Where I'm Coming From

I've always been a Democrat. My father was a Democrat, my mother is a Democrat, my brother's a Democrat. Several years ago--it was the mid-80s, when Democrats were maybe even a little more anxious than they are now--I asked myself why I was a Democrat.

The answer was that I believe in equality--not equal incomes, but equal respect. As a recent president said:

The president who said that, unfortunately for Democrats, was Ronald Reagan. What Reagan didn't admit--and as a Republican, couldn't admit--was that in order to achieve this American type of equality, we need an active and effective government. That's always been true, but it's especially true these days, when the income gap generated in our economy seems to be growing relentlessly, due to forces over which we have at best partial control.

We don't need government to equalize or rearrange income. We need government to insure that disparate incomes don't translate into a more fundamental, nasty and unAmerican sort of inequality.

The universal health insurance legislation, recently passed by Congress, does part of that job. It's one thing to have rich people and poor people--that's capitalism. But it's another thing if those differences of money routinely translate into differences of life and death. This is why I think the health bill, for all its flaws, stands as a great triumph for President Obama and the Democratic party.

What's not clear is whether it's a beginning, or an end.

Because in too many other respects, our Democratic party has already failed. It's failed because the party's own dogma--what you simply have to say and do if you are running for office as an anointed, establishment Democrat- has itself become an obstacle to realizing the ideals of equality and decency that Democratic voters believe in.

In too many areas, the party that believes in government, has become captive of the interests that it serves--its so-called "constituencies." Actually, "captive" isn't right. That implies there's a party to capture, when all too often here in California it seems as if the party that's supposed to represent all of us has vanished. All that's left are the big interest groups--the unions, the ethnic lobbies, the gambling interests, the Hollywood money men.

They've perfected the art of raising funds and getting their handpicked choices elected. They draw the district lines so there's no chance of not getting elected. Once in office, their ambitious pawns take care of the unions and lobbies who put them there, which in turn keeps the money flowing and keeps them in power.

It's a self-perpetuating machine. State of the art. Unfortunately it increasingly listens only to those who run it. Average citizens aren’t consulted, and when they speak up they aren’t listened to. After all, who are they? The Democratic machine—increasingly—serves neither their interests, nor the requirements of common sense. It's leading our state and nation into a dead end. Unless we change it, it will destroy our party.

Let me take just two issues--important issues--to illustrate what I mean. First, the issue of organized labor.

I don't agree with the right wingers who argue unions are always wrong. Unions have done a lot for this country--they were especially important when giant employers tried to take advantage of a harsh economy in the last century, not only keeping down wages but speeding up assembly lines and worse, forcing workers to risk their lives and health.

If you think about it, unions have been the opposite of selfish. By modern standards they've been stunningly altruistic, lobbying for job safety rules and portable pensions and Social Security and all sorts of government services that, if they were really selfish, they might have opposed--because if the government will guarantee that your workplace is safe, and that your retirement is secure ... well, then you don't need a union so much, do you? Yet unions pushed through all these reforms because they were the right thing to do, even as they made unions less necessary.

And we are no longer living in a World War II economy where big, slow moving bureaucratic organizations are the engines of prosperity. Only fast-moving, flexible organizations prosper today. Technology changes too rapidly--and those changes themselves tend to make everything move even faster. Firms have to be able to make decisions rapidly--expand here, contract there, change the way they work every day. That was the lesson of Japan--how 1,000 little improvements in productivity can add up to a big advantage.

But our union system is stuck in 1950, when it was considered a glorious achievement to generate thick books full of work rules that restricted what could be changed. At some automobile plants, every position on the assembly line was considered a distinct job classification. You wouldn't want an "Installer Level II" to have to do the job of an "Installer Level I," would you? Then came the competition from the Japanese factories--including many in the U.S.--where they spent their time building cars instead of work rules, and there was only one job classification: "production." If something needed doing, you did it. Is it any wonder they cleaned Detroit's clock for two decades?

