August 10, 2021 - 7:00am
The emergence of 69-year-old talk show host Larry Elder as the leading candidate to depose California’s Gavin Newsom is both odd and significant. Elder is no one’s idea of a politician, and when he called me for advice at the start of his run, I was perplexed. I thought Larry had it all — the nest egg, nice house, successful career.
Newsom, who I once described as Governor Preen, and his operatives in and out of the media, have already started attacking Elder. Under the talk show host, they claim, abortion rights will be restricted and the state’s crusade against climate change and social justice will be hampered. The irony is in the fact that Elder will be attacked as candidate of the rich and greedy in ads paid for by oligarchs who epitomise this very greed on a massive scale.
People, yes even here in Lotus Land, are not as universally stupid as the campaign consultants think. If there’s a candidate of “privilege” here, it’s Newsom. As former assembly speaker and San Francisco mayor Willie Brown suggests, Newsom is the confection created by San Francisco’s ultra-rich. The hotel magnate Pritzker clan (whose family includes the current “progressive” Illinois governor), the Fishers (who founded the Gap clothing chain) and, of course, the oil heir Gettys who also financed his business ventures, all back him.
“He came from their world, and that’s why they embraced him without hesitancy and over and above everybody else,” Brown told the Los Angeles Times. “They didn’t need to interview him. They knew what he stood for.”
In contrast, Larry‘s is very much a self-made story. His father, who he sees as a role model, grew up in the Jim Crow south, worked two jobs as a janitor and eventually opened a small coffee shop. Elder ended up with a law degree from the University of Michigan and then launched his media career. He may be an inveterate capitalist, but there are few magnates in his corner.
This poses a challenge for Newsom and other Republicans, but perhaps not an insurmountable one. Newsom outspent the entire GOP effort by 200 to 1 in July. But in an era of low cost social media, many African-Americans, Latinos and Asians, all of whom are surprisingly sympathetic to the recall, will see in Larry as someone closer to their experience. He is a man more akin to their aspirations than the union officials, tech oligarchs and Hollywood types rallying to Newsom’s defense.
But the recall and Elder still face enormous odds. Besides money and a first-class union-led get-out-the vote effort, he cannot expect much sympathy from a media that, with few exceptions, will roll over on their bellies for any Democrat. Getting largely anti-Trump Democrats and Independents will be key here since the GOP base has shrunk since the last recall in 2003 from over one-third to barely a quarter of the vote.
Inevitably Larry, if he continues to lead in the polls, will be found to have baggage. His occasionally rigid libertarian positions, for example on public education, could offer ripe targets for political consultants who see an ever-expanding welfare state as the ticket to a permanent majority. Yet even if it loses closely, the recall will be a reminder to the Democrats that even here, in the ultimate blue utopia/dystopia, a large number of Americans look forward to a future that promises something more than high-tech feudalism.
Joel Kotkin is a Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and a Senior Research Fellow at the Civitas Institute, the University of Texas at Austin.
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SubscribeFang’s argument would be more persuasive if one could credibly believe that CFPB was and will be impartial in applying its rules. That is not the case. It was and remains fully a creation of the Democratic Party, and was part of the “weaponization of government” we witnessed over the last decade.
Anyway, the fundamental problem is much deeper, going back to legislation and rules that empower the federal government to oversee and direct how banks conduct business, not with the purpose of preventing fraud but to use banks as tools to attack disfavored entities without going to the trouble of developing and presenting criminal cases. It started with drugs, prostitutes, terrorists, and illegal guns, which most saw as worthy goals.
But, as we should all have learned long ago, such power, once granted to the government, is NEVER limited to the original purpose or scale. Any promises to the contrary are always hollow and ultimately disproven, and often surprisingly quickly.
This is false:
” … crypto — the sector that, more than almost any other, yearns for looser regulation.”
For the past decade the crypto industry has been bending over backwards asking for clear regulation, on every possible front. The absence of which gave carte blanche for tradfi propagandists and unwitting propaganda parrots—author Lee Fang apparently included—to whine about the crypto baddies and their made-up demands for less regulation—or their inability to follow rules that Literally could not be followed, by design.
The reality is 180 degrees the opposite of Feng’s portrait, as anyone who has done any actual research is aware. Fang’s article isn’t Unherd, but arch Herd.
“Corporations are people, my friend.” –Mitt Romney, 11-Aug-2011
The majority of the U.S. Supreme Court in Stromberg v. California accepted Brandeis’s ideas on free speech.
As free speech has become a battleground for everyday Americans
Which American had this on their Bingo card? Free speech is one of those things we are accustomed to taking for granted, like water coming from the tap when the handle is turned. But in Europe, free expression is under open attack and don’t think for a second people in the US are not salivating to do the same thing. They have been doing it, as this piece points out, and they will continue unless stopped.
Being surprised that the U.S. sanctions countries and individuals it disagrees with—only to now see it doing the same to its own citizens—reveals a staggering lack of critical thinking and a failure of the education system. What did people expect? That sanctions or debanking used abroad wouldn’t eventually be used at home? Just laughable!
