California Democrats Further Torn After Seeing Sen. Feinstein’s Return to Washington

As she approaches retirement age, Democrat Donna Perkins understands reluctance about telling Sen. Dianne Feinstein what to do as she winds down her career.

After all, California’s senior senator has already announced that she would not seek another term — and some argue that the calls for her to step down earlier are rooted in misogyny and ageism.

But after seeing news coverage of Feinstein’s return to the nation’s capital last week, in a wheelchair and still weak after a nearly three-month absence from Washington as she recovered from shingles, Perkins is more concerned than ever about the 89-year-old senator’s ability to represent 39 million Californians.

“I don’t want to be like that, right? I’m getting ready to turn 65. I want somebody to say, ‘Hey, Donna, you know what? It’s time to pass the torch.’ It’s sad, but it’s not fair either,” said Perkins, 64.

Perkins was among about a dozen Democrats who gathered at the Highland Park branch of a Los Angeles library Thursday evening to watch a livestreamed U.S. Senate candidate forum featuring two of the top Democrats running to replace Feinstein in 2024, Reps. Barbara Lee of Oakland and Katie Porter of Irvine. The event was sponsored by the progressive California Working Families Party. Rep. Adam B. Schiff of Burbank was invited to participate but declined.

Questions about Feinstein’s future have been swirling for quite some time over concerns about declining mental and physical capabilities. Concerns grew after she was briefly hospitalized earlier this year and, while recuperating at home in San Francisco, missed votes that resulted in a holdup for confirming some of President Biden’s judicial nominees. Feinstein is a member of the Senate’s powerful Judiciary Committee, which was deadlocked because of her absence, resulting in Democrats delaying votes on nominees that could not win support from Republican senators.

Feinstein flew back to Washington on Wednesday, though she has been advised by doctors to take on a lighter workload. She cast critical votes Thursday to advance judicial nominees who lacked Republican support. And yet, among some California Democrats, Feinstein’s return did little to quell concern about her likely effectiveness in the Senate, heightened further by the Democrats’ razor-thin majority.

“Everybody is so diplomatic. I think she needs to take care of herself, and you can’t take care of yourself with that intense responsibility. Something comes first — either taking care of yourself or taking care of your constituents,” said Susie Tompkins Buell, a major Democratic fundraiser based in San Francisco. “I know she likes being there, I know she’s a fighter. But I feel like for the bigger picture, for a better future for all of us, I think she should resign. It’s an act of honor to do that.”

Tompkins Buell has helped raise campaign money for Feinstein in the past and her husband once worked for the senator.

Others expressed similar concerns about representation, while declining to weigh in on what Feinstein should do.

“I’m not a doctor. I certainly haven’t seen Sen. Feinstein in person. I don’t feel like the best person to make that judgment call,” said former San Francisco Board of Supervisors member Jane Kim, who is now the executive director of the Working Families Party and moderated the Senate candidate forum.

“I think it’s important we have a U.S. senator to be able to fulfill their duties every day in the U.S. Senate because we have a tied vote,” Kim said Friday. “It is critical for our party and our movement that we’re able to move forward on decisions around judicial nominees in particular and keep business moving in Washington.”

Eddie Isaacs, 42, said after seeing the images out of Washington, he was concerned about her health but wants to see how Feinstein’s recovery progresses.

“I think we should see how she does in the next few weeks and make a decision at that point,” he said. “Frankly, I didn’t realize it was deteriorating as bad as it had been the last three months.”

Click here to read the full article in the LA Times

California’s Sen. Dianne Feinstein Announces Retirement

WASHINGTON, D.C. – California’s longest-serving senator, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, will not run for reelection next year. 

The announcement was made Tuesday on Twitter and on her official website. However, the public announcement appears to have come as a surprise to Feinstein, according to multiple reports.

When asked about her retirement, she told reporters,“I haven’t made that decision, I haven’t released anything.”

Feinstein’s staffer injected telling the senator “We put out the statement.”

Soon after, Feinstein is heard on audio recording telling reporters that, “So it is what it is. I think the time has come.”

According to the initial announcement, Feinstein said she plans to remain in office through the end of her term, which ends at the end of 2024.

“I am announcing today I will not run for reelection …but intend to accomplish as much for California as I can through the end of next year when my term ends,” Feinstein tweeted. “Even with a divided Congress, we can still pass bills that will improve lives.”

