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Tuesday, February 27, 2018

84 year old four-term Conservative Diane Feinstein rejected by California Democratic Party insiders: Why is this not headline national news from the studios and press rooms of American mainstream media? Because the owners do not want it to be? Nothing to see there, move on with Nunes and Mueller circus details, school shootings which have happened and will happen again, and leave Feinstein's failure along with the dissatisfaction felt with the tax monstrosity to languish unreported in a hope it will be forgotten? What is news, then?

Alternet does report:

February 26, 2018, 6:26 AM GMT

California Democrats shocked Senator Dianne Feinstein by not endorsing her for re-election at their state convention Sunday.

Conservative Democrat Feinstein won just 37 percent of the 2,775 delegates’ votes, versus 54 percent for her challenger, state Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León, D-Los Angeles. Support from 60 percent of the delegates was needed to secure the party’s official endorsement.

“The outcome of today’s endorsement vote is an astounding rejection of politics as usual, and it boosts our campaign’s momentum as we all stand shoulder to shoulder against a complacent status quo,” de León said Sunday. “California Democrats are hungry for new leadership that will fight for California values from the front lines, not equivocate on the sidelines.”

“The days of Democrats biding our time, biting our tongue, and triangulating at the margins are over,” he said.

[...] It was a jolting signal to the 84-year-old Feinstein, who has been in politics for five decades and was first elected to the Senate in 1992.

“The Democratic Party tends to endorse incumbents,” said Rose Kapolczynski, a veteran California Democratic strategist who ran former Sen. Barbara Boxer’s 2010 successful re-election campaign.

“It sends a message that the Democratic Party is a progressive party and they’re going for the candidate who they view is the more progressive candidate,” said Tom Steyer, the billionaire San Francisco activist who is close to de León but has not endorsed in the race. “Both of them have long histories of service to the state, to the country and to the party. And it’s pretty clear that Kevin is positioned as more progressive than Sen. Feinstein.”

Feinstein's oppostion to single-payer health care, her anti-marijuana stance, and her repeated votes for President Donald Trump’s nominations angered many California Democrats.

The item posted a Glenn Greenwald tweet:

Dianne Feinstein, 84, has spent her 4 full terms in the US Senate with great loyalty & servitude to the CIA & NSA & various wars. She now wants her 5th full term. But the California Dem Party just refused to endorse her; they prefer her opponent by 54-37%

And this is not viewed as news? Get real. This is as relevant a barometer of shifting political weather as any actual news can be. Under reporting of this indicates something. Readers should try to figure out what is indicated. It looks fairly ugly, but better to know it than to accept glide and slide.

____________UPDATE_____________
A thought experiment: Absent Net Neutrality, what is to stop concentrated corporate broadband providers from putting Alternet into "premium package" status, where the basic plan would be FOX and CNN, and go to the library and such for more? Say hypothetically, there would be Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, and whitehouse.gov, plus your local TV outlets in a base package, but with eBay, Pinterest, YouTube, Buzzfeed, Target, BestBuy, The Intercept, Wikileaks, Yahoo, Library of Congress and Google Scholar as premium content? What stops cable TV from serving consumers such arbitrariness?

_________FURTHER UPDATE_________
Opinions differ. Strongly so. But at least Strib did cover the Feinstein vote of no confidence. In a fashion.

The no confidence vote was as she deserved, some would say. Others would counter it was bad judgment, non-conciliatory, as the Strib carried Bloomberg op-ed contends.

Opinion here; sooner would have been better for repudiating Feinstein, but now is better than later to repudiate Feinstein and her anti-people pro-money record on which her legacy stands.

BOTTOM LINE: Multimillionaires like Feinstein in office as long as she was, as mediocre as she was, stands as a sound term limits argument. She may gain reelection. For that question we have to wait and see.

________FURTHER UPDATE________
Mainstream media sampling - ABC:

Democratic activists were more eager to back her primary challenger, state Senate leader Kevin de Leon, who is touting himself as a fresh face with stronger progressive credentials, particularly on immigration.

However, he too failed to earn the 60 percent support needed to win the endorsement Saturday at Democrats' annual convention. That means neither candidate will get the party's seal of approval or extra campaign cash leading into the June primary.

