Too liberal for California?
Post Reports
The Washington Post
4.4 • 5.1K Ratings
🗓️ 6 June 2022
⏱️ 25 minutes
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Summary
Today on “Post Reports,” we take a hard look at California’s strange election season to see how Democrats across the country are testing the viability of their beliefs – and whether some may be losing patience with leftward ideas.
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Tomorrow is primary day in the Golden State. And in California’s two largest cities, things are looking pretty…odd.
In San Francisco, there’s a campaign to remove a district attorney and “progressive prosecutor,” who was voted in a couple of years ago. Then, in Los Angeles, one of the front-runners of the Democratic mayoral primary is a guy whom some voters have described as a secret Republican.
We take stock of the primary election in California and what it says about the future of leftward politics with correspondent Scott Wilson.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Tomorrow is primary day in California. |
| 0:06.0 | And in two of the state's biggest cities, things are looking weird. |
| 0:12.8 | Today a new poll was released by our media partners at the San Francisco Standard showing |
| 0:16.9 | that the district attorney will have an uphill fight to keep his job. |
| 0:21.1 | In San Francisco, they're trying to get rid of the district attorney that they just voted |
| 0:25.1 | in a couple years ago. He's the city's quote, progressive prosecutor. Then in Los Angeles, |
| 0:31.5 | we have a bunch of issues in the city like crime and homelessness and corruption in city |
| 0:36.3 | hall that need to be fixed. And I believe I have the skill set to fix them. |
| 0:41.0 | They're voting for a Democratic candidate for mayor. And one of the front runners is a |
| 0:45.1 | guy who some voters have described as a secret Republican. |
| 0:49.1 | Obviously this is an extremely blue state. Democrats really hold every office across |
| 0:53.8 | much of the state. Scott Wilson is a senior national correspondent for the post based in |
| 0:59.0 | California. The way California's two most influential cities are thinking about the |
| 1:06.0 | condition of those cities. Both are very troubled places, very angry electorates, sort of |
| 1:12.8 | taking their anger out on Democratic leadership. Both of these really capture how Democrats |
| 1:18.7 | are trying to wrestle with big social problems and stay true to their values of compassion for |
| 1:25.8 | homeless, do no harm to people addicted to drugs. And yet are those problems getting |
| 1:32.1 | solved? |
| 1:35.3 | And as Californians await to hear election results on Tuesday night, Scott has been |
| 1:39.5 | thinking a lot about this question. Are there limits to liberal politics, even in one |
| 1:44.8 | of the most liberal states in the country? |
| 1:52.3 | From the newsroom of the Washington Post, this is Post Reports. I'm Martin Powers. It's |
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