At 89 years old, Feinstein is the oldest senator. 

She had been dogged by accusations in recent years that her effectiveness in the Senate has been hindered by her age.

Other Democrats had already jumped in to run for her seat, even before she made the inevitable announcement. 

Democratic Reps. Katie Porter of Irvine and Adam Schiff of Burbank launched rival Senate campaigns in recent weeks. Earlier this month, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she would support Schiff if Feinstein did not seek re-election. 

Rep. Barbara Lee of Oakland is expected to jump into the contest as well.

In recent years, questions have arisen about Feinstein’s cognitive health and memory, though she has defended her effectiveness.

Feinstein was first elected to the Senate in 1992. Previously, she became mayor of San Francisco after the assassination of then-Mayor George Moscone and city Supervisor Harvey Milk in 1978.

Feinstein will be remembered for her fight against the “epidemic of gun violence.” She achieved the passage of the landmark, federal Assault Weapons Ban in 1994 and has advocated for its reinstatement since it expired in 2004.

In 2019, she introduced three pieces of gun safety legislation in the Senate: an updated assault weapons ban, the extreme risk protection order act to help states develop court processes that allow family members to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous individuals and a bill to raise the federal age to purchase assault weapons and high-capacity magazines from 18 to 21.

Click here to read the full article in FoxLA

Kavanaugh Hearing Shines Light on CA Senate Contest

Dianne FeinsteinIn any normal election cycle, the state’s race for governor would be in the spotlight for California’s voters and media. But, this is not a traditional political era we are living through, and the dramatic, emotional hearings over confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court has made California’s senators the center of the political world.

The different styles of California’s U.S. Senators were on display at the confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week. Before the compromise that delayed the nomination vote for a week, California senator Kamala Harris walked out of the proceedings. Senior senator and ranking minority member Dianne Feinstein remained in her chair.

Harris’s walk out had as much to do with her presidential aspiration as it did with her objections to the committee’s direction. As the San Francisco Chronicle’s Matier & Ross reported, Harris has been busy using the Kavanaugh hearing as a tool to build lists of potential supporters around the country.

Feinstein on the other hand was the center of the Kavanaugh confirmation storm charged by Republican colleagues with engineering a strategic political hit against the nominee by holding Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s accusatory letter of sexual assault until right before a final vote on Kavanaugh. Feinstein denied any skullduggery and advocated for the ultimate compromise to bring in the FBI investigators.

Watching from across the country, California voters have the opportunity to endorse the Feinstein approach or kick her out of office with someone more in the Harris mold.

Feinstein’s opponent in the senate contest, State Senator Kevin de Leon, assuredly would have walked out of the meeting with Harris. In fact, if you listen to his rhetoric, he would not have been in the meeting at all but would have been out in the hallway with anti-Kavanaugh protestors.

De Leon’s campaign highlighted the recent PPIC poll that has him now 11 percent behind Feinstein, half of what he trailed her by in the previous poll.

One interesting aspect of the poll is that about a quarter of Republican voters queried said they did not intend to vote in this Democrat vs. Democrat contest. However, of those Republicans who did name a preference, the state senator who has put out an agenda far to the left of Feinstein actually had a small lead among Republicans.

Much of de Leon’s standing with Republicans reflects their lack of knowledge for his policies and familiarity with the long-servicing Democratic U.S. Senator.

Oddly, the turn of events in Washington could continue to help de Leon if some Republican and conservative voters who plan to sit on their hands instead of voting decide that Feinstein is culpable in the attack on Kavanaugh—especially if, in the end, he is rejected as a court nominee. Retribution could come in the form of a vote for de Leon.

On the other hand, Feinstein’s actions, if given credit by liberal voters for sinking Kavanaugh, could strengthen her hand with a segment of the Democratic Party voters.

Regardless, how this comes down, already political expectations have been turned upside down when the state’s governor’s race now playing second fiddle to the U.S. Senate contest.

ditor and co-publisher of Fox and Hounds Daily.

This article was originally published by Fox and Hounds Daily.

Dianne Feinstein was an easy mark for China’s spy

Dianne FeinsteinAs vice chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee and a ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) has been investigating allegations of President Trump’s “collusion” with Russia.

