So Far Left He’s Ready To Leave The City Behind

I’m talking about Matt Gonzalez. I’ve been following his career and it has basically been a trajectory to the left. Hard left. Which is disappointing. I mean, here’s a guy who is intelligent, talented, skilled, determined, and driven. He had it all going for him. But he veered too far to the left. It sort of took my breath away when he announced he was switching to the Green party but I hoped he would come to his senses and return to the Democrats. When it became apparent he wasn’t going to change his mind, I sucked it up and continued to support him. But the last couple of years have been difficult.

As he became more aware of how the system runs, and more disillusioned with it, he moved more and more to the left. At the end of his tenure as supervisor, he moved about as far left as you can go by moving back into the private sector and opening a Green law firm with the very public intention of being a thorn in the side of city government. Thumbing your nose at the establishment is not the way you win future votes. As far as I’m concerned this spoils any future political race he might have in mind. I know, I know, Matt galvanized a whole group of voters when he ran for Mayor. My prediction? That was the first political race in which many of them voted, and it will probably be the last. They’ve moved onto other things. That leaves the rest of us.

San Francisco may consider itself quite liberal but the reality is, it isn’t that liberal. Pick a bridge and cross it and the state becomes even more conservative. We like our representatives to work within the system for change. Although it’s a slow process, it works. Standing on street corners shrieking like Medea Benjamin, having pissing matches between members of the school board and the school superintendent, and suing the city just for the hell of it, will send any responsible voter running in the opposite direction.

San Francisco has a lot of problems: a myriad of housing issues, the teetering school system, labor problems, and a law enforcement that’s more like the Keystone Cops are just a few examples. At the state level, we can’t find a governor who can garner any control and we have a dysfunctional legislature. At the national level? I think the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina spells out our national leadership. We need someone like the Matt I described above, but he needs to be within the system, not on the fringes and so far left no one pays attention. Come back, Matt.