Midway through this summer, a high-quality poll found that Democrats in California were overwhelmingly in favor of the upcoming ballot measure for a one-time 5% tax on billionaire wealth.
The ratio was more than 4 to 1. But the state’s most powerful Democrats – including the governor Gavin Newsom, his near-certain successor Xavier Becerra and the Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass – have lined up with Silicon Valley billionaires who’ve raised upward of $340m to defeat the initiative.
So what.
So it’s not exactly democratic, now, is it? And yet he frequently harps on about his “mandate”.
Don’t get me wrong I like the guy and don’t know of anyone better, but democracy is paramount to me.
It’s shady as fuck that Starmer stepped down for seemingly no reason in particular, and then Burnham takes over with no democratic vote - especially when two leaders ago Labour had Corbyn, who had overwhelming support from the party base but almost no support at all from wealthy elites. With Burnham, the party base has explicitly been denied their say. It doesn’t pass the sniff test and reeks of backroom deals.