SF Dems Flex In Hopes Of Swinging State's Primary

The following piece is published on Pop and Politics as well as HuffPost's OffTheBus.

Twenty-four years ago, San Francisco hosted the Democratic National Convention. At the GOP's gathering that same year, Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick used the city's leftist leanings to coin one of the most damning political epithets in history: "San Francisco Democrats." Shortly thereafter Walter Mondale got creamed by Ronald Reagan, and so began nearly a quarter century of national irrelevance for the Bay Area.

But that long trip through the wilderness appears to be over. In 2006, Nancy Pelosi, a real live "San Francisco Democrat," became Madame Speaker. And since California moved its primary up to Super Tuesday, we "America Haters" by the Golden Gate will actually have a say in who moves on to the general election this fall. That might scare the rest of the country, schooled as it is in Jeane Kirkpatrick's famous meme about us. But in spite of the city's reputation, San Francisco politics aren't as out there as you might think. And the shifting tectonic plates of our local political landscape might just presage a political earthquake on the national scene.

Keep reading.

Comments

[AnotherHuddy]

I will not be a San Francisco Liberal in the primary, but I will be in the general. And proud of it.
~s~

[altohone]

Newsom and Clinton are peas in a pod alright.

Such aspirations for a young man with flowers (too much product) in his hair.

[Pdubya]

ron paul got second to dennis kucinich in sanfran straw poll later last year.

[ReasonIsMyReligion]

If SF and California REALLY wanted to show some REAL cajones, vote OUT Pelosi in 2008.

By not impeaching Bush and Cheney, she has been complicit in them pissing on the Constitution.