Press: San Francisco Democrats clean house

On any list of America’s favorite cities, San Francisco ranks at or near the top. It’s definitely at the top of my list. Because it’s where I had my first job, first got involved in politics, met and married my wife, and where we had our first son. I love it because it’s so beautiful and because it’s the most liberal big city in the country. 

But even San Francisco’s liberal politics can sometimes go too far. As it did last year, when the San Francisco School Board voted to change the names of 44 public schools — more than one-third of the city’s total — because they were named after people who, no matter how much they’d accomplished, the board now considered politically unacceptable because of some long-ago association with racism, sexism, or other injustice. 

We’re not talking Confederate leaders like Robert E. Lee, segregationists like George Wallace, crooked politicians like Richard Nixon, or mass murderers like Charles Manson. Oh, no. Those the over-woke school board voted to dump are among the most revered of all Americans, including George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, John Muir, and California Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.).  

Why? Jefferson and Washington, because they were slave owners (no matter that Washington freed his slaves on his death). Lincoln, despite being the Great Emancipator, because he didn’t do enough for native Americans. John Muir, even though he founded the Sierra Club and launched the environmental movement, because he once made derogatory comments about indigenous peoples. Sen. Feinstein, because as mayor of San Francisco in 1984, she allowed a Confederate flag, torn down as part of a historical flag exhibit, to be replaced with another one. 

No doubt, this amounted to the dumbest move made by any public official since Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) named Sarah Palin as his running mate. And the voters of San Francisco agree. Last week, over 70 percent of San Franciscans voted to oust three members of the school board who had supported the renaming project. 

But here’s where the media got it wrong — again. Immediately, almost every cable channel and newspaper trumpeted the same message: The San Francisco vote proves how out of touch the Democratic Party is from average voters and therefore how certain they are to get massacred in the midterm elections.  

Wrong, wrong, wrong! They totally miss the point. The San Francisco vote, in fact, proves just the opposite: that the establishment Democratic Party is actually so in touch with average voters that whenever some wackos try to take it to ridiculous extremes, the party doesn’t hesitate to clean house.  

Where are those three idiot school board members in San Francisco? Out of a job! Rejected largely by Democratic voters in an overwhelmingly Democratic city. Where’s the campaign to “defund the police” in Minneapolis? Dead! Rejected last November by largely Democratic voters in another Democratic-majority city. Or where’s that purported take-over of New York politics by radical lefties? Gone! Squashed by the election of centrist Eric Adams and endorsement of moderate Gov. Kathy Hochul for reelection by the state Democratic Party. 

Meanwhile, dare we ask? Where are the nut jobs in the Republican Party? 

Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), and Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) are still in Congress. Like a crazy uncle, Donald Trump still’s in Mar-a-Lago, insisting he won the last election. Meanwhile, Wisconsin Republicans are still trying to negate their electoral votes and re-install Trump in the White House. 

And that’s the true message of the San Francisco vote: One party rejects its most extreme elements; the other party coddles theirs.  

Press is host of “The Bill Press Pod.” He is author of “From the Left: A Life in the Crossfire.”