But now we learn Feinstein may be the one compromised by a foreign power.

Turns out that Communist China had a spy in her office. A 20-year employee of Feinstein’s, the agent had been reporting back to China’s Ministry of State Security for well over a decade before he was caught in 2013, according to the FBI.

A Chinese-American who doubled as both an office staffer and Feinstein’s personal driver, the agent reportedly was handled by officials based out of the People’s Republic of China’s consulate in San Francisco, which Feinstein helped set up when she was mayor of that city. He even attended consulate functions for the senator. …

Click here to read the full article from the NY Post

Poll: Half of CA Republican Voters Unlikely to Vote in Dem-on-Dem Senate Race

Dianne FeinsteinWith no Republican candidates to choose from, 47 percent of Republican likely voters and 24 percent of independents “say they would not vote in [the Senate] race.”
New poll from Public Policy Institute of California has Gavin Newsom with 24 point lead for governor:

California Democratic Party abandons incumbent Feinstein, endorses opponent

Dianne FeinsteinThe California Democratic Party voted to endorse a progressive state senator over incumbent Sen. Dianne Feinstein for the U.S. Senate in the party’s executive board meeting in Oakland, California, on Saturday.

Though Feinstein beat state Sen. Kevin de León, 51, by nearly 33 points in the jungle primary last month, progressive grassroots activists have largely taken control of the state party apparatus in recent years and have pushed for a more liberal candidate to take on the Trump administration.

This is the second time they have elected to endorse de León over 85-year-old Feinstein, who has served California in the U.S. Senate since 1992.

According to the balloting results, the decision was made by 333 voting members who make up the California Democratic Party’s executive board. While de León received 65 percent of the vote with 217 votes, Feinstein earned a paltry 22 votes or 7 percent. Rather than endorse either candidate, 94 members elected to vote for no endorsement. …

Click here to read the full article from NBC News

California revives 100% carbon-free energy bill

California lawmakers revived a long-stalled proposal on Tuesday to set a goal of generating 100 percent of the state’s energy from carbon-free sources.

With other controversial and high-stakes energy legislation also moving forward, California lawmakers face an array of decisions with vast implications for the Western energy grid, the future of renewable power and consumers’ electric bills.

A state legislative committee sent the 100 percent clean energy bill to the full Assembly, setting up a vote later this year.

The bill’s revival is a tentative victory for its author, Democratic Sen. Kevin de Leon, who is waging an uphill battle to unseat Democratic U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein in the November election. …

Click here to read the full article from KCRA News

In California, the “Jungle” Is Predictable

Gavin NewsomOne doesn’t expect the unexpected in California elections. A progressive Democrat will become governor; Dianne Feinstein will return to the Senate yet again; and so on. Nuances still matter, particularly at the congressional level, in part due to the “jungle primary” system, but nothing much has changed. Statewide, the ideological die, at least for now, is cast.

Perhaps the best news for Republicans, with the surprisingly strong showing of businessman John Cox, is that they will actually have a candidate on the November ballot for governor. Businessman Cox easily beat out the Democratic challengers to the front-running Democrat, former San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom. Some conservatives, like Newt Gingrich, think that Cox has a serious shot at victory in November, but all GOP candidates combined pulled in barely 35 percent of the vote.

Here’s the reality: California Republicans, constituting barely a quarter of the electorate, now make up a smaller cohort than Independents. Combined with Independents who lean to the GOP, they perhaps could win 40 to 45 percent of the vote in November—still not good enough. The big money that once filled the coffers of Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon now goes overwhelmingly to the other side: the top three Democratic gubernatorial candidates raised over $70 million, more than ten times what the GOP’s top candidate, the largely self-funded Cox, had drummed up by the end of last month.

Even more than money, the problem for Republicans is demographics, which suggest a continued decline of the state party. In the last decade, the state gained 2 million Hispanics and 1 million Asians—both groups now trending overwhelmingly Democratic—while losing almost 800,000 whites, the GOP’s vanishing base. Migration patterns show middle-aged, middle- and working-class families exiting a state increasingly dominated by the unmarried childless and older, affluent white voters, including many who have profited from the rise in housing prices and are the most bullish on the state’s future.

