Catherine Liu: California is Capitalism’s Multicultural Utopia

All right, so I am now joined by our friend Catherine Liu. She, of course, has been on the show many times before. You know her as a professor over at UC Irvine, the author of the book *Virtue Hoarders*, and a longtime California resident, which is what we're here to talk about today. Catherine, good to see you.

Hi, good to see you. So, I really wanted to have you on for a chat on, "What's the matter with California?" so to speak. And I want to dive in by reading a quote from the sociologist Dylan Riley. I've shared this quote on the show before, and I think it's a really interesting one. And, and I just sent it to you, but I'm going to read it now. So, this appeared in the NLR. This is by Dylan Riley. He writes, "Multicultural neoliberalism offers a profoundly unequal but rigorously equitable form of capitalism. Social mobility might be low in such a society, but not for illegitimate reasons of race or gender. California offers a template for a capitalist society informed by this logic."

This huge and immensely wealthy state has been run for decades by the liberal progressive wing of the Democratic Party. What has its record been? California has an inequality index higher than Mexico, the highest poverty rate in the country, an aging population, a housing market out of reach of most middle and working-class people, and poor public schools. It provides fewer and fewer working-class jobs as its industrial structure becomes increasingly concentrated in the glitzy Bay Area, Silicon Valley technology hub. This is roughly the model that multicultural neoliberalism offers the U.S.

So, I find this a really striking quote. Uh, and the reason why I'm bringing this up is because, you know, in the context of this question of what's the matter with California, I think that we obviously hear a lot in, you know, progressive and or liberal circles that like, there's something wrong with red state residents, right? Like, you've got like poor people living in red states who consistently, quote, "vote against their interests." And California is interesting to me because it sort of seems to have the opposite kind of contradiction or the opposite kind of problem, which is that it is an incredibly diverse state, a deep blue state, like probably the most capital D Democratic state in the union, right? And yet, as Dylan Riley points out, has soaring income inequality, high rates of poverty. Um, the homelessness crisis is obviously a huge issue in California right now. And, you know, it's kind of like, why is this going on in a blue state? Right? So, I guess the opening question for you is, like, what do you make of this Dylan Riley quote, and what do you make of this contradiction that we have the state of California, which is a deep blue progressive state, and yet, you know, has all of these problems?

Um, it's, it's a really good diagnosis of what has gone wrong here, but, um, there's some material issues that we can look at, which are, um, the NIMBYism of, you know, "not my backyard" kind of ethos in the professional managerial class, management of real estate and development in California. And what all the policies in California now are designed to do, the ones that are passed by the state assembly because they're super majority, the Dems have super majorities in the assemblies in the legislature, are all designed to benefit, um, upper middle-class homeowners who are professional managerial class people for the most part. Although there is a large merchant right-wing class, we've talked about that before, but that merchant class is, you know, saying that they're voting with their feet and moving to Nevada and Texas where there's no, um, personal income tax. But, um, the elites really work here through technology, through universities, through, um, increasingly medical research, private medical companies. Um, and the, I'll just give you an example of what is so crazy about California right now. One of the ways in which the governor and the legislature want to mitigate homelessness is by allowing homeowners to build, um, dwellings, approved dwellings, they're called ADUs, you know, like little, little tiny beautiful houses in your backyards. That is their solution to, um, the homelessness crisis. So, the crisis in, um, um, like availability of housing, basically. This means like people who are homeowners, like me, can build a unit that we can then rent out for money. We get more wealthy, we have more value to our real estate because we can have approval for a rental unit. This is along the lines of like the solar policy, which they realized like 10 years down the line is really punishing lower income and working-class people who don't own their homes, so they can't put solar on their homes. And all of the, um, wealthy people in my neighborhood are so proud of having solar energy, but this has actually driven up the price of electricity, and we've gotten all these tax breaks as a result. And so these are the kinds of progressive policies that California prides itself on, and we've really forged this boutique politics of what Riley says is, you know, sort of neoliberal multiculturalism.

Um, it's, you know, um, more like, I'm hesitant to use the term neoliberal right now because I think a lot of people just avoid capitalists and use neoliberal instead, right? So, can we call it capitalist, right? Um, multiculturalism, late capitalist multiculturalism, finance capital multiculturalism? Like, there are people like Wendy Brown, who came out of Berkeley and is now like some grand poobah in, um, Princeton, who's written, you know, so many books on neoliberalism and never does she talk about political economy. She's like, she's like the perfect avatar of the California mentality. It was called like the California Ideology, which was about the utopian dreams of Silicon Valley and tech. Now, like, we're not even talking about utopia anymore, although, you know, Riley's description of it seems like it is a kind of, um, capitalist multicultural utopia for the professional managerial classes. Um, it's dystopia for everyone else. The median home value in my area has gone up above a million dollars, and the median income does not break a hundred thousand dollars because there are a lot of working-class people in Orange County. Yeah, so, um, they're Latinos, but they're not just Latinos, they're all different kinds of Asian populations in Orange County. It is incredibly diverse, but, um, the kinds of middle-class home ownership that were promised by, um, military, the military-industrial complex in Orange County, the big Boeing and other aerospace industries, especially up near Lakewood, like those kinds of promises are just gone, right? Just, it's gone. Yes, middle class. It is not a middle-class utopia anymore, or a working-class utopia, which it temporarily was, you know, in the period immediately after the war.

