LINDSAY HILLBILLY JUMPS IN
I sent Evans some thoughts on his Power report – 13 of them.
Here are a half-dozen of my thoughts.
1.) Let me explain who I am. I’m unemployed, 65 years old, married. Born in Lindsay, in southern Tulare County. We lived on a five-acre chicken ranch in 1950, halfway between Lindsay and Tonyville.
I’m a father, grandfather and veteran. I didn’t own a car until I was 29 years old. I got thrown in jail in Grand Junction, Colorado in 1972 for hitchhiking on the Interstate.
I voted for Nixon in ’72. I voted for Carter, Carter, Mondale, Dukakis, Clinton and Clinton. Then I voted for Bush, Bush, McCain and Romney.
I’ve been a registered Republican, a registered Democrat and now am a registered Republican.
2.) You’ve got a fundamental contradiction.
On your “Power Elite Agenda” page, you say the elite’s priorities are to “grow at all costs” and to ‘keep wages down.”
That might resonate with some among the Democratic Party’s rank-and-file. But as a platform to secure power in a diverse democracy, it makes no sense.
The whole point of a free market is to sell stuff to people who can buy it.
The Acme Widget Company desperately wants to boost its sales by 20% a year every year until the cows come home.
How is Acme going to do that if, as you contend, Acme’s executives (and the political leaders they help elect) work late into the night to keep 99% of their customers dirt poor?
The answer is simple. Free market advocates want customers to have money. But free market advocates also want a currency that doesn’t collapse.
It’s like I wrote in a blog after the Fresno City Council debated regulations on payday loan companies.
I wrote: “Everyone on the council wants everyone in Fresno to have enough money to satisfy their needs and wants. Everyone on the council wants everyone in Fresno to have fair access to fairly-priced credit. Everyone on the council wants everyone in Fresno to have equal opportunity to repay their debts without undue hardship. Everyone on the council wants all this supported with a currency that retains its value.”
I didn’t need to add: Good luck with that.
3.) You have Fresno County Supervisor Henry R. Perea right in the middle as to his political sentiments.
I think that is the perfect assessment.
That’s why I think Perea would have a very good chance at winning the 2016 Fresno mayoral race.
Henry is 63. Just think if he were 43. What a future!
4.) You have District 2’s Esmeralda Soria as the most left-leaning member of the Fresno City Council.
That’s fair.
But I’ll bet she moves more to the center as her political ambitions ripen and she settles into the responsibility (and bears more of the burden) of leadership in a pluralist society.
You have District 6’s Lee Brand among the Fresno City Council members leaning substantially to the right.
This, too, is fair.
But Brand already knows firsthand about the snares of power. He also knows what it takes to succeed politically (and economically) in Fresno.
Brand has been moving toward the center for more than a year. He’ll continue to move in that direction.
His change is sincere. “Numbers guys” know how to make a deal.
5.) Your two pages of precinct results by party – 2008/2012 presidential elections and the 2013 Measure G special election – are fascinating.
By geography, you show, close to three-quarters of Fresno is blue – Democrat.
I’m not sure that’s the same as saying the people living in Blue Fresno are passionate about the Progressive agenda you identify in this analysis.
Based on my experience, the vast majority of Blue Fresno is terribly fond of safe neighborhoods, personal responsibility, hard work, low inflation, sound money, balanced budgets, upward mobility, good manners, criminals behind bars, accountability at home and City Hall, patriotism, ordered liberty for each man and woman as long as it doesn’t impinge on the ordered liberty of others.
What I have just described is, I gather from your analysis, the province largely of Fresno County’s Republican Party.
If so, Michael, that spells long-term trouble for Fresno County’s Democratic Party.
You might want to take another look at a “dish the Whigs” strategy.
6.) Finally, the “Homeless” issue.
You mention homelessness as one of the issues that Progressives can pursue as part of a proactive, non-defensive agenda.
In all my years of covering City Hall, I’ve heard just two Progressive ideas for the homeless that weren’t already embraced by the broad coalition of homeless advocates best summed up as the Fresno-Madera Continuum of Care.
The first: Do nothing. The homeless self-selected themselves into those massive downtown encampments of yore. If those survival-of-the-fittest camps worked for the homeless, then they should work for us.
The second: Government-funded camps governed by the homeless themselves, with the public purse responsible for meeting all human needs and the police department responsible for maintaining perfect order without being authoritarian or intrusive.
Michael, I can’t believe either Progressive idea has a snowball’s chance in hell of resonating with the public or succeeding.
I’ve heard Progressives at the council chamber’s public microphone smear the character and intentions of many Fresnans for their alleged indifference to the fate of the destitute.
Those smears simply aren’t true.
Michael, if your report is actually about ideological purity, then by all means the Fresno County Democratic Party should manipulate the homeless issue in a way designed to destroy the reputation of anyone who thinks the homeless issue is complex and the best homeless answers almost certain to be less than perfect – because, as Margaret Thatcher said, life has limits.
If your report is about political power in a democracy and how to get (and keep) it, then be smart.
That’s immensely more effective than being clever.
