Stephen Jaffe, seeking Nancy Pelosi’s congressional seat, speaks at the Alameda Elks’ Lodge.
September 21, 2017 (SFChronicle.com)
It’s not a good time to be Nancy Pelosi or Dianne Feinstein. After a combined six-plus decades in Washington, they have become “the Man,” at least to a growing number of progressives who see them as embodiments of a Democratic Party taken over by “corporatists.”
Start with how immigration rights activists shouted Pelosi off the stage and called her a “liar” at her own manicured press conference in San Francisco this week, saying she isn’t liberal enough on immigration.
Feinstein’s star is even more tarnished after saying President Trump still had the potential to be a good president, causing progressives to rip her for being less than California-grade resistant to Trump. When the Berkeley IGS Poll last week asked California voters if they would back Feinstein for re-election next year, they responded with a rousing, “meh.” Only 45 percent wanted six more years of DiFi. More alarming for Feinstein: Only 30 percent of those under 30 would vote for her.
So what are the alternatives? Who is stepping up to take on two of the wealthiest members of Congress, women with near-100 percent name recognition?
There is only one place to go to get answers to tough political questions like this: the Elks Club in Alameda.
On a recent evening there, the Alameda Democratic Club hosted a Progressive Candidate Night. The fact that a Bay Area Democratic club held a candidates night solely devoted to progressives more than a year before the next election, and that 100 people showed up on a Wednesday night, tells you something.
It tells you that voters are mad. Not just at Trump but at a system they see as failing them and at the people who have been in power for decades — no matter who they are or what they’ve accomplished. Voters, particularly those Sen. Bernie Sanders inspired to get involved — are mad. And they’re taking it out on the Man.
So at the Elks Club, the revolution was fomenting. Or maybe that was the sound of the pretzels in my stomach.
“I am running for U.S. Senate as a working-class representative for the people,” David Hildebrand, a 39-year-old policy analyst who lives in Sacramento, told the audience. He also pointed out that he’s been unemployed at times and paid his way through college over nearly a decade while working multiple jobs.
“I’m not interested in corporations, their money and what they think,” Hildebrand said. “I am a Democratic socialist.”
So is Sanders. Hildebrand volunteered on his presidential campaign last year, and just like Bernie, Hildebrand promised not to accept “corporate money.”
All the candidates at the forum pledged to do the same. Democrats often tout themselves as the party of working people, but a lot of their money comes from a different source. Senate and House candidates raised nearly $47 million in the 2016 campaign cycle from Wall Street interests. That’s more than the $44 million they received from labor union PACs and officials, according to FactCheck.org.
And arguably the greatest political fundraiser on the planet not named Barack Obama is Pelosi. Through the end of last year, Pelosi had raised $567.9 million since entering House leadership in 2002 — $141 million in the last election cycle.
That money discrepancy is part of the problem for Jaffe, a San Francisco employment lawyer and Sanders acolyte. The first presidential campaign Jaffe remembers was Eisenhower versus Stevenson in 1952. Since then, no candidate has inspired him like Sanders.
After the Vermont independent lost last year’s Democratic primary battle against Hillary Clinton, Jaffe started thinking about what he could do to carry on the senator’s work. So he decided to run for Congress against arguably the most powerful Democrat in the country. Doesn’t matter that he’s never run or held office before — this was about taking a stand against a party gone wrong.
“We are here because we are the true believers. We represent the fundamental core values of the Democratic Party,” Jaffe told the Alameda audience. “I do not adhere to the politics and programs and practices of the people presently in control of the Democratic Party. They are centrists. They are corporatists. And they are elitists.”
The Elks Club filled with applause.
Then Jaffe explained why he was in Alameda on a Wednesday night when the district he wants to represent is across the bay in San Francisco.
“I think my election, with the risk of some immodesty, is the most important Congressional election in the United States,” Jaffe said. “And it’s not because of me … because no one knows who I am.
“It’s because of who my opponent is,” Jaffe said. “My opponent represents the very corporate elitist Democrats who people want to remove.”
One subject that ticks off progressives about Pelosi and Feinstein is how they haven’t supported the “Medicare for All” health care system that Sanders has proposed in the Senate and will be talking about when he visits San Francisco on Friday.
The two elected officials do offer a defense.
“Right now I’m protecting the Affordable Care Act,” Pelosi told reporters last week, after Sanders launched his proposal. “None of these things, whether it’s Bernie’s or others, can really prevail unless we protect the Affordable Care Act.”
Feinstein said she is waiting to see how much Sanders’ proposal costs before weighing in.
But c’mon. Aren’t the two who hope to become elected officials tilting at the biggest of Democratic windmills? What kind of prayer do two unknowns with little cash and less name recognition have in taking on two titans of the left?
Not surprisingly, Jaffe and Hildebrand told me they are playing to win. But there’s another reason to run.