I want to jump in and ask you quickly about the, um, component that Riley identifies of the multiculturalism, or like this idea of equity. Because what's interesting about California to me is like, as you're saying, like the pie is very obviously shrinking for middle-class and working-class families. At the same time, it does seem like there's a push from Gavin Newsom and other, you know, leaders in the California Democratic Party to distribute that shrinking pie more, quote, "equitably" among various racial groups. Right? So, what I'm thinking of here is Gavin Newsom will do things like he'll sign a bill requiring ethnic studies, uh, in, in California public schools. At the same time that he rejects expanding, uh, you know, financial aid to students. This was something that, you know, Ben Burgess, friend of the show, pointed out the last time he was on. Um, I know that California has really, uh, started an effort to try to close, like, the math achievement gap among public school students. But at the same time, it's like resources for public schools across the board seem to be dwindling. You probably saw that California, the California Assembly, I think recently approved a reparations task force. And there was like a big, you know, a big debate over who the reparations would be for. I think they finally, after much, you know, back and forth, decided that it would be limited to the descendants of slaves. So, like, you know, not just to any Black person, but specifically to the descendants of slaves, which I guess makes sense in the context of reparations in some ways, but it's also weird in the context of California because it's like, California was never a slave state. Just want to point that out. So, again, not really quite sure, like, what the point of this is. Um, which, and, and of course, you know, there's been an effort by Democratic leadership in California to reinstate affirmative action, or to like, you know, get rid of meritocratic admissions at elite schools, which, as we've talked about before, seems to me like, in the context of shrinking resources for higher education and public education in general, just an attempt to diversify what is a dwindling resource, right? So, um, I don't know. I mean, maybe talk a little bit about that, because I know at the same time that all of this is happening, something that's more universal, like the campaign for single-payer in California has completely died on the vine. So, so what do you make of that? I mean, is that just something that's a media spectacle, this kind of like, I don't know, like, uh, equi-racial equity or like sort of like woke component of California politics, or do you really feel like that is something that the Democratic leadership is pushing?

Well, both. I mean, I think the Democratic leadership in California is one of, it's really, really, really corrupt. Yeah. And it's interesting about why it's so corrupt because there's, it just has so much power. The Republicans are really screwed here. And so with great power comes the temptation to abuse it. So we have a, a Democratic Party here that is just abusive of, um, democracy, really. If you look at Nancy Pelosi doing robocalls for Quayle in Texas, she does that for an anti-abortion, pro-gun rights, um, congressman who's being challenged by Cisneros of Bernie Kratz, right? And she doesn't feel like there are any consequences for her, right? She doesn't feel like there's any challenge to her. So it is a little bit like living in an autocratic state. I mean, our Republicans are admitted, like, completely insane because they've been out of power for so long. But it is like living in a one-party kind of one-party, um, political organization, kind of like the CCP, you know, the Chinese Communist Party and the California Democratic Party have a lot in common, sort of. But, um, one of the, but, you know, all joking aside, I just feel like the misery of being working class or a middle-class person here, even, is like, you, you just wait for that explosion to happen, and it's not really expressing itself in politics right now. And I'm not quite sure why we have, we've been taken hostage in this way, but it's because the Republican Party is just so, um, completely insane. You know, Bernie won this state in the primaries, like, by, you know, by large margins. Yes. So you think that there could be like a building, a rebuilding of the Democratic Party, um, and a transformation of the, um, Democratic Party from within because of that victory, but, um, it's really not happening because the vested interests are just, they have too much money. There's too many, um, NGOs funded by private foundations that, you know, put up a lot of smoke and mirrors. But the single-payer thing was really, really incredible. It came, it didn't even come to a vote. It was killed before it, um, came to the state legislature as a vote. And, um, you'd think, like, with the state that voted, um, so overwhelmingly for Bernie, with, you know, the younger part of the, um, electorate being very much for this, that there would be a push for at least this to come to a vote in the state legislature, and it would have been really exciting, right? And sort of politically motivate, but motivating. So what I heard, you know, in terms of the scuttlebutt, I think it's pretty easy to find out, I've been like too busy to do this, is that big pharma and insurance came in, and they lobbied people really hard to just not, to just kill it. And that, I mean, is just incredible to me. But if you think about it, the Democratic Party in California is beholden to very, very wealthy donors, and very wealthy donors from their, from tech and from various, you know, industries. And, um, the big pharma and big insurance, they just came in, and they just threw their weight around. And, you know, in the end, what California really respects is money. So we're going to have this like, really, um, corrupted and, you know, tyrannical, um, Democratic Party, like displaying all of its, um, progressive bonafides, but it's all a complete sham because what we have is, um, just, you know, what the Riley quote, um, describes.

