San Francisco – These are days of creating souls for the Democrats, a period of calculation and self -criticism when they try to understand why they lost the Congress and the White House and fight to find their path from political purgatory.
The examination even extends with regard to San Francisco, a place famous for its liberalism and its sufficiency, where interior reflection has started even before Trump’s restoration in the White House.
In 2022, the voters removed three uber-The progressive members of the School Board, which seemed more intentional on symbolic gestures, such as renamed it from public schools to erase the tastes of Abraham Lincoln and Paul Revere, that the performance of students. A few months later, the district prosecutor, Chesa Boudin, was recalled in response to his bleeding approach perceived of public security.
Continuing Apace, the voters in November elected a new moderate political and relativecomer, Daniel Lurie, as mayor and punctuated the feeling by offering him a simpler supervisors of the Baroque town hall of San Francisco.
In the same vein, the city’s democratic party, not exactly a pro-maga choir, has come closer to the middle, eliminating a leader who sees the election of Trump and improved standing in this blue bastion like the One of those moments when flash red lights and sirens are screaming.
“One of the questions with the Democratic Party at the moment is that a large part of the parties of the parties, especially at the local level, has been largely performative and not really relevant to the daily life of the workers,” said the President of the local party, Nancy Tung. “And I think we see the counterpoup now nationwide.”
San Francisco is not about to transform into a hillier version of Kansas, nor to become in Alabama with Pacific views. Trump obtained 6,000 more votes here in November that there was four years ago and increased his support by 2.5%. However, he lost to Kamala Harris, the former city’s prosecutor, nearly 65 percentage points.
Tung’s policy should also be placed in a certain perspective. She checks all the Democratic boxes – Pro -Choix, Anti -Trump and Sur – and Pleaning laughing that in many places, she was called Communist. But Tung is a centrist according to the standards of San Francisco, and the city’s political pendulum, which has long oscillated between left and far left, clearly swung its direction.
People “can call me as they want,” she said during lunch in the city’s mission district. “I think the government should work for people, and at the local level, there are really fundamental things that should not be controversial, right? Each community deserves good public schools. They deserve safe streets, clean sidewalks. The government that works is not too bureaucratic … It does not put special giant interests before everyday people. »»
Tung, 50, is the daughter of Taiwanese immigrants. She grew up in southern California in Arcadia, before moving to the Bay region, where she spent most of her prosecutor career. His work in the office of San Francisco Da focuses on hatred crimes.
Tung began her political activism quite recently, after Trump’s upset victory in 2016. During a trip to Washington, she planned to celebrate the historic election of Hillary Clinton as the first American president. Instead, she had an ugly cry at the National Portrait Gallery, seated before a rendering of women who sat at the Supreme Court.
A few weeks later, Tung was back in the capital, walking on the eve of Trump’s first inauguration with the megaphorn in hand. At home, she redoubled her political commitment by registering with one of the myriads of democratic clubs in San Francisco. Finally, however, Tung has moved away, feeling marginalized not because she was a woman or an American of Asian origin, but because other Democrats would not accept her comparative moderation.
In 2019, she presented herself without success for the district prosecutor, losing against Boudin. The following year, the supervisor council scuttled the appointment of tung to the police committee because, in the climate after the murder of George Floyd, it was considered too Providence.
Slowly, however, political winds have moved, as they often do. By 2022, it was the leadership of the Democratic Party of San Francisco which seemed outside. Among other measures, the party opposed the school board, to which 70% of the voters supported, and the eviction of sausage, which was entirely distorted. In 2024, Tung led a centrist slate who took control of the party.
During lunch in a favorite Indian-Pakistani restaurant, she described her goals by the end of her mandate in April 2028. Tung’s behavior, as you would expect from a prosecutor, was not a meaning. Crossed arms. Crumpled brow.
The most important thing suggested Tung, was to move away from abstractions and indulgences and to solve problems that affect the daily life of voters.
Tung cited a resolution that the local party adopted a few years ago opposing the use of child labor in the chocolate trade in Africa. A terrible thing, yes. But why, she wondered, Democrats in San Francisco devoted time to the question? “It makes people believe that you are disconnected,” said Tung. “Why is there something about children’s work in another country and not something about how we are dealing with children here?”
It can be reductive, but the point is well taken. If the latest elections showed something, it is that the high -minded principles, such as defending democratic norms, are less important for many voters than, say, the cost of essence and grocery store.
Democrats said Tung said that the portion of rice and lenses must “actually show people our value, like what we do in the community.” … do you help people? Do you help clothing people? Do you help connect people to services? Do you help people cutting administrative formalities at the Town Hall?
Inevitably, the conversation turned to Trump and fears that the country will be making its way to the dictatorship.
Yes, said Tung, party leaders as they can and should express themselves and help channel democratic indignation. There is information and resources to share with individuals and groups, such as immigrants, which can be targeted by punitive policies. “Can we provide support for affected people?” Yes, we can, ”said Tung. “Can we provide a forum to people who want to express themselves?” Yes, you can also do it.
But real resistance, said Tung, will have to come from elected officials, members of the Congress, Prosecutors General and other fight against the Trump administration in court.
She did not say it, but the reality is that if the Democrats really hope to stop the excesses of Trump and his bulldozer of federal programs, they will have to resume a certain power in Washington.
And there is a lot of work to do.
California Daily Newspapers
