The Irrelevant Press Democrat

Last Sunday's Press Democrat ran its usual confused commentary on "warring tribes" in local and national politics. "The issues that motivate these warring tribes are no longer relevant," someone wrote. The issues he cited as irrelevant are mostly environmental, including resistance to big chain stores, and doubts raised about massive land development by multinational corporations. The PD, a decent paper in some ways, has never met a corporation whose backside it didn't fondle.

The newspaper's curiously ahistorical claim is that the warring political tribes are dying off, being replaced by young sane centrists. The evidence cited for major change is the Sonoma County elections of Supervisor Efron Carillo in 2008 and the election of Supervisor Mike McGuire in 2010.

In fact the struggle between greedyguts and compassion predates written history and shapes each new generation as it matures. Greedyguts doesn't become irrelevant in the same sense that newspapers become irrelevant.

I don't remember what position the Press Democrat took on Carillo when he ran in 2008. I do recall that the PD opposed McGuire, who won without its useless endorsement.

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From my perspective, what has been happening is not the rise of new neutral or conciliatory generation but the demise of the local Republican party. Sonoma County voters today are overwhelmingly Democratic. The local plutocracy has responded to this fact in three shrewd ways. (1) They have encouraged Republican politicians to switch parties and run as centrist Democrats. (2) In races that end up being contested by two progressive Democratic candidates, Republican voters are advised to vote as a block for the more polite Democrat. That can decide a close election and give the well-funded and well-organized Republican machine a little clout with the winner (they hope). (3) The plutocracy has orchestrated a campaign (see the claims above) to convince Carillo and McGuire that they are and should be political castrati.

Are Carillo and McGuire the sort of Democrats who believe in science (climate change), equal rights for gays, compassion (immigration reform), fiscal sense, no unnecessary wars, careful county planning, full employment, etc? I don't know Carillo, but he has forcefully resisted racial profiling (and been denounced for it). I've known Mike McGuire for ten years, and it's obvious that his core values are progressive. The Board of Supervisors has not shifted to some neutral pro-corporation center, as the Press Democrat hopes. The Board has moved Left.

Gary Goss