But, you know, um, and I was just listening to Chapo in California and the elections, and they got it completely wrong. They said California has a $60 billion surplus this year, and they were like, "Oh yeah, and it's from the COVID relief." And they're like, "Hahaha, that's so much money." It's a $97 billion budget surplus. There's talk of establishing a sovereign wealth fund for the state of California, so we'd be like Saudi Arabia. I mean, it is a combination of the COVID money, but also because people got really rich in the past year from real estate sales and, um, tech, and, um, state tax revenues just went up like crazy. But if you follow the way, if you follow the money, and if you look at how California spends its money, it spent so much money on, um, housing the homeless and, you know, um, those kinds of initiatives, and there's just nothing to show for it, right? It's like a complete, it's an industry unto itself now, this kind of like NGO industry. There's, there's a pet project for every single thing. There is no systematic, no, um, macroeconomic analysis of what's actually going on. And just like with the sort of single, single-family dwellings now being able to be zoned to make their own little houses in the back, their tiny houses in the backyards, um, it's, it's not, um, systematic. It's not big. It's, there are no big projects. The, the high-speed rail between San Francisco and Los Angeles is like mired in, you know, um, budget overruns and like regulatory problems. And then, and so this comes back to, I think, like the old California ideology of counter-culture plus tech, where you're like, "Small is beautiful." We're going to find all these small solutions. And it's like, no, we need to build huge housing projects again. It's not chic, it's not, you know, um, it's not a, it's not like very, um, desirable. And the other, from the point of view of this like, "small beautiful" thing, the other thing is like, they, during COVID, they did all the hotels were empty, so the government, the governor went and, um, created this program where, um, homeless people could find hotel rooms and live in them. And the rates of overdose just went up really crazy because there was no requirement to stop using drugs. And I think Schallenberger, you and I have talked about this, like Mark Schallenberger is making a run for governor against Newsom. Newsom is basically like the emperor of California. They were really funny, and Chapo was like, he's like the god emperor. But he is like the god emperor. And, um, they tried to cut, they tried to recall him, it didn't work. And so that only strengthened his hand. And now we have this like, um, situation where it's an endemic homeless problem that is that is fed by a, you know, drug problems, mental illness, and, um, and there's this progressive left attitude of not being able to make interventions, but respecting people, keeping them alive so that they can, you know, come to their own senses about, you know, quitting, about quitting the drugs. And with the kinds of street drugs that we have now, like fentanyl and all these other things, I mean, I just don't see that, like, I don't even know what to call it, but like this touchy-feely attitude towards this is just not going to work. Like, we need some tough love here, and nobody's willing to, um, do that. No one's willing to go against the sort of common nostrum of like, "Oh, we have to respect people." It's like, "Yeah, you know what? They're addicts, and you might be mentally ill." And, um, I would want, you know, to be treated in a certain way if I were just like destroying myself like that. But, um, it's so, I was actually, so I was actually in California last week, and this is anecdotal, of course, but I was speaking to a journalist, um, about some of the upcoming elections, the primary elections in California. And he mentioned that the sort of top issues on most voters' minds seem to be crime and homelessness. Right? And again, this is just, you know, one person's account, or this is just sort of anecdotal. And that doesn't speak for everybody, but it does seem that the, I mean, we've obviously been hearing a lot about both of those issues in the media as well. And I get that there is very much an impulse on the part of the left to not want to like overhype or like go, you know, obviously go right-wing on those issues, um, and create a kind of law and order backlash or feed into a law and order backlash. But I am wondering if you think the kind of public concern over homelessness and crime, and then the way that the political class has been responding to that or not responding, as you seem to be suggesting, what does that tell us a bit about the growing division between working people and, you know, politicians in California?

