5 ms·

I don't know enough about California politics, how is it that Feinstein is able to be a proponent of these crazy ideas and somehow get elected in the home state

I don't know enough about California politics, how is it that Feinstein is able to be a proponent of these crazy ideas and somehow get elected in the home state of Silicon Valley and many of the companies who will be ruined by these proposals?

mtgx 11y ago
Electronic voting machines, which somehow end up re-electing the chief of the Senate Intelligence Committee, as well as chief NSA cheerleader? But I'm sure that's just a coincidence, and Feinstein is just that loved in California. After all, US is a democracy, not some banana republic! http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Elections/2012/1026/Could-e-voting-machines-in-Election-2012-be-hacked-Yes http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Elections/2012/1026/Could-e-vot... https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/03/21/the-u-s-has-worst-elections-of-any-long-established-democracy-report-finds/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/03/21... http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746 http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746
- scrollaway 11y ago
  Blaming reelection of corrupt officials on conspiracies and voting fraud before doing any introspection on why they actually won is the best way to perpetrate those reelections.
koenigdavidmj 11y ago
She has a D after her name.
- _asummers 11y ago
  So do many people in California. And that's only relevant in a general election. Why hasn't she gotten a reasonable challenger in the primaries?
  - scurvy 11y ago
    Tenure and pork. Same reason Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond kept getting reelected when most of the population didn't like them. To paraphrase: she's a jerk, but she's our jerk.
  - justinlardinois 11y ago
    It actually doesn't matter at all, as we've done away with partisan primaries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonpartisan_blanket_primary#California_open_primary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonpartisan_blanket_primary#Ca...
cuckcuckspruce 11y ago
Because Harvey Milk and George Moscone are dead - she wasn't killed by Dan White[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscone%E2%80%93Milk_assassinations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscone%E2%80%93Milk_assassina... (Edit: What I'm trying to say is that she was the person that found Harvey Milk shot and was one of the people that police asked to identify the bodies of both Milk and Moscone. Certainly being that close to the aftermath of violence changes a person.)
- coldpie 11y ago
  Wow, I had no idea Feinstein was so close to the assassinations. That's traumatic. I wonder if those events lead to her positions on defense and privacy which are so uncharacteristic of the rest of her party.
  - NoGravitas 11y ago
    Her positions on defense and privacy are actually pretty representative of the establishment wing of her party. The Democratic party has some pretty severe divisions in it, and has for years.
    - coldpie 11y ago
      That's a fair point. Obama is in the anti-encryption camp too, after all.
  - api 11y ago
    I highly recommend a book called Season of the Witch by David Talbot. It's a great history of SF in the 50s-80s with a strong focus on the 60s and the counterculture. It's some amazing history that many people don't know much about. If the 60s counterculture and the rest of America had been geographically segregated like the South and the North in the 1860s, you'd have had secession and civil war.
- joesmo 11y ago
  The good ones always die and the assholes live. It seems like Feinstein has been trying to legislate that day away for decades now. Shame on her. She's obviously not competent to do her job and this is not the first bill to reflect that.
justinlardinois 11y ago
As a Californian, because... * There are a lot of Republican voters in California who are happy to vote for Democrats, so even better if they're more towards the right * I'm not old enough to have voted in too many elections, but her opponent in 2012 was a joke * She doesn't really have an anti-Silicon Valley reputation (yet) * California is more than just Silicon Valley * Likelihood of voting correlates directly with age, and Silicon Valley is dominated by young people * Her family is just so established in California politics, so the money's rolling in. Her husband is chairman of the University of California Board of Regents. I'm not a fan either.
- DanielBMarkham 11y ago
  I think you're hitting close to the reason. California is a conservative state outside of SF and LA, although because of their populations, the state is owned by the Democractic party. Feinstein is a party machine candidate who can appeal across the aisle to those conservatives. Sure, she'll lose some Democrats, but the base will stick to voting with the party, and enough conservatives will crossover that it all works out. Note that if SV goes to war over this, and it should, it could change the balance in the state. The problem with this from the SV point of view is that if you sabotage Feinstein, you don't get another Democrat. You get a Republican. And I imagine the Republicans are looking for a little payback if they can ever get the levers of power back. So what do you do? Do you get rid of Feinstein over this one-issue, idiotic and harmful security state nonsense, then end up with a bunch of folks in power that might hurt you on a bunch of things, or do you grit your teeth and bear it? Looks like the compromise is to let her posture a bit for the conservatives, then fund the opposition to make sure that nothing she proposes gets through. That's a tricky game to play, though.
  - justinlardinois 11y ago
    > The problem with this from the SV point of view is that if you sabotage Feinstein, you don't get another Democrat. You get a Republican. Well, not necessarily. California abolished partisan primaries a few years ago. The way it works now is that all candidates for a position run in the same primary, and the top two advance to the general election, regardless of affiliation. I'm not sure if there have been any races so far that involved two Democrats (it's only been two or so election cycles since the change) but the 2016 Senate race seems likely to be between two Democrats. Of course there's still the problem of finding a Democrat with enough clout and balls to challenge Feinstein in 2018.
scurvy 11y ago
She's a Democrat and a long tenured, high ranking one at that. Apathetic voters are largely to blame but no one wants to rock the boat because I'm sure she pork barrels a ton of money back to California. She also has access to oodles of money from her husband (TPG Capital). She's not opposed to being a hippocrite. She rails against guns but has a concealed gun permit. Her secret service detail carries automatic weapons and that's OK with her. It's not OK with most of her neighbors, but again, apathetic voters.

