimee Alison, a California-based Democratic strategist and founder of She the People, which supports women of color running for office. To Lee’s backers, her run is about more than simply representation: Lee’s quarter-century in Congress prepares her best, they argue. “If this really was a country whose politics were based on meritocracy as to who was the most qualified, the most experienced, then that would be Barbara Lee,” says Kimberly Ellis, a Bay-area Democratic strategist.

It’ll be fun to watch this play out.

Schiff is likely to have more than the support of establishment Democrats though the desire to keep this seat in a woman’s hands is not his only obstacle.

As a former prosecutor, Schiff will have to tread a delicate path similar to the one current Vice President Kamala Harris attempted to navigate when she ran for president in 2020 — explaining a prosecutorial background at a time marked by significant concerns among liberal voters about the treatment of people of color in the criminal justice system. As a white man, Schiff faces an additional challenge among some California Democratic voters who hope to diversify the Senate’s ranks.

On the other hand. ”Among Democrats, Schiff is a fundraising juggernaut. He had nearly $21 million in the bank in late November and has raised significant money since announcing his Senate bid.”

No nationally prominent Republican has yet announced, but per the Los Angeles Times, there are two possibilities, neither of whom has yet announced an interest in running: Brian Dahle, a state senator, and  private attorney Mark Meuser. Under ranked choice voting, a Republican might actually have a shot at it, because if the Democrats cannot unify behind a single candidate and the Republicans do, they might just pull it off.

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