Um, I feel like there is this attitude, and it was echoed today on Chapo, too. Like, "Oh, they're so San Franciscans, they're so hysterical. They're, you know, their crime rate is the same as Amsterdam's, and they're going crazy." Well, actually, what has happened in San Francisco, it's not just like a bunch of, you know, upper-middle-class, T-shirt-wearing ladies going crazy. It's actually like working-class people in San Francisco, right? A lot of them are Asian, and a lot of them were physically attacked during the pandemic. Not, I mean, let's just say a small minority of them were, but people felt really, really endangered by this. And like, and I think like the Chapo guys took up the attitude like, "Oh my god, look, Walgreens is like Johannesburg to them," but, ha ha ha, and they just laughed it off. But I feel like the, um, the working-class people who are living in San Francisco, they're like, seeing the social fabric really fray. And I mean, I hate to talk about Uvalde and the shooting in Texas, but I'm just pretty upset about that. And I feel like the social fabric in the United States is really frayed. But if you're like a liberal living in a nice community, you're just like, "Oh my god, why is everyone being so hysterical? It's all law and order stuff." I mean, we shouldn't, it shouldn't come from law and order that there is a society where, um, robust relationships of solidarity can be built. But, you know, it's one way to understand like how, um, we feel like there's some like civilizational collapse. At the same time, in the United States, I mean, the, the, the fact that someone who's 18 years old could go and get like an AR-15 and shoot up, um, 10-year-olds is like, I, I don't know, it's pretty close to civilizational collapse. I don't feel like I'm being hysterical by saying that. Um, the social fabric is worn, really thin. It's not necessarily in my, um, immediate neighborhood. And yes, there are a lot of upper-middle-class people who are like, "Oh my god, there's so much crime," and everything, and they are, um, hand-wringing on that level. But like, we're at a place where there is so much hypocrisy. Like, all the stuff that you're talking about about, you know, the, um, kind of, um, appearance of social, the social justice, that's the official language of the state, and the like raw suffering and inequality that we see on the street every day, that division just makes people mistrust our institutions. It makes people hate each other, you know, that makes, um, people, um, suspect each other of, um, either buying into this hypocrisy or just being passive about democracy. There's a sense of like powerlessness about what to do. And all of the law and order concerns, yes, are probably construed for like, um, people who vote, who are like older people, upper-middle-class people, and they're like concerned about that. But, um, there's just a disorganized, well, I didn't say like, in Kuwait, like, um, sense that, um, things are not working, even though like everything seems to be like, um, on the bottom line, like in terms of accounting, doing really well. Um, the, the social fabric of the United States is frayed. But there's just, like in California, there's just, but you can go from bubble after, but to bubble, but in between, and this is, you know, the case, I guess, in New York in a certain way, but people are maybe more mixed up. There's, there's just a sense that there's like, um, very, we're being held together by like glue and like, um, um, duct tape, you know? Um, it's barely, we're barely being held together. And there's no real social mission. But this is the other thing, going back to the Riley things, like, you know, in a way, like we realized that multicultural utopia, right, in California, right? Like, could we say that? Like, I guess we could kind of say that. And then there's all this like serious, real serious problems that are not addressed. But there's this constant self-congratulation. I just want to talk about like London Breed, the mayor of San Francisco. Do I have like an Asian American, like, um, axe to grind here? Number one, she was like saying that, um, African-American single mothers would qualify for, um, free tuition if they wanted to train as EMTs. This was during the pandemic. And, you know, she's the mayor of a city with a whole lot of working-class Asian Americans. And there's, there's this sense that, um, you can just take these American electorate for granted. Yeah. And I'm, I'm like, "Oh my god, this, we, we have to come up with a new party in California because the Democratic Party does not, the Democratic Party is now seeing race in a bipolar way, white and Black. They don't even care about Latinos." Yeah.

Actually, I was going to bring that up. I was going to ask you, I know in California, like, I was going to ask you about Latino and specifically Asian voters in California, who, like, you were saying, like, I feel like at least from what I'm seeing, the Democratic Party does not care about at all, which seems crazy. But I also wanted to ask you if it even makes sense to talk about Latino voters and Asian-American voters, because I will sometimes do that on the show, and, you know, there are reasons to do that, but of course, those groups are not by any means a monolith. And I think what's interesting about, you know, um, Asian constituencies in large cities like San Francisco or Los Angeles is you really do see a division between working-class Asians and their professional managerial class counterparts in terms of where their politics fall. Right? So I feel like the latter group aligns very, very closely with kind of the, you know, Newsom vision of California, whereas it's the working-class Asians, and of course, working-class Latinos as well, who are really getting left behind, and whose politics are really falling out of step with the Democratic orthodoxy. So then we can come to the Chesa Boudin recall, right?