mtgx 11y ago

Electronic voting machines, which somehow end up re-electing the chief of the Senate Intelligence Committee, as well as chief NSA cheerleader? But I'm sure that's just a coincidence, and Feinstein is just that loved in California. After all, US is a democracy, not some banana republic! http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Elections/2012/1026/Could-e-voting-machines-in-Election-2012-be-hacked-Yes http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Elections/2012/1026/Could-e-vot... https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/03/21/the-u-s-has-worst-elections-of-any-long-established-democracy-report-finds/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/03/21... http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746 http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746

scrollaway 11y ago
Blaming reelection of corrupt officials on conspiracies and voting fraud before doing any introspection on why they actually won is the best way to perpetrate those reelections.

koenigdavidmj 11y ago

She has a D after her name.

_asummers 11y ago
So do many people in California. And that's only relevant in a general election. Why hasn't she gotten a reasonable challenger in the primaries?
- scurvy 11y ago
  Tenure and pork. Same reason Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond kept getting reelected when most of the population didn't like them. To paraphrase: she's a jerk, but she's our jerk.
- justinlardinois 11y ago
  It actually doesn't matter at all, as we've done away with partisan primaries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonpartisan_blanket_primary#California_open_primary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonpartisan_blanket_primary#Ca...

cuckcuckspruce 11y ago

Because Harvey Milk and George Moscone are dead - she wasn't killed by Dan White[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscone%E2%80%93Milk_assassinations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscone%E2%80%93Milk_assassina... (Edit: What I'm trying to say is that she was the person that found Harvey Milk shot and was one of the people that police asked to identify the bodies of both Milk and Moscone. Certainly being that close to the aftermath of violence changes a person.)

coldpie 11y ago
Wow, I had no idea Feinstein was so close to the assassinations. That's traumatic. I wonder if those events lead to her positions on defense and privacy which are so uncharacteristic of the rest of her party.
- NoGravitas 11y ago
  Her positions on defense and privacy are actually pretty representative of the establishment wing of her party. The Democratic party has some pretty severe divisions in it, and has for years.
  - coldpie 11y ago
    That's a fair point. Obama is in the anti-encryption camp too, after all.
- api 11y ago
  I highly recommend a book called Season of the Witch by David Talbot. It's a great history of SF in the 50s-80s with a strong focus on the 60s and the counterculture. It's some amazing history that many people don't know much about. If the 60s counterculture and the rest of America had been geographically segregated like the South and the North in the 1860s, you'd have had secession and civil war.
joesmo 11y ago
The good ones always die and the assholes live. It seems like Feinstein has been trying to legislate that day away for decades now. Shame on her. She's obviously not competent to do her job and this is not the first bill to reflect that.

justinlardinois 11y ago

As a Californian, because... * There are a lot of Republican voters in California who are happy to vote for Democrats, so even better if they're more towards the right * I'm not old enough to have voted in too many elections, but her opponent in 2012 was a joke * She doesn't really have an anti-Silicon Valley reputation (yet) * California is more than just Silicon Valley * Likelihood of voting correlates directly with age, and Silicon Valley is dominated by young people * Her family is just so established in California politics, so the money's rolling in. Her husband is chairman of the University of California Board of Regents. I'm not a fan either.

DanielBMarkham 11y ago
I think you're hitting close to the reason. California is a conservative state outside of SF and LA, although because of their populations, the state is owned by the Democractic party. Feinstein is a party machine candidate who can appeal across the aisle to those conservatives. Sure, she'll lose some Democrats, but the base will stick to voting with the party, and enough conservatives will crossover that it all works out. Note that if SV goes to war over this, and it should, it could change the balance in the state. The problem with this from the SV point of view is that if you sabotage Feinstein, you don't get another Democrat. You get a Republican. And I imagine the Republicans are looking for a little payback if they can ever get the levers of power back. So what do you do? Do you get rid of Feinstein over this one-issue, idiotic and harmful security state nonsense, then end up with a bunch of folks in power that might hurt you on a bunch of things, or do you grit your teeth and bear it? Looks like the compromise is to let her posture a bit for the conservatives, then fund the opposition to make sure that nothing she proposes gets through. That's a tricky game to play, though.
- justinlardinois 11y ago
  > The problem with this from the SV point of view is that if you sabotage Feinstein, you don't get another Democrat. You get a Republican. Well, not necessarily. California abolished partisan primaries a few years ago. The way it works now is that all candidates for a position run in the same primary, and the top two advance to the general election, regardless of affiliation. I'm not sure if there have been any races so far that involved two Democrats (it's only been two or so election cycles since the change) but the 2016 Senate race seems likely to be between two Democrats. Of course there's still the problem of finding a Democrat with enough clout and balls to challenge Feinstein in 2018.

scurvy 11y ago

She's a Democrat and a long tenured, high ranking one at that. Apathetic voters are largely to blame but no one wants to rock the boat because I'm sure she pork barrels a ton of money back to California. She also has access to oodles of money from her husband (TPG Capital). She's not opposed to being a hippocrite. She rails against guns but has a concealed gun permit. Her secret service detail carries automatic weapons and that's OK with her. It's not OK with most of her neighbors, but again, apathetic voters.