The Republican brand’s weakness was dramatized in the success of former state insurance commissioner Steve Poizner, a onetime Republican now running as an Independent for his old job. Poizner, who sold his GPS company to Qualcomm for $1 billion in 2000, came in first, with 43 percent of the vote. Another promising result was the first-place finish in the state superintendent’s race of school-reform advocate Marshall Tuck, also an Independent, against teachers’ union-backed Tony Thurmond. Poizner and Tuck will face the progressive money machine’s full fury in November, but each has resources with which to fight back. Such non-party candidates, suggests former GOP congressman Tom Campbell, could draw some moderate Democrats and help reestablish a modicum of policy debate.

At the top of the ballot, Newsom’s large plurality suggests that he will become the next governor. Given his strong financial support from the state’s public employees, the tech oligarchy, inner-city real estate developers, and Bay Area progressives, he represents the apotheosis of California gentry progressivism. Newsom’s showing displays how dominant the Bay Area machine, with its media, union, and tech support, has become. He swamped former Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, a charter school advocate, even beating him easily in L.A. (Villaraigosa’s handlers may have erred in promoting him primarily as an anti-Donald Trump candidate rather than as an independent reformer. All Democrats compete to show their hatred for the president.)

In the manner of the old Miller Lite commercial, Newsom is much like departing Governor Jerry Brown, but less filling. Brown may sometimes sound hysterical about climate change, recently suggesting that it would kill “billions,” but he has also been willing, sometimes, to speak hard truths, notably on fiscal issues. His stature allowed him to go off the progressive reservation—for example, shooting down egregious Title IX abuse—and get away with it. Newsom, a good-looking, callow opportunist, lacks this kind of uncalculated independence. When California’s economy was on the rocks, he seemed concerned about the state’s business climate, even visiting arch-rival Texas in search of inspiration. He expressed doubts about Brown’s out-of-control bullet train project. But as the economy improved, particularly for state workers and oligarchs, Newsom learned how to stop worrying and love the bullet train, though it is increasingly unpopular with voters. He has reinvented himself as a “futuristic” prospective governor, a kind of digital moonbeam who sees tech as the solution to all problems.

California’s economy is slowing some amid the national surge, but as long as it seems healthy, Newsom will feel little urgency to address the state’s serious long-term issues: pension-driven fiscal realities, a dearth of high-wage growthoutside the Bay Area, poorly performing schools, a huge homeless problem, and decaying infrastructure.

From a national perspective, the big California story is in Congress. Senator Feinstein’s reelection, based on her four-to-one margin over progressive Latino climatista Kevin de Leon, seems assured. Any Republicans who show up in November will likely back her. She will remain the most moderate, reasoned voice in the party, until she fades from the scene.

The real competition is at the House level. GOP seats are in play in seven districts that went for Hillary Clinton, mostly in suburban Southern California or the Central Valley. In many of these, an increasingly minority population spells trouble for Republicans. And with President Trump’s approval rating at roughly one-third among California voters, House Democrats have no reasonable fear of losing seats. In places like Orange County, Trump gets somewhat more support (37 percent), according to a recent Chapman University poll. Voters in this former GOP stronghold are evenly divided on whether the country would be better off under Democratic or Republican governance. Expect at least two to three California seats to flip, given the big Democratic edge in money and organization. GOP stalwarts like Devin Nunes and Kevin McCarthy won their primaries by sizable margins, though, and will be back to battle the Democrats in D.C.

With Republicans an afterthought, California’s Democrats seem poised to exert greater influence on the national stage. However wrongheaded the Golden State may seem to outsiders, it remains easily our most economically and culturally dominant state—and its massive influence likely will continue to push Democrats further left. The anti-Trump Resistance, consisting of media, oligarch-funded activists, academia, and government unions, regards the state as a role model. In the past, California Democrats have failed to win the presidential nomination, with the party choosing more pragmatic figures such as Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, candidates who could campaign effectively in what is now considered Trump country. But with many national Democrats increasingly contemptuous of red states, the door might open for a California presidential candidate. In 2020, that could mean three contenders—Senator Kamala Harris, presumptive-Governor Newsom, and L.A. mayor Eric Garcetti—crowding the stage. Of the three, Harris is clearly the front-runner. Part Asian, part black, and all San Francisco, she is an intersectional dream.

