The unprecedented measure has enormous potential nationwide. The clash exposes the party’s corporate-progressive divide

Midway through this summer, a high-quality poll found that Democrats in California were overwhelmingly in favor of the upcoming ballot measure for a one-time 5% tax on billionaire wealth.

The ratio was more than 4 to 1. But the state’s most powerful Democrats – including the governor Gavin Newsom, his near-certain successor Xavier Becerra and the Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass – have lined up with Silicon Valley billionaires who’ve raised upward of $340m to defeat the initiative.

  • savvie@lemmy.zipOP
    73·
    4 days ago

    This is a fight for the soul of the Democratic party,” [California Congresscritter Ro] Khanna told me last weekend. “Will we be beholden to billionaire donors and offer platitudes without policy like Gavin Newsom, or will we reclaim our FDR courage and offer a bold vision for our nation’s future?”

    Exactly 90 years ago, speaking at Madison Square Garden on the last day of October 1936, the then president Franklin Delano Roosevelt scorned the rightwing plutocrats of the day: “They are unanimous in their hate for me – and I welcome their hatred.” Leaders of today’s Democratic party have failed to earn such hatred.