Exactly, exactly. Right. Everyone's like, "Oh my god, he's a son of Weathermen." I'm sorry. I'm like, if you look at the, um, recall of Boudin's website, and if you just listen to the scuttlebutt, um, from Asian Americans and from various constituents in San Francisco, 50% of his prosecutors resigned while he was DA because they just felt like he wasn't, um, he wasn't prosecuting any crimes. And the Asian-American, Latino, and African-American working-class communities in San Francisco actually like creating a cross-racial alliance, bring him down. And I just, and now he's like reaching out to the Asian American community and everything else. Um, I, you know, what, like, I feel like we're just, we're in like opposite world or something. And I, [Music] I don't know how our politics run anymore because, as I said before, there is this like populist anger that's not very, you know, well-directed, and then this like Democratic monolith that basically doesn't feel like it's accountable to anybody because there are no challengers, right? Right. Power, right, right. So, um, I don't know what's going to happen with that recall, but I know for a fact that, um, the people who want him out are not like upper-middle-class white people crashing their Porsches. It is a working class, you know, a cross-racial alliance of people who live in San Francisco who've seen, you know, the kind of, um, wreckage on the streets. Oh yeah. On Chapo, they were like making fun of the Google worker who, like, you know, is picked up in a bubble and taken over to Google. Do you really think the Google worker is behind the recall of Chesa Boudin? I don't think so. That Google bus just like picks you up from the Mission, takes you to the Valley. You don't need to see what's going on the streets. You don't shop at freaking Walgreens because you get everything delivered by Instacart or Amazon. Who's shopping in San Francisco Walgreens? I think that your point about people in, in the Mission, in Chinatown, it's like, grow up, people. Go look at something and see who's living there and what's really actually affecting. I think that your point about this populist rage, which is kind of like diffuse or like not very well directed, is really salient in terms of the recall because I don't think that San Francisco's crime spike is the result of Chesa Boudin's policies.

You know, like the same way, oh, are you skeptical? Or I don't know. Maybe you have no, I don't know. I'm not a criminologist. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, but he's just, I mean, I'm standing for something. Exactly, exactly. Like, I think that, I think that's a problem, right? The problem is more that he's sort of become an avatar for soft-on-crime policies. And whether his actual record is what produced, you know, the wave in crime, I, I think is a little bit unclear. Um, it's kind of the same way where in New York City, a lot of, you know, conservative law and order types wanted to link bail reform to the crime spike. And bail reform had nothing to do with the crime spike because bail reform, you know, is about just not punishing people for being poor. But, um, but this is, but this is all to say that, you know, I, I think that you're, you're absolutely right about the, the sort of class, um, composition of the people who seem to want to recall him. But at the same time, it just goes back to your point where, uh, I, I don't know that that will solve the crime problem. And that isn't to say that these people are wrong and wanting to, you know, recall him, but it's just to say that it's a mess, as you were saying. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, and the other thing is like, there is a part of me that is saying like, you know, what a crime spree is, it's a class war without any organization. But the problem is, like I said before, it's, if it's inner-city crime, and it's pedestrian, you don't want to, um, you don't want to prosecute it, that's one thing. But, you know, who is being, you know, who's on the front lines for that class war? It's not the Google employees, it's not lawyers, it's not PMC people. It really is working-class people who are living in those neighborhoods, who have to use those shops, who have to walk those streets. And I'm not saying like police should are the solution necessarily, as you said, I mean, look at what happened in Uvalde. I mean, those people, that police force really gave "Blue Lives Matter" a different spin for me. It really was like, you know what? Our lives matter more than the lives of children and teachers. And it just infuriates me. But, um, I was just, there's a layer of hypocrisy generally that is just really hard to live with. And so what kinds of, you know, political organization explosion could come out of it? And I was talking to someone who I guess was a, um, community organizer in San Francisco, and she was saying that, you know, um, um, working-class people aren't necessarily law and order people, that, you know, they just need to be educated and organized. And I was, I was like, "Okay, well, you know, I'm not an ethnographer, I don't know about that." But it was this idea of, um, "I come in and I organize working-class communities." So this goes back to