Yet as they consolidate control, California Democrats must face some profound contradictions, as the Marxists would say. The gentry—tech oligarchs, real estate speculators, and venture capitalists—stand comfortably with the left on symbolic race, gender, and environmental issues. But these party bankrollers could be hard-pressed if they face the prospect of higher taxes to pay for a state single-payer health-care system, massive housing subsidies, and Governor Brown’s choo-choo, not to mention the state’s ever-soaring pension costs. As Amazon is learning in Seattle, progressive politicos have figured out where to find the biggest piles of cash. Aggressive taxation of tech companies is already becoming a trend in Silicon Valley.

A stronger, motivated grass-roots Left could constitute the greatest immediate challenge to Governor Newsom. Many Californians, particularly millennials and minorities, face a lack of high-wage jobs, soaring rents, and essentially insurmountable barriers to homeownership. A majority of Californians, according to some surveys, express dissatisfaction with the state’s bifurcated economy. The disappearance of upward mobility makes these voters susceptible to embracing such things as rent control, higher minimum wages, free college, and free health care. They will support ever higher taxes on businesses and on generally white, affluent Californians. The call for new spending will become more problematic once the state comes back to earth from its Silicon Valley and real-estate inflation highs, which for now keep the operating budget in the black.

At some point, Newsom and the Democratic nomenklatura will have to deal with pervasive conditions of diminished opportunity, racial polarization, and fiscal weakness. When these realities eventually impinge, the state’s progressive rulers may find themselves on the defensive, and—if confronted with a plausible opposition—vulnerable, at long last.

Dianne Feinstein Blocks Self-Driving Car Deregulation

Dianne FeinsteinSenator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) smacked down her former Silicon Valley allies this week by blocking a federal deregulation that would have expedited the testing of self-driving cars.

Feinstein, as a 25-year California Democrat incumbent and the ranking minority member of the Senate Judiciary Committee used her prerogative to block the “AV START Act,” which would have set up a friendly federal transportation regulatory structure to circumvent local restrictions for testing autonomous (self-driving) cars on America’s public roads.

Proponents of the bill thought they had bipartisan Congressional and White House support to expedite passage, due to the all-out efforts from hundreds of lobbyists representing 64 Silicon Valley companies, including big venture capital back start-ups and tech giants such as Alphabet, Apple, Tesla, and Uber.

Intel and Strategy Analytics presented an economic white paper in support of the federal takeover that forecast autonomous vehicles would generate $4 trillion from ride-hailing and $3 trillion from delivery and business logistics by 2050.

An analysis of U.S. Patent and Trademark Office data presented by L.E.K. Consulting revealed that American companies since 2007 have filed over 2,118 autonomous vehicle technology patents. Many filings are for Lidar laser sensors, vehicle-to-vehicle communication, image processing, computer vision, and advanced driver-assistance.

With a similar bill unanimously passing the House of Representatives in September, the Senate version was introduced on September 28 and moved through the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation on November 28.

For her first 24 years in the U.S. Senate, Feinstein was viewed as a tireless advocate for Silicon Valley tech initiatives. But on November 1, Feinstein, threatened Silicon Valley executives that Congress would do something about foreign interference in elections through social media, if the tech industry failed to act.

Feinstein told general counsels from Facebook, Google, and Twitter at a Senate Hearing: “I must say, I don’t think you get it.” She argued that tech company platforms were responsible for foreign powers being able to use cyber-warfare during the 2016 presidential election to sow conflict and discontent all over the country.

Democrat Silicon Valley Congressman Ro Khanna told the San Jose Mercury News that the 85-year-old Feinstein, as the oldest member of the U.S. Senate, does not represent progressive values on key issues including privacy, encryption, “Medicare for All,” and the new innovation economy.

Feinstein was also humiliated at the California Democrat Party Convention in late February, when she only received endorsement support for a fifth term from 37 percent of delegates; while California State Senate majority leader Kevin de León won 54 percent.

It is unclear if Senator Feinstein deliberately retaliated against Silicon Valley and its social justice warrior fellow travelers for failing to support her re-election effort. But Feinstein did rally several senior Democratic Senators, who now claim self-driving car technology is too unproven for a national roll-out through a federal takeover.

Feinstein’s opposition to allowing national driverless car tests carries extra Congressional weight, since the State of California has allowed testing on public roads since September 2014.

