Is it possible that the San Fran Democrat Party is more reasonable than the national Party, AOC, Pelosi or Elizabeth Warren? San Fran is a dead city. But they did Recall the DA, School Board and elected a moderate (socialist) as Mayor.
“Leaders of the local party argue the famously liberal city has, in recent years, exported one bad political idea after another, leading Democrats astray and ceding power in Washington to Donald Trump and the GOP. They cite “defund the police,” symbolic resolutions about foreign conflicts like the war in Gaza and removing the names of U.S. presidents from school buildings, among other causes they cast as damaging to the party’s brand.
It’s an astonishing pivot for the party in a longtime bastion of progressivism, after moderate Democratic activists made deep inroads in the city last year. Now they are attempting to lead a national conversation around what it takes for Democrats to win — by rejecting what they deride as performative politics and virtue signaling and embracing pragmatism and quality-of-life issues.”
I believe, if they are “successful”, the national Democrat Party will split between Progressives and socialists. The 2028 election could be the last for the Democrat Party as we know it.
‘There’s a reckoning to be had’: San Francisco Dems move to push the national party to the center.
Local party leaders are advancing an ideology they call “new pragmatism.”
By Dustin Gardiner, Politico, 4/21/25 https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/21/san-francisco-democrats-push-to-center-00299814
SAN FRANCISCO — Democrats in San Francisco — who for decades pushed their party down an increasingly progressive path — are now advocating a dramatic course correction to the middle over fears of suffering another national wipeout.
Leaders of the local party argue the famously liberal city has, in recent years, exported one bad political idea after another, leading Democrats astray and ceding power in Washington to Donald Trump and the GOP. They cite “defund the police,” symbolic resolutions about foreign conflicts like the war in Gaza and removing the names of U.S. presidents from school buildings, among other causes they cast as damaging to the party’s brand.
It’s an astonishing pivot for the party in a longtime bastion of progressivism, after moderate Democratic activists made deep inroads in the city last year. Now they are attempting to lead a national conversation around what it takes for Democrats to win — by rejecting what they deride as performative politics and virtue signaling and embracing pragmatism and quality-of-life issues.
Their previously unreported plans, shared first in conversations with POLITICO, call for fully staffing police departments, erasing local regulations that drive up the cost of building new housing and focusing public schools on closing learning gaps for Black and Hispanic students in math and reading. They are also calling for imposing potential age limits on elected officials, a cause of some activists in both the center and left wings of the party.
“There’s a reckoning to be had — we need to stop pretending like everything is OK,” said San Francisco Democratic Party Chair Nancy Tung, who is leading the effort. “Part of it is that we see a lack of leadership on the national level.”
Their proposed solution is an ideology they call “new pragmatism”: a focus on issues they say dominate the daily lives of ordinary people, such as crime and housing costs, and that they argue deep-blue cities must address to shake the pervasive perception that progressive cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago and New York aren’t governed efficiently.
Tung said the goal is to force Democratic Party leaders to focus on issues that could win back voters who shifted toward Trump in 2024, including union members, immigrant communities and younger voters — blocs that have traditionally been strong pillars of the Democratic coalition.
The effort comes as Democrats nationally are in the political wilderness and struggling to chart a path back to power after devastating losses across the country in 2024, including the presidency. The shift to the center is part of a wave of efforts, including the ascendant Abundance movement popularized by the journalists Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, that aim to reorient the left to focus on policy outcomes, rather than symbolism.
But party activists in San Francisco contend the city is uniquely primed to help Democrats undo the damage wrought by ultra-liberal politics. They point to the Bay Area and California’s long tradition of birthing modern movements that have spread nationally and redefined national politics, including activism around gay rights and the environment.
San Francisco, which nurtured the early careers of Nancy Pelosi, Kamala Harris and Gavin Newsom, has also pivoted dramatically to the center in recent years. Last fall, voters elected Mayor Daniel Lurie, a moderate and an heir to the Levi Strauss blue jeans fortune with little expertise in elected politics, and moderates took control of the Board of Supervisors and the county Democratic Party.
San Francisco also passed ballot measures to require drug screening for welfare recipients and expand police surveillance, two years after they recalled progressive former District Attorney Chesa Boudin and three progressive school board members.
“We do tend to be a model for the rest of the country — sometimes for better, sometimes for worse,” said Eric Kingsbury, a veteran consultant and party official involved in the San Francisco effort.
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Their new vision is encompassed in a set of five resolutions proposed by moderate members of the San Francisco Democratic Party County Central Committee. Moderates hold a supermajority on the body, which is expected to approve the resolutions at its meeting Wednesday.
From there, they plan to propose the resolutions at the California Democratic Party’s annual convention in late May — where parts of the package are likely to face fervent opposition from the state panel’s progressive members.
The resolution backing age limits on public officeholders at the state and local levels is a political lightning rod. Kingsbury said it’s a response to prominent officials who’ve suffered from obvious age-related declines in office, naming former President Joe Biden, the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, herself a former San Francisco mayor, who died in 2023, at age 90.
The fate of constitutional rights and U.S. democracy “should really not depend on the health and mental acuity of a handful of octogenarians,” Kingsbury said.
And then there’s the specter of Pelosi, 85, the former House speaker who still represents San Francisco in Congress and hasn’t said whether she plans to run for another term in 2026. Pelosi’s campaign declined to comment, noting the resolution only speaks to a retirement cap for state and local officials.
Kingsbury insisted the proposal “is absolutely not about Nancy Pelosi.” The resolution doesn’t suggest a specific age cap, but urges Democrats to explore “the feasibility, legality, and public benefits of establishing a mandatory retirement age” for elected and appointed public officials. But Kingsbury said he hopes the declaration, if adopted here, could push national Democrats to also consider age limits.
“You see her at events constantly. She is still very, very sharp,” Kingsbury said of Pelosi. “She is the exception above everyone else.