what I was saying before, which was that we're not organized by communities, where we don't have class consciousness. And I, um, this reified notion of the community, though, really serves like the political class very well because you can say, "I served the interests of this community. You're the representative of this community." It serves people like me who can become the spokespeople of my community. But you have these, um, sort of local problems with, you know, San Francisco residents or Orange County residents or Los Angeles residents who share a space, right? And that's like a very tenuous thing. So we decided to call it a community. But, um, I, I really feel like the fragmentation of our social, you know, whole is, um, forcing, you know, the NGOs to talk about communities. And it's this language that really, um, only serves them to get funding. I was like, "Okay, so who are these organizations?" She's like, um, "They're NGOs." And I was like, "Who are their funders?" And she said, "Private foundations." So I was like, "Okay, so you have to speak a language that's good for the private foundations and will keep the money coming in. And you think of the working class community as this, you know, mass that you have to educate." But, you know, I'm, I'm just not buying that. I mean, there is, you know, there's some basic leftist things we can say here. First of all, like, you come in community, Barack Obama was a community organizer. What is that action called? Organizing, right? And she was very pessimistic about unions, too. I was like, "You know, so these people don't have like an interest, they don't have an employment interest." And she's like, "Yeah, because unions are very weak." I was like, "So you can use the sort of residential, um, thing to unite them." She's like, "Yeah, and they just need to understand like they can work with each other and they don't have to have the police." And I was like, "Oh, okay, so you're educating people who live in a working-class neighborhood that they can rely on each other and not the police." And it just seems like such a top-down thing. Like, there's no, um, I was like, "You know what? I have, I come from the old left tradition where, um, your first solidarity only exists in the workplace. And then second, like, as an, as an outsider or an organizer, like, first, what you need to do is find out what the needs of working-class people are. You learn from them, you don't organize them." And, um, it's, it's so monolithic now. It's like, me questioning this is not gonna do anything because they are getting their paychecks cut by the private foundations. The private foundations fund the NGOs. And, um, our, you know, the University of California is like basically, I always say this, but everyone's like, "Okay, whatever," but it's like an ancillary arm of the Democratic Party. When does that happen, you know? Should this really be it? Like, I didn't want it to be an arm of the Republican Party, right? But we basically, if the Democrats come up with something, we jump too. And, um, what was happening earlier when Schwarzenegger won that recall was that he was actually very friendly to the UC, but from this like old school, like liberal Republican point of view. And now that there really isn't a Republican challenger, it's like everything that the Democratic Party wants in terms, but it's really curated minority profile status, that's what we deliver. And it's a very, the university now is very, where I teach, most of the UCs now are very medical school-driven and computer engineering-driven. They're two profit centers because we have an aging population, and so we want to do stem cell research to keep these, you know, old people alive so they can live forever. Um, so, and then we have, you know, the tech, the tech center, um, education where we are training, you know, good little worker bees to work in Silicon Valley, Silicon Beach, um, and whatever, like Silicon Orange thing we have here. So, so that's basically what we do in terms of servicing the, the, um, the purposes of California industry. And it all seems like work, incredibly smoothly. And, um, our chancellor is always like sending out these like consolatory emails because you've had so many horrible things happen recently. And I'm like, you know what? STFU. This is not really your job to either consult us or take a position on any of these things. Um, but he's got a module, you know, called, um, that he's funded called "Confronting Extremism." It's a series of webinars that we're supposed to listen and watch, and then, um, we can confront extremism. And, you know, the thing is, they're centrists, so they could very literally say, you know, leftists are extremists, true, and of the far right is extremist. But I'm just like, after all of these atrocities, he's telling us that we should teach this in our classes and watch this. This is a violation, number one, of academic freedom. And this is him taking his bully pulpit and using it for a little bit of virtue hoarding and signaling, just like, "No, you don't tell me what to teach, and you don't get to appear to be a good guy here." But nobody says anything because there's no room for dissent, you know? There's no, um, contest.

