when you talked about how K Street will never embrace them, unless they pull a Kirsten Cinema

or a Nancy Pelosi, right? Pelosi went to Congress 30 years ago backing the policy that she now

won't even allow members of Congress to vote on or, you know, wouldn't when she was the speaker.

And this pattern of co-optation that we observed from the Congressional Black Caucus to the

contemporary Progressive Caucus, from Pelosi to cinema to perhaps another generation that's learning

the allure of celebrity as an alternative to the visionary governments that we've seen from

some of our other colleagues on the panel right now, in particular.

And this other theme that Imani raised about how, and this also reminds me of the

letter from Birmingham jail, you know, King says that we should expect the intransigence of our

enemies. There's not a lot you can do to change the views of people who are committed to whatever

model of hatred or militarism or capitalism or what have you that we confront. But it is the

allies, the so-called allies, the people who claim

to get it, who, whether because it's selling out for their career or selling out for, you know,

some perceived political opportunity. I'm the only candidate in San Francisco to have ever stood in

November supporting universal health care in the Green New Deal. And I had to fight the opposition

of every group in the city that claimed to be left. And the ones that were smearing me called themselves

socialist. You know, I've seen not just the deference of the left to the centrist establishment,

but it's wholesale co-optation and subversion. That pattern, I think, is part of this dynamic. At the

end of the day, I think what it just comes down to is, you know, are we willing to put our

principles before our opportunities? And you can test and see who's real by who's done that,

right? You know, I see Shama having achieved a stellar success that paved the way for a national debate long overdue, and to leave elected office to help coordinate a movement of people outside the institutional sphere to call out its illegitimacy, to help not just destabilize the establishment, but hopefully grow something new in the shell of the old.

That's leadership, it seems to me, of the sort that we're not seeing from the people who institutionally have that mantle.

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