With Democrats still licking their wounds from the 2016 election, some of the party's biggest stars, including U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris and U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, urged unity ahead of the midterm elections. They reminded more than 3,000 activists gathered this weekend that President Donald Trump is their common enemy.

Though party activists rebuked Feinstein, she has millions of dollars to run a successful campaign and polling has shown she enjoys wide support among Democratic voters and independents, a critical piece of the electorate in a race without any well-known Republicans.


The top-two primary system in heavily Democratic California allows the two highest vote-getters to advance to the general election regardless of party identification.

It's the first time Feinstein has failed to win the party's backing since 1994, when she won her first full-term to the U.S. Senate, though she's lacked a credible Democratic challenger in most previous races.

[italics empahsis added - the actual vote split numbers went unreported by ABC]

CBS coverage - buying into the don't worry be happy pro-Feinstein spin; like ABC, no report of the actual size of the vote split:

U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein failed to win the official endorsement of the California Democratic Party as she seeks her fifth term in Washington, but her supporters say it won't hurt her with a broader swath of voters. Party activists were more eager to back her primary challenger, state Senate leader Kevin de Leon, who is crafting himself as a fresh face with stronger progressive credentials. However, he too failed to earn the 60 percent support he needed to win the endorsement.

That means neither candidate will get the party's seal of approval or extra campaign cash leading into the June primary. The decision came from more than 3,000 activists gathered for the party's annual convention this weekend, an event aimed at generating enthusiasm for the midterm elections.

None of the four Democrats running to succeed Jerry Brown as governor secured an endorsement either.

For Feinstein, it's the first time she's failed to win the party's backing since her first successful U.S. Senate campaign in 1994. But she also has never faced a credible primary challenger. This time around, there's no Republican running in the contest, meaning a showdown between de Leon and Feinstein was likely from the start.

The top-two primary system in heavily Democratic California allows the two highest vote-getters to advance to the general election regardless of party identification.

Feinstein backers downplayed her failure to win the party endorsement, saying she remains popular among the wider California electorate and has millions of dollars needed to run a successful campaign.

mecurynews.com:

SAN DIEGO — In a surprising show of discontent with one of California’s most enduring political leaders, the state Democratic Party declined to make an endorsement in this year’s U.S. Senate race on Sunday, snubbing Sen. Dianne Feinstein in her bid for a fifth full term.

Her main challenger, State Senate leader Kevin de León, won the support of 54 percent of delegates at the state party convention here this weekend, short of the 60 percent needed to secure the party’s endorsement. Feinstein received only 37 percent of the votes.

The rebuke of Feinstein by the party delegates comes even though the 25-year incumbent has led polls by wide margins and received the backing of political luminaries like Sen. Kamala Harris and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.

[...] Feinstein’s campaign still has a huge financial upper hand over de León, as well as the built-in advantages of incumbency. Her chief political strategist Bill Carrick played down the importance of the non-endorsement Sunday, arguing it would have little tangible benefit for de León. “The reality is, he’s way the hell behind,” Carrick said.

Ouster of the entrenched money-servant millionaires will resonate, but the voters of California have yet to cast votes in the top-two primary, and beyond. We can hope.

____________FURTHER UPDATE_____________
The story has grown mainstream legs, NY Times:

A candidate must garner the support of 60 percent of the delegates to win the party’s nomination. None of the candidates running for statewide election met that threshold.

Still, Ms. Feinstein’s showing was particularly stark given her status as a Democratic institution. Mr. de León drew 54 percent of the vote, or 1,508 votes, compared with 37 percent, or 1,023 votes, for Ms. Feinstein.

The vote came after Mr. de León, who has been running an insurgent campaign, delivered a blistering speech that reflects deep divisions among Democrats here — and across the nation — about how to respond to President Trump. Mr. de León questioned, among other things, remarks Ms. Feinstein had made that were interpreted by many Democratic activists here as sympathetic to Mr. Trump, and suggested she was too conventional in taking on the White House.
Continue reading the main story

“The days of Democrats biding our time, biting our tongue, and triangulating at the margins are over,” he said.

His speech also reflected a feeling among many Democrats, particularly younger ones, that it is time for the old guard of Democratic leaders here to step aside. Gov. Jerry Brown, 79, is stepping down at the end of the year because of term limits.