Fang’s “worrying trend” has existed at least since the Lochner case in 1905. One American’s protection is another American’s involuntary restriction. When there’s a high degree of “pre-political” (ie, cultural) uniformity, or at least similarity, liberalism stands a chance of squaring the circle. But after say two centuries of increasingly fractious individualism, our options have become tyranny and revolution. Unless Andreesen makes us all into virtual – and virtuous – Romans.
The good news is that Elon Musk now has access to, and a copy of, the federal government’s data from the past couple of decades. Which includes dubious agency links to progressive NGOs and to companies that didn’t have the integrity to do the right thing when feeling pressure from these agencies and NGOs to destroy people based on progressive cult ideology.
So we’ll all find out soon enough about the companies that were being un-American by debanking, firing employees, etc, without due process and based on specious progressive ideology.
Democracy dies in darkness. And light, transparency and truth are the best disinfectants that build trust in society.
Elon is the right man at the post to get this all done.
It’s worth remembering that the early drafts of the Declaration of Independence spoke of “…life, liberty and the pursuit of property…” instead of “happiness”. Most of the delegates objected, in an early sign of populism even in the upper classes, and the wording was changed. Thank God.
But that avaricious attitude is still alive and well in the minds of some Americans. They’re usually referred to as ‘conservatives’. Until recently most corporations and business-people were staunch conservatives.
Our present Supreme Court line-up is not a good place to look for happiness.
Looking on from a distance, I had the impression that the Democrats were now the party of the rich (and the other side was the deplorables, bitter clingers, etc) and that becoming a Democrat politician was a fast track to becoming rich.
Lee “crypto sector yearns for looser regulation” is wrong and quantifiably so. Hundreds of start ups have wasted time, money and energy taliking with the SEC in an attempt to clarify their business propositions.
Chokepoint 2.0 has ruined many bright prospects and forced entrepreneurs overseas.
The industry craves sensible regulation
I think the author should go and check out the other recent Andreessen media appearances: Lex Fridman and Ross Douthat.
From them you get the feeling that the tech bros just can’t take the Dem regulation and interference and stupidity any more.
This author is another of that crew that believes that the more big words you use, the cleverer you sound. Unfortunately, ’tis a lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing. No points, soldier.
Again with the complaints about “big words” Sam? Might be time to download a dictionary app? Then the chip might feel a little lighter on that shoulder. Try it.
I don’t mind big words, Martin. They are sometimes necessary. But they are also used at times to obscure the author’s lack of intelligence or knowledge. Such as in this case ….
I get what you’re saying. You’re saying there’s a lot of abstract code-speak and jargon.
I cut him some slack because he’s trying to fit a ton of information into a small window of space. My assumption is that he respects his audience and doesn’t want to talk down to them.
I’m open to the idea that he’s right about plenty, he just needs a longer article to fill in the specifics.
it was fine, well written and clear
A critical mass of the American populace is now awake to the dirty use of power by the elite Left in and out of government. Democrats are totally in denial as to how exposed they are and how culpable they appear. The suspicions were growing prior to the election but now DOGE et al are flipping on the lights in the dark corners of government and Americans are seeing roaches scurrying for cover everywhere.
Democrats relentlessly demonized Trump for eight years in the media, impeached him in Congress, dragged him through the courts and convicted him. How did the people respond to this orchestrated character assassination? They elected him to the presidency. What about this stunning sequence of events is so difficult for Democrats to appreciate? Americans are so outraged by the Left’s feckless abuse of power that they simply don’t care what Democrats say about Trump. Still, the Left doubles down on Trump-bashing because they have nothing else to offer.
I can see where you’re going with this Lee but some anecdotal evidence of the specific speech or transactions you’re referencing would be helpful. I specifically recall the Canadian Truckers being debanked. Nigel Farage was famously debanked. I don’t know anything about Palestinian protesters being debanked.
The absurdity of the Canadian Truckers getting debanked was because of the double standard. The same government previously allowed economic sabotage from the Left only months prior and cheered it on. Farage was obviously singled out and is a more glaring example of targeted overreach. I would assume…and I’m not just saying this because the Palestinian protesters were on the Left that a more universal standard was applied to them. The same standard used against Trump supporters.
That to me is the issue, the rules can’t be arbitrary and applied to one set of views. If the rules at least attempt to be neutral there is less of a problem because the State has an interest in balancing free speech with the real threat of economic sabotage.
The crypto situation is over my head. There’s too much going on there to figure that out. I personally view Crypto as a ponzi scheme and the losers have only themselves to blame.
Citizens United is a bit different. If citizen speech is not suppressed than total spending on political campaigns is less of a problem. In fact, you could argue billionaire and corporate contributions actually hurt the Harris campaign in a Populist environment because the population in the 2024 election was able to point it out without being suppressed. When one Party is whining about Oligarchy despite having significantly more billionaire support than a rational informed public kind of cancels out the hypocrisy.