Editorials

The giant whoosh you heard on Saturday morning was the citizens of Berkeley collectively expelling the breath they’d been holding until the results of the presidential election were officially blessed by the Associated Press and acknowledged by the Biden campaign.

This is, admittedly, a peculiar pivot-point. Exactly who is The Associated Press these days anyhow? The decisionmakers there, whoever they are, were not elected, nor were they appointed by any official body. But we trust them and wait for their pronouncements.

This is different from, for example, the situation with the results of Berkeley’s local elections, which are generally reported by the Alameda county clerk in a day or so. A much smaller number of Berkeleyans were holding their breath over these races.

But now that it’s over (even though the “certification” of the national results by state authorities doesn’t take place immediately) we can turn our worries to what’s going to happen in the near future.

First, we need to evict Trump, who is the only over-seventy who’s still in the grip of the terrible twos. As many parents have commented, the tantrum he’s having now over losing the game is like nothing so much as the two-and-a-half year old who thinks he’s playing checkers and erupts when he “loses”. We can only hope there are a couple of grown-ups in the room who can give Donny a time out at his golf course before he gets in more trouble.

Don’t count, however, on his budds Lindsey and Ted, who have already added their voices to his shrieking chorus.

What’s Trump got on these guys that he can suck them into his bad behavior?

 

A good guess, based on years of observation of American politics, is that it has something to do with sex. The most recent example of how sex gets pols into trouble was Democratic candidate Cal Cunningham in North Carolina, who unwisely exchanged seductive emails with a woman not his wife, but there are many more. 

So, what does Team Trump have on Lindsey Graham or Ted Cruz, do you think? I’ve heard a couple of theories, but I wouldn’t repeat them in a family publication if this were one. 

But what has happened to the rest of what used to be called the Republican Party? How can they just sit there (with two or three exceptions) as if they were stuffed while Donald Trump attacks the very premise on which this country’s government is based, free and fair elections? 

It’s reminiscent of the ‘50s noirish movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Wikipedia summarizes: 

“Alien plant spores have fallen from space and grown into large seed pods, each one capable of producing a visually identical replacement copy of a human. As each pod reaches full development, it assimilates the physical characteristics, memories, and personalities of each sleeping person placed near it; these duplicates, however, are devoid of all human emotion. “ 

Yes. That would be just about what’s happened to the party formerly known as Republican. Current members are look-alike duplicates of the old-timers, but devoid of all human emotion. These guys make Barry Goldwater look like a mensch. 

Here in California, the evaporation of the Republican-captioned presence in the legislature makes it mighty difficult to know what the putative Democrats are up to. Some of them have assimilated some characteristics of Dems but seem to be crypto-Republicans in various other ways. We’re all Democrats now, aren’t we, but what does that mean exactly? 

The Wienerites in the state legislative bodies are a good case. Scott Wiener is all for gay rights and other good causes which serve his personal interest, That’s brought him continuous employment in the state Senate, but most of the time he serves the interests of the monied development industry instead of those of his constituents. 

But he’s just been re-elected. 

Without meaningful party identification, and with the gradual evaporation of the local press, voters vote for incumbents since they have no real way of knowing what candidates will do if elected, let alone what they have done after the fact. 

Here in Berkeley almost all incumbents, both in the city council and the state legislatures, were simply re-elected with no visible opposition. There were a few exceptions. 

Our hill-dwelling voters believe they live in the best of all possible worlds. If it’s not broke don’t fix it--cultivate your garden and vote again for the incumbent.. Wayne Hsiung’s campaign failed to get much support for mayor despite spending a lot of out of state money to parachute into progressive Berkeley. 

It’s a strategy which worked well a couple of years ago when Buffy Wicks showed up with national money to run for the state legislature, but Wayne’s problem was his involvement in an animal rights movement that looked from the outside mighty like a cult. 

Another exception was Cheryl Davila’s loss in Berkeley’s District 2. Here I witnessed a scenario which I’d seen the past, in Berkeley and elsewhere. 

A Black candidate is elected, but when in office is perceived by some White original supporters to be just too, well, mouthy, so must be removed. I’ve seen this happen twice before using recalls, but this time the ouster was in a regular election. Here the replacement candidate was supported by innocent-sounding PACs funded by the development industry. He might be a lovely person, but I doubt that he’ll talk back to his financial backers. 

Without political parties or newspapers, voters don’t know what they’re getting, and when the expensive glossy mailers start coming they’re easily fooled by them. 

Another major reason so many city governments in California are disfunctional is that they’re traditionally governed by narrowly educated and seriously overpaid bureaucrats who are accountable to no one, especially not to the electeds, who get blamed for lots of problems that they have little control over. 

So what else is new? I recently expressed surprise to a friend, a longtime observer of local politics, that Berkeley’s city manager is paid something like $400,000, and he pulled out this quote: 

“The official myth that the city manager provides "scientific" and "objective" administration is belied by the performance of successive city managers in Berkeley. Part of the city manager's role has been to create the appearance that the council majority rejects redistributive programs for technical considerations rather than political disagreement. As the top figure of the bureaucratic pyramid, the city manager also marshals support for council programs among the city staff. The department heads and their assistants reflect [the manager’s] outlook. “ 

A free subscription to the reader who can identify the source and the publication date of this acute observation. 

Does Berkeley need a new charter, perhaps one which would allow us to elect a strong mayor and to choose a manager who responds to the people's agenda? What do you think? 

But this is no day for grumbling. For the moment, let us rejoice and be glad. One more day of dancing in the streets, okay, then back to work on Monday.