“California’s greatness comes from acts of human audacity, not congressional seniority,” Mr. de León said.

Ms. Feinstein, in her remarks, talked about her success in the Senate in pushing through a ban on assault weapons, which was later phased out. She pledged to do it again if elected. But the pledge was clearly not enough.

Don't worry be happy spin, absent.

WaPo, here. CNN:

In an aggressive speech at the California Democratic Party convention, De León said Democrats deserve a progressive senator who fights on the "front lines," who doesn't "equivocate on the sidelines."
"I'm running for US Senate because the days of Democrats biding our time, biding our talk, are over," said De León, who is the leader of the California Senate. "Leadership comes from human audacity, not from congressional seniority."

He faulted Feinstein for her initial approach to President Donald Trump -- which infuriated Democratic activists here -- mocking her for saying last August that she believed Trump "can be a good president" if he had the ability to "learn and to change."

Charging that Feinstein is out of step with the progressive direction of the party, De León pointed to a litany of issues where he said he disagrees with the senior senator, including school vouchers, allowing federal agents to spy on American citizens, and her past support of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He said he would never have supported prosecuting 13-year-olds as adults "in a criminal justice system propped up by institutional racism" (an apparent reference to her support for the 1994 crime bill). De León also chided Feinstein's approach to immigration, charging that he would never use the so-called Dreamers "as a bargaining chip."

"We demand passion, not patience. We speak truth to power," said De León said. "And we've never been fooled into thinking that Donald Trump could be a good president. ... Being good sometimes is not good enough."
Feinstein did not mention her Democratic opponent at all.

In the wake of the mass shooting in Parkland, Florida, she focused her remarks on her decades-long advocacy for an assault weapons ban, which was phased out in 2004. She criticized Trump for suggesting that teachers should be armed.

[...] "Now is the time to take those weapons of war off our streets," she said to applause.

De León got a far warmer welcome than his opponent on the convention floor. But he had to receive 60 percent of the delegate votes to get the Democratic endorsement, a threshold he did not meet.

De León enjoys a close kinship with many of the state delegates, who tend to be far more liberal than the average California voter.

Even had De León notched the endorsement, Feinstein is still heavily favored to win in November -- in part because of her nearly unlimited resources, and her support among California independents and some Republicans.

That's a spectrum. May De León win the good fight; passion vs money. Do not expect it, but know the contest exists.

___________FURTHER UPDATE_____________
Feinstein's OpenSecrets.org page.

Dan White gave Feinstein her big career boost, and there are several unsavory allegations of grotesque family profiteering from office. However, much of that reporting is by politically biased outlets. Aside from Breitbart and Rush Limbaugh sourcing, etc., AlterNet weighed in, the subject, post office privatization. HuffPo, same topic. Breitbart, same topic. Rush, war profiteering claim. FOX, foreclosures profiteering. Breitbart, again, three separate allegations. WND, less accusative? Even the Brainerd Dispatch picked up the USPS story:

No one in the mainstream media is even raising an eyebrow over the conflict of interest or corruption on the sale of billions of dollars worth of public assets.

How does a U.S. Senator from San Francisco manage to get away with organizing and lobbying such a sweet deal?

As for accusations of a conflict of interest and suspicions that Feinstein may have influenced the awarding of the contract to her husband’s firm, Feinstein’s office strongly denies the charges.

“Sen. Feinstein is not involved with and does not discuss any of her husband’s business decisions with him. Her husband’s holdings are his separate personal property. Sen. Feinstein’s assets are held in a blind trust,” the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

“That arrangement has been in place since before she came to the Senate in 1992,” said Brian Weiss, Feinstein’s communications director. In 2012, Feinstein voted for an amendment to a postal reform bill that would have temporarily halted post office closings. The amendment was defeated in the House.

LA Times, back in 1992, with a cautionary report in line with the closing paragraphs of that quote.

Bottom line: The career so long, the claims so many. Again, Feinstein is a poster child in favor of term limits. From the other side, Bernie is the strongest argument against term limits. Any term limit proposal's success would need to include impartiality; i.e., no massive set of loopholes as with the tax code.

FURTHER: One more, with an interesting comment stream.