Well, I mean, on the subject of kind of like breaking the stronghold of the, you know, Democrat centrist Democratic elite, something you, to go back to something you had mentioned earlier, Bernie Sanders won the California primary on Super Tuesday. I know it was, you know, a while ago. I'm always talking about it as well because I think it was pretty incredible. And I'm wondering if you think it was that was a fluke, or if that provides some sort of like hopeful or optimistic blueprint for, you know, any kind of left organizing in California?

I, I feel like, you know, so we're sifting through the ruins of that election still. I, I want to say that he won like 65% of the vote, but it might be wrong. I don't have the number. It was significant, specifically among Latino and Asian-American voters. But so, and I was talking about that too much. No, I know. And I was on a lot of those rallies. I think a lot of those young, um, voters there were first-time voters. They voted when things didn't happen. They just turned away from politics. Yeah. And I, and I just don't think that there's any way of like, um, well, like how do you, we need to galvanize them again? Maybe in a, Oh, 36%. I'm sorry. Oh, sorry. I just reversed it. And it's like, okay, I might just say 60, but okay, 36. And there were, and everyone was still, you know, running then, so there were a lot of people. So actually, that's really depressing. But, um, because I had such an inflated number in my mind. But, um, I think it was a galvanizing moment, and then, you know, now we're like, we're sifting through the ashes of that. And I think a lot of like, young voters who voted for him, they're totally disillusioned, and they turn away from both parties, and they've got sort of gone back to kind of political passivity. So you have like PMC concern trolls again taking over the DNC and just like doing whatever they will with their, you know, um, political power that they have in the state. They don't even want to admit they have political power. They are the freaking tyrants of our state. Um, I can't tell. Like, George Floyd protests, we know were really violent. Day one, day two, there was really confrontation. There were confrontations all over LA. Day three, I went down to LA City Hall, and they had gotten someone at the bullhorn in front of thousands of people going, "Protest and vote. Protest and vote." And I was like, "Oh my god, like, how quickly did this happen? 72 hours, and it's been completely absorbed by, um, electoral politics." So, I, I don't know what to do about this. And I'm like, I feel like there was all this energy, but I don't, but I feel like the party knows that those people don't remain committed to voting, so they don't need to cater to younger people, to, um, younger people of all races who came out to vote in California. So, um, there's a lot of economic, um, insecurity. And, you know, the California ideology is really powerful, right? I'm looking at all these crazy people on my ballot who are running for president. I mean, the president, governor, you know, because we have the jungle primaries, right? And like half of them are called like small business owners, entrepreneurs, entrepreneur, okay, small business owner, small business owner, owner of a restaurant, entrepreneur. And there's still like, oh, there's someone, Pamela Elizondo of the Green Party is a marijuana plastic. Oh yeah, very California, right? And then like, there's, so there's still that idea that, um, if you just hustle here, and you just hustle a lot, you can still make your, make your way in the world, even, even though housing is so expensive. You know what, Jen? I'm actually, like, the, the cheapest places to live for young people, I know you're in New Mexico. I think it's a purple state. It's like, I want to tell you and people like, go live, go to a college town in a red state because it's hopeless here. Yeah, it's insane unless you have inherited wealth and somebody's gonna help.

Well, I will say, so something that I saw today, which does seem like a good sign, is I saw that a social housing bill passed in California's assembly. So this is a bill to design kind of like European-style, like mixed-income, mixed-use housing, rather than, you know, just the like usual, like stigmatized, like public housing in a neighborhood that, like, no one wants to live in. Huge, in huge to scale. Yeah, yeah. So, but again, now that it's passed the assembly, it's going to be in the Senate. So you tell me, what does that mean for us?

I don't know what that means, you know, because so many things, so many progressive things get passed, and then they kind of die. Yeah. And then there's like this internicine fighting. So, you know, here's the thing is like, actually, when you just feel really powerless living in this deep blue state, which I guess you described it as, and there's this kind of dislocated feeling of, um, not really having like oppositionality. Yeah, because there is no organized left. I mean, I'm sorry, and I'm not supposed to criticize them because like, uh, is this like punching down? I have no idea. But I had really high hopes for the DSA, and there are some progressive, um, candidates, but not, no one like, um, no one even like Cisneros in, um, in, uh, Texas, you know? Um, there are some, there are some younger people who are coming up and, you know, to challenge Democratic incumbents. But here's the thing is like, the incumbency thing is so powerful that that's why you feel really powerless because at least in like certain districts, like AOC's district, or, you know, I was really hoping in Texas as well that there would be a progressive, um, challenge to a Democratic incumbent. But one thing about living in a place where the Democratic Party is so strong and so corrupt is that you have to deal with incumbency. And to really mount a, um, candidacy from the left means you're not adhering to Democratic Party discipline. I can't talk about this now because this is, you know, sort of confidential, and I won't, um, um, I don't know if you want me to talk about this right now, but when a Bernie crowd elected official is just being attacked right now from, um, the Democratic Party side, one for her willingness to work with Republicans and her, um, independence with regard to Democratic Party orthodoxy, and so they're the ones who are taking us her down. Like, that's what's happening in California, which is like a very bad sign for how the Democratic Party in power deals with its left flank, which is always to suppress and repress any any notion of dissent with regard to party, party lines. And, and that's, that's the power of the party.

I always think like, I'm kind of joking, but I also, I was thinking like, what if we had a, um, Latino or Asian-American, um, candidate who could run on a socialist slate that was also, um, anti-affirmative action in California?

Are you saying you're throwing your hat in?

No, I'm not throwing my hat in the ring, but I'm just thinking like, what kinds of, you know, new political formations do we have to create here to produce like that kind of, um, a popular or a wellspring of dissent with regard to these things that I'm describing that, you know, when I'm not a depressive person, Jen, but when I talk to you about this, I'm just like, "Oh my god, it's just so heft up here." I mean, there's so many Black Lives Matter signs up. Have they not read the articles about BLM? Like, shouldn't you be ashamed? Like, maybe just take them out of your yard because you finance pastries, colors, house, the power of that, um, orthodoxy around this very groomed, manicured, you know, neoliberal, late capital multiculturalism just really serves people well here. And, and yet, so, and yet, right, I'm comfortable here because, um, being Asian American is very normalized.

Right. All right. Well, so maybe one final question for you to kind of like cap all of this off. Who is the very worst Democratic politician in California?

