Rallies all over the world challenged the direction of the Trump Administration today, and at least 5,000 showed up at San Francisco’s Civic Center.
The event was loud and festive, and demonstrated how unpopular the right-wing takeover of the federal government is in this city (and apparently, in plenty of other cities.
There were great speeches, there was lots of energy … and some of the moments that are all too typical in San Francisco these days. Among the speakers was state Sen. Scott Wiener, who talked, correctly, about how Democrats came out of the Great Depression with new programs like Social Security, and how the part could come out of what looks like a Trump Recession with plans that will work for the long term.
It’s just odd to see Wiener saying he is standing up to the billionaire oligarchs, when the local billionaire oligarchs have long supported him, and his economic policies have long supported the interests of the local billionaire oligarchs.
The Chron story on the rally notes:
Wiener also called for “broad-based realignment” of the Democratic Party to not give right-wing leaders the chance to reclaim offices every two or four years. “It’s not enough to just get them out of office,” Wiener said.
As he left the stage to loud applause, one person in the crowd turned to another and said she couldn’t wait until Wiener runs for Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi’s seat when she retires from the House.
Wiener’s politics are not substantially different from Pelosi’s; both are centrist, neoliberal Democrats. A “realignment” that shifts the party to the right on, for example, taxes and housing policy, is unlikely to make the Democrats a majority party. The huge rallies that Sen. Bernie Sanders and AOC have been holding seem to offer a more promising path—but Wiener and Pelosi have never supported, and at times have actively opposed, the Sanders-AOC approach.
You can argue that it’s not the time to talk about policy differences in the Democratic Party, the issues and the crisis right now is so, so much bigger. I get it. I also get that the old Clinton Wing of the Democratic Party has for some time now failed, badly, not just in policy but in political strategy.
But for a couple of hours, on a beautiful summer day, thousands of people were united in one message: This is not normal, this is not okay, and people in San Francisco are not intimidated or cowed.
