7thriv

There are four Democrats who are widely touted as possible nominees for the CA governor's race: Dianne Feinstein, Jerry Brown, Gavin Newsome, and LA mayor Antonio Villiaraigosa. Of these four, Villaraigosa would easily be the most disastrous. Although seen as a harbinger of youth and progressive values, he is actually the most traditional Democrat of the four; a class warrior who finds his power base both within the state's ghettos and in its union halls. A Villaraigosa administration would be one of gold-plated pension benefits for 45 year-olds, and driver's licenses for illegals. Plus, he has the whiff of John Edwards about him. What is the over-under on the odds that there is a Villaraigosa love child out there somewhere?

Still, Villaraigosa is considered a strong candidate because he is mayor of LA. But, if this piece in LA Magazine (illustrated with a picture of the Mayor with the word "FAILURE" emblazoned across his waist) is any indication, his constituents aren't too thrilled with him either: Dear Mr. Mayor

We are bitter because you promised us so much. You were not only our first Latino mayor in 137 years but arguably the most charismatic leader in memory to step onto L.A.’s bland political stage. You had charm, poise, and vigor, and you spoke in cadences that reconciled reason and compassion.

Your life story alone was cause for celebration. Here was no high-powered man of business who traced his father’s footsteps, like Richard Riordan, or scion of a beloved county supervisor, like James Hahn. As a boy, you endured Eastside poverty and a drunken, violent father who abandoned the family. Dropping out of high school, you sank into hurt and hostility. A tattoo on your arm warned that you were “born to raise hell.” In your rise from those beginnings to the mayor’s office, you bulldozed long-held prejudices about what any of us could or deserved to achieve. You spanned the city’s divides of race, class, and geography. You owed your mayoral victory as much to the home owners of Encino and the African American congregations of Crenshaw as to the laborers of Boyle Heights and the Prius drivers of Westwood. Under your reign, our city might cohere.

What an agenda you rolled out for us. Your progressive platform, if enacted, would cleanse the city of its toxins: street crime and failing schools, the evaporation of affordable housing and the carcinogens in our skies. You made your share of election-year boasts—a thousand new cops! a million new trees!—but we understood these to be ornaments hung upon a grand civic vision.

It goes on like this for pages. Personally, a high school drop out with a tatoo would have been my last choice for mayor, but that's probably just my bad attitude.

Among other things, Villaraigosa is accused of failing to "clean-up" the environment around the Port of LA, failing to provide "affordable housing," failing to save LA's failing schools, failed to alleviate the city's gang problem. etc. How Villaraigosa should be expected to take care of all of this in four short years is unclear (he was busy having a torrid affair with a Telemundo reporter, after all).

Really, the problem is not that Villaraigosa "failed." It's that he made the classic mistake of all progressive politicians: he overpromised on issues that were either intractable or beyond his control. Villaraigosa cannot deliver "affordable housing" at the stroke of a pen. He wouldn't have been able to clean up the schools without taking on his allies in the teachers union (something that is true of all Dems). He can't do much about the gang problem because the one way of dealing with criminals - busting heads and making arrests - is the one thing that the sort of people who love voting for handsome progressive mayors will not abide.

I have little sympathy for Villaraigosa. CA has enough glib, platitudunous, progressives promising every imaginable entitlement with no regard for their cost, necessity, or effectiveness. But, his "betrayed" voters also display the sort of pathology that give rise to the Villaraigosas of the world: credulously believing the outsize promises of a glib politician when his own voters are often the source of these inttractable problems.