Nancy Pelosi. [Laughter] And I was like, maybe she'll say Newsom. Oh, no. Um, may, uh, I, I just think she's so awful. But then I was thinking, like, how about Dianne Feinstein? But she's just like, really old and won't take. But she's like the RBG of, um, California politics right now, and she's just occupying that place. Um, her husband, though, was truly evil. Richard Blum was a regent of the University of California through the financial crisis. As he was a regent of the UC system, defunding the UC system during that crisis, he was investing in for-profit universities. Like, why wasn't that a conflict of interest? Why wasn't he booted out? And, you know, what really is gets me is he, before he passed away, funded in almost every UC campus the Richard Blum Center for the Study of Poverty. Oh, study of poverty. Well, I mean, this is like this huge hedge fund guy who actively promoted, um, universities that defrauded working-class people during and after the financial crisis. And, [Music] he's like, and everyone's like, "Oh yeah, we'll take his millions. We'll take his billions." And, you know, do, and do what we want, do what he wants us to do. I feel like we're there. We're just, um, there's very little like, um, political room for, um, opposition because it just seems like we, we all flow where, where the money goes. And that's what the deal, that's what the Democratic Party does. And, um, why do I feel like there's no hope on the local level? Because you hate, you hate the "small is beautiful." You know, I, I guess, I guess I used to, you know, how people were like, um, you know, "Think locally, act locally." Well, the local thing in California is about this diffuse like hegemony of like, um, gig worker, um, Silicon Valley trampolism. So that is our local culture being exported. This model of inequality, you know, exported everywhere. This model of like, technocratic multiculturalism plus libertarianism, like really scary forms of libertarianism, just make it, just like make us put us in this political impasse. And I don't know, I, uh, I wish I had more optimism about a way out with regard to the California Democratic Party, but I really don't. Um, maybe there is like a union power that would come up and, you know, challenge and, um, challenge them. It would have to be, you know, the, it would have to be an alliance of unions because the Democrats are just so well-funded and so powerful.

Well, I was going to say, my understanding was that the nurses' union was very instrumental in trying to push the single-payer bill forward. National Nurses Union. They were incredible. They were incredible. But of course, as we were saying earlier, you know, among other interests, I remember reading that Gavin Newsom, who had initially signaled support for the bill, just kind of turned his back on it or let it wither. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, this is this, this is the crazy thing about this state is that materially speaking, we all know that single-payer would do more for African-American health and well-being and working class, of working-class health and well-being of all races, right? But it's one thing we can't have. We can have, um, every diversity, equity, and inclusion initiative, but we can't have single-payer, right? I mean, this would be the thing that would make a difference for people of color in this state of every single skin color, gender, sexuality, persuasion, um, but it's one thing we can't have. I think New York is closer to it than we are.

Oh, really? I don't know. I think so. Yeah, yeah. I mean, as someone who's been living in both states with different kinds of coverage, I think New York has more progressive healthcare coverage as, um, policy for even for insurance companies. And so all the innovation that we have in California has just created like a more austere, more surveilled form of, um, of public goods. Well, like austerity and public goods, surveillance of public goods. And what is going to happen to that $97 billion surplus? They say they want to keep it for a rainy day because there's a recession coming up. But, what, how will it be used? I mean, you know, Schoenberger, who is a critic of Newsom, just says that we just keep throwing money at the homeless problem, nothing goes away, nothing's done. And, will, will high-speed rail be more, work out better because of that surplus? I don't, there isn't, there isn't a holistic vision or an idea of like anything that we're, I'm headed towards. The environmental movement here is very fragmented. It's always about like saving one area or saving another area. And I, and you know, they just killed a desalination plant in Huntington Beach, and it was like, really rah-rah environmentalism. What's going to happen when the water runs out? It's like, any big project is going to be opposed by various interests. So we can just have like private desalination, desalination, um, projects. I don't know. At the same time, we continue to have very, very good weather.

Right. Yeah. I was, I was going to say, last note is that I saw an article in the New York Times literally today that was something like, "Hear Why Californians Love California," and then it was like a bunch of quotes from like a bunch of different people about how they love the good weather. So, to make a long story short, politically very regressive, although, um, apparently liberal. We've, we are the pioneers of late capitalist, um, diversity initiatives, Catherine says. So Dylan Riley appears to agree. Catherine again is the author of *Virtue Hoarders* and a professor at UC Irvine, obviously, longtime California resident. Catherine, always good to see you. We will have you back whenever there are new developments in California politics, for the better or for the worse.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Okay. Thanks so much. Thanks, Catherine. Thank you.

If you like this video from The Jacobin Show, please hit like and subscribe and share with your friends. Thanks. [Music]