By JOHN HARLOW | Editor-in-Chief
They were bowed, bloodied and, yes, shockingly defeated in a presidential election that many on the Left are still finding tough to stomach.
And yet, as Washington prepares to welcome the Republican administration, liberals in the Palisades, from Democratic Party leaders to emerging groups with their own agendas, are starting to gather their forces.
For them, Donald Trump may be the most powerful recruitment tool in a generation.
The Pacific Palisades Democratic Club is preparing to take the first step back toward electability with a big bang of new faces and fresh approaches at its first gathering of the post-Clintonian era on Sunday, Jan. 22.
The club has gathered together an array of political “big beasts,” including Eric Garcetti, mayor of Los Angeles, to talk and listen at the Pacific Palisades Woman’s Club for two-and-a-half hours on that Sunday afternoon.
Palisadian representatives, such U.S. Congressman Ted Lieu, new assistant whip for the state party, State Senator Ben Allen, State Assemblymember Richard Bloom and LA City Councilmember Mike Bonin, will give their theories about how their well-organized machine could win 2.5 million more votes than a businessman/television personality and still end up in the political wilderness.
They may blame the media, Trump’s divisive personality or the Russians.
But they can also expect to be questioned about why they failed to sell a more inclusive economic policy that could have convinced millions of voters they were on their side.
And how they are going to prevent their own party from shrinking into a regional power, perhaps, as Governor Jerry Brown jokingly suggested, behind our own state wall.
The party establishment will also face pressure from activists in 80 Californian districts who were elected as Assembly District Delegates, or state party advisors, on Saturday, Jan. 7
There were two groups representing, simplistically, the Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton wings of the party—more formally known as the Progressive and Grassroots slates.
Erika Feresten, a Pacific Palisades Democratic Club board member, and Marcy Winograd, a former board member who ran for Congress in 2010 and got 41 percent of the Democratic vote, won as ADDs from the Progressive slate. They got 423 and 413 votes respectively.
And the unstoppable energy of Maryam Zar, chair of the Pacific Palisades Community Council, paid off: she attracted 342 votes on the Grassroots slate.
Officials were amazed by the turnout at the election held at Santa Monica Public Library; More than 1,000 registered Democrats queued around the block to register their ballots.
Yet the party may only represent one tactical approach and shade of liberal thinking in the Palisades, which voted 75 percent in favor of Clinton.
Other voices are emerging, such as “Indivisible”—a new group being promoted by Palisadian activist Michael Kafka, a distant relative of the famous writer.
Representatives from Indivisible said the group wants to replicate Tea Party tactics by “stiffening the spines” of national party leaders against Trump.
There are also more low-key groups, including Code Blue, where Palisadian members are crunching “big data” to block Republican attempts to redraw electoral boundaries to their own advantage inside and beyond California.
Many local liberals are currently in a state of disbelief, as indeed are some Palisadian Republicans, but these are the first signs of a Democrat spring.
It will begin taking shape at the Pacific Palisades Woman’s Club on Sunday, Jan. 22.
This page is available to subscribers. Click here to sign in or get access.