What had seemed like at least an easy victory for Silicon Valley now is rated at just a 32 percent chance of enactment, according to Skopos Labs.

This article was originally published by Breitbart.com/California

Left and Lefter in California

california-flagThe California Democratic Party’s refusal to endorse the re-election of Senator Dianne Feinstein represents a breaking point both for the state’s progressives and, arguably, the future of the party nationwide. Feinstein symbolizes, if anyone does, the old Democratic establishment that, while far from conservative, nevertheless appealed to many mainstream businesses and affluent suburban voters. The rejection of Feinstein reveals the eclipse of the moderate, mainstream Democratic Party, and the rise of Green and identity-oriented politics, appealing to the coastal gentry. It offers little to traditional middle-class Democrats and even less to those further afield, in places like the industrial Midwest or the South. In these parts of the country, bread-and-butter issues that concern families remain more persuasive than gestural politics.

To its many admirers back east, California has emerged as the role model for a brave new Democratic future. The high-tech, culturally progressive Golden State seems to be an ideal incubator of whatever politics will follow the Trump era.

Certainly, California is an ideal place to observe this shift, as radicalism faces no restraints here. The Republican Party has little to no influence in politics and culture and not much even among business leaders. For the Democrats, this vacuum allows for a kind of internecine struggle resembling that of the Bolsheviks after the death of Lenin. And just as happened then, a new Stalinism of sorts seems to be emerging—in this case, to the consternation not only of conservatives but also of traditional liberals and moderates of the Feinstein stamp.

Yet as California Democrats exult in what they see as a glowing future, they are turning away from the models that once drove their party’s (and the state’s) success — a commitment to growth, upward mobility, and dispersed property ownership. California’s current prosperity is largely due to the legacy of Governor Pat Brown, who, a half-century ago, built arguably the world’s best transportation, water, and power systems, and created an incubator for middle-class prosperity. Ironically, the politician most responsible for undermining this achievement has been Pat’s son, Governor Jerry Brown. Long skeptical of his father’s growth-oriented, pro-suburban policies, Brown the Younger put strong constraints on growth, especially when these efforts concerned the fight against global warming — a quasi-religious crusade. Battling climate change has awakened Brown’s inner authoritarian; he has lauded the “coercive power of the state” and embraced “brainwashing” on climate issues.

Brown’s stridency on climate, however, does not extend to all leftist issues. Like Feinstein, Brown has some appreciation of the importance of infrastructure, such as the need to increase water supplies, and he exercises at least a modicum of caution on fiscal matters like the state’s gargantuan pension debt. He is not a strict identitarian, having vetoed an attempt to enact Title IX standards of evidence for campus sexual-assault cases, a measure embraced by the state’s vocal feminist leaders.

As Brown prepares to depart, and Feinstein struggles to retain office, a new dominant coalition — led by tech oligarchs, identity politicians, and Greens — is rising to usurp control of the party. This new coalition of the privileged and aggrieved marks a departure both from Pat Brown’s social democracy and his son’s more elitist but still measured politics.

State senator Kevin de León, the emergent leader of this new configuration and cat’s paw of billionaire Tom Steyer, the San Francisco hedge-fund billionaire epitomizes the new approach. Having made much of his fortune in oil sands and coal, Steyer is now the Democratic Party’s prime bankroller, and his largesse extends to the drive to impeach President Trump. He has made common cause with hard-Left politicians like de León, and even embraced unionism—as long as labor follows his extreme position on climate change.

Steyer and other oligarchs are working to eliminate the last vestiges of the old Democratic Party. Climate activists have been targeting, with some success, the so-called Mod Squad — centrist Democrat legislators from the state’s less-prosperous interior and working-class suburbs. This shrinking group, occasionally financed by energy, homebuilding, and other pillars of the old economy, sometimes holds the balance of power in Sacramento, and has managed to slow some of the most draconian climate measures.

De León’s enthusiastic embrace of climate-change dogma may seem odd for a politician whose impoverished district suffers from Los Angeles’s continued de-industrialization, hastened by strict environmental regulation and high energy costs. Instead of backing policies that would create more high-wage jobs, de León’s priorities are largely redistributive. This jibes with his support among public employees and from the militant California Nurses Association. He endorsed the union-backed single-payer health-care plan, a measure that assembly speaker Anthony Rendon tabled as impossibly expensive (it would more than double the state budget). Immigration is another key de León issue. He is a fervent supporter of illegal immigrants, in a state that houses one in fourof the nation’s total, bragging about his own relatives’ use of false IDs.

Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom, the former San Francisco mayor and frontrunner in the governor’s race, also embraces these policies. After briefly trying to appeal to mainstream business, Newsom has fallen into line with Bay Area-dominated progressives and the big public unions on virtually every issue, including single-payer. His likely election suggests a continuation of California’s current drift, but without Brown’s occasional restraint and intelligence.

The Golden State’s progressive tilt would not be possible without demographic change. The state’s majority-minority makeup has made the capture of middle-class and moderate voters less important. As middle-class families leave California, the electorate is increasingly dominated by racial minorities — with whites, 70 percent of the population in 1970, now less numerous than Hispanics and destined to be roughly one-third of the population by 2030. California’s demography is more and more dominated by the poor and near-poor (roughly one-third of the population), the young and unattached, and a residual population of older whites, many luxuriating on generous state pensions or inflated property values.

What makes all this work is the growing power of the tech oligarchs and their more glamorous cousins in the Hollywood glitterati. The tech boom of the last decade has obscured the decline of California’s basic industries, such as energy and manufacturing. California’s above-average job performance since 2010 is almost entirely a combination of high-income employment growth in the Bay Area and the swelling ranks of low-wage service workers who serve them. The oligarchs, including tech investor Sam Altman, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, and philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs, widow of the late Apple founder, have lined up behind de León. Tech will likely bankroll the pliable and well-heeled Newsom, who already gets cash from Airbnb, Twitter, and Salesforce.com.

This marriage of the poor and the new rich appears to be the dominant theme emerging in California. The oligarchs, as Greg Ferenstein has reported, don’t even pretend to believe in upward mobility for the masses. Instead, they favor policies — such as forced densification — that will house their largely young, childless workers, including the nation’s largest population of H1-B visa-holders. Measures such as State Senator Mark Wiener’s SB 827 would largely strip cities of their ability to control development anywhere near transit stops. Civil rights groups, mainstream environmental organizations, neighborhood associations, and cities themselves have come out in opposition, and even Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti, a dedicated densifier, fears a backlash in the city’s remaining single-family neighborhoods. Yet the oligarchs and their YIMBY (“yes in my backyard”) allies, whom they generously fund, have backed the bill.

At its core, the oligarchs’ vision for California represents a kind of high-tech feudalism. Tech companies are starting to dominate sectors like electric and autonomous cars, even seeking monopolies in dense urban areas. They support limiting ownership and consumer choice, even as the bulk of automobiles remain gas-powered. In the longer term, the oligarchs have little interest in creating blue-collar jobs and would prefer to replace employment with algorithms. Deprived of work and unable to pay for housing, the working class and an ever-shrinking middle class would be bought off with income-maintenance payments — twenty-first-century alms for the poor.

Opponents of this new gentry agenda should appeal to the remnants of the middle class and the unsubsidized portions of the working class. Feinstein could win reelection by rallying such voters; her name recognition and ample campaign war chest could help her fend off de León this year. But even if she wins, it will likely be a last hurrah for the old Democrats. Tech oligarchs and activist CEOs have committed themselves to extreme environmentalism, identity politics, and open-borders immigration policy. California’s bevy of clueless celebrities, now celebrated by Time as “suddenly serious” for following the identitarian party line, have also climbed aboard.  As anyone knows who has suffered through awards shows or listened to interviews with stars, the entertainment industry—much like tech — has become homogeneous in its views.

The key issues for the glitterati are not income inequality, upward mobility, or the preservation of middle-class neighborhoods but the feverish pastimes of the already rich: gender and racial issues, climate change, guns, and anything that offends the governesses and schoolmarms of intersectionality. To the ranks of these over-exposed but influential voices, you can also add California’s media and most of its intelligentsia, who seem to get their talking points from progressive sources and work assiduously to limit the influence of moderate (much less conservative) views. With Silicon Valley increasingly able to control content and ever more willing to curb debate, the policy agenda of the state’s new elite may well become reality — a nightmarish one for millions of ordinary Californians.