Integrity

Americans, by and large, do not trust skilled politicians, because career office holders lack ordinary basic integrity. You can’t count on them the way you can count on your family and friends. A leader doesn't get to be a career politician in this country unless he or she becomes skilled at misleading and manipulating voters (who can’t stand the truth) and becomes ready to betray his closest political allies/rivals to advance himself.  

Case in point. About 15 years ago, I attended a small meeting in Healdsburg called by Leah Gold, a Democrat and a progressive member of the city council. She was not a career politician. Most of the time the city council is—like all city councils—dominated by developers and business interests whose true allegiance is to avarice. To be fair, when they aren’t arranging city contracts and ordinances to benefit developers and landlords, they also make sure the garbage is picked up and the poor well-policed. 

Anyway, after one term in office, Leah Gold had decided not to run again. I don’t know why. I only talked with her one time. She had called a meeting, I believe, trying to get herself replaced by another progressive. At the meeting she had introduced a very young Mike McGuire to the Healdsburg Peace Project. Back then the Peace Project could provide a progressive candidate with maybe 30 precinct walkers, a load in a town with about 5,000 voters. Young Mike was very able and progressive (and still is), and we decided to support him for city council, as did many other groups, and today, of course, he’s a state senator and on his way up from there. 

Recently Leah Gold re-emerged, perhaps brought back to politics by recent events. She’s again running for the Healdsburg City Council, and Mike McGuire, Mike Thompson, Jim Wood and other elected progressive  leaders of the Democratic Party have endorsed her opponent, a jack-booted, conservative Republican, a lifelong favorite of the swanky members of our society.

The progressive leaders may explain all of this, but there is no real excuse. 

Local elected Democrats have done this kind of thing before. I don’t know why they endorse Republicans for office. Maybe because campaign funding for both parties flows, in part, from the same greedy interests.  Maybe these elected Democrats intend to lead the resistance to Trump by supporting conservative candidates   Maybe they listen to really bad advice. 

Maybe half our nation is too disgusted to vote.

The official Democratic Party still has a chance to endorse Leah Gold, and I hope they will. But remember this, a career politician is, by necessity, manipulative and self-interested, someone without the integrity you get naturally from kith and kin. He will fail you. That’s built-in.