You folks probably know my inherent dislike and distrust of billionaires. How I'm sick of CEOs who think they can run a public office because they ran a private company before. I have specifically said, on this board, that Steyer needs to open his wallet and support someone who has worked in the public sector rather than running for office himself.
Then I went to the candidates' sites and looked at what they've put down on issues … and holy cow. Steyer sounds more on the progressive side than either of the candidates … and I have a pre-wired affection for Katie Porter based on her performance in the Congress.
Beccera and Porter *boyth* sound like garden variety centrist Democrats who kinda sorta acknowledge that there is a problem somewhere and have their hearts in an actual solution that sounds nice, but seem to have zero appetite to actually make any bold moves. They both sound like politicians running against Trump. In California. They're mostly like "such and such is a big problem. Trump. I will fight to make the problem go away." A lot of classic political milquetoast platitudes -- and I must say that's especially disappointing coming from Porter. I feel like taking up a red pen, writing down "yeah but what is *your* proposal?" and "you need to give me something more than 'Trump this' and Trump that'" and give her an incomplete.
Believe it or not, and boy, I can't believe I'm saying this, I was much much more impressed by Steyer's take on the issues. There are some issues that he's kinda just phoning it in, but there are other issues like energy, ICE, housing, etc where it looks like he has spent some time thinking through the issues and he seems to have more to offer than Ezra Klein's Abundance theory.
He's the only one who even puts ICE and AI on the agenda and actually talks about them.
I dunno man. I need to do some soul searching and probably think about how much one can actually trust a billionaire and whether it is possible for a person to push back against the rewiring that high levels of wealth seems to do to people's brains to turn them into utter a$$holes.
This is going to be a tough one for me.