Keep in mind that Detroit's union, the United Auto Workers, is one of our best. It's democratic. It's not corrupt. Its leadership has often been visionary. Yet working within our archaic union system, it still helped bring our greatest industry to its knees. And the taxpayers were stuck with the bill for bailing it out--while UAW workers didn't even take a cut of $1 an hour in their $28/hour basic pay. How many Californians would like $27 an hour manufacturing jobs? Actually there was a good auto factory in California, the NUMMI plant in Fremont. It got sucked under when GM went broke.

Yet the answer of the Democratic establishment to the failure of 1950s unionism has been more 1950s unionism. If workers see what happened to General Motors and don't want to choose a union by secret ballot--as they didn't at Honda, for example--well then, eliminate the secret ballot! And impose mandatory arbitration, which means a bureaucrat from Washington will fly out and impose a settlement that looks like all the other settlements in the same industry--a sure way to stop any innovative changes in production methods.

This isn't how we're going to get prosperity back. But it's the official Democratic party dogma. State of the art. No dissent allowed. Barbara Boxer has to toe the line and endorse labor's push to effectively eliminate the secret ballot.

Government unions are even more problematic--and as private sector unions have failed in the marketplace, government unions are increasingly the only unions left. If there are limits on what private unions can demand--if they win too much, as we've seen, their employers tend to disappear--there is no such limit on what government unions can demand. They just have to get the politicians to raise your taxes to pay for it, and by funding the Democratic machine they acquire just the politicians they need.

No wonder that in our biggest school systems it's become virtually impossible to fight the teachers' union and fire bad teachers. The giant Los Angeles Unified school system, with 33,000 teachers, fires only about 21 a year, or fewer than 1 in 1,000, according an L.A. Times investigation. Now either they have the greatest teachers in the world or something is very wrong. Talk to parents and you'll know the answer.

When I was growing up in L.A., practically everyone went to public schools. Even in the affluent neighborhoods. Only the discipline cases, the juvenile delinquents, went off to military academy. It was vaguely disreputable. Now any parent who can afford it pays a fortune to escape them. The old liberal ideal of a common public education has been destroyed, And it's been destroyed in large part not by Republicans, but by the teachers' unions.

Barbara Boxer can't say that. She's state of the art Democrat.

No wonder that, as the private economy has faltered, we increasingly have a two-tier economy: If you're an insider, a government employee, you're in good shape. Even if you don't do a very good job, you won't be fired. Even in hard times, a brutal recession, Washington will send billions in stimulus funds so that you don't get laid off. You won't even have to take much of a pay cut. And you can retire like an aristocrat at taxpayer expense. But if you're an outsider, trying to survive in a world of $10/hour jobs, competing with immigrant labor, paying for your own health care, forced to send your children to lousy public schools run by unfireable teachers and $100,000 bureaucrats--well, good luck to you. But be sure to vote Democratic.

"The deal used to be that civil servants were paid less than private sector workers in exchange for an understanding that they had job security for life, But we politicians — pushed by our friends in labor — gradually expanded pay and benefits . . . while keeping the job protections and layering on incredibly generous retirement packages that pay ex-workers almost as much as current workers. Talking about this is politically unpopular and potentially even career suicide . . . but at some point, someone is going to have to get honest about the fact."

I didn't say that. Willie Brown, a Democratic hero, said that, explaining why the state may go the way of Vallejo and General Motors. But you won't catch Barbara Boxer saying it. She does not want to commit career suicide. She's state of the art.

We need a non-retired Democrat who can tell the unions "no."

Second issue: immigration.

If you're a Democrat and resist the party's new dogma on immigration, you'll inevitably be called "anti immigrant" or worse. So let me affirm: 1) Immigrants have been good for America and are still good for America. 2) They are especially good for California--those who come from south of the border and those who come from overseas. Most are working hard to help their families. The place wouldn't function very well without them, including those who came here illegally.

But the party's dogma on immigration--they've never met an amnesty they didn't like--is at odds with common sense. Common sense tells you that half the world would happily move to our country if given a chance. That wouldn't be a desirable result. Los Angeles and the Bay Area would soon look like Rio de Janeiro, with vast communities of shacks and slums. Americans used to working for at least the minimum hourly wage would find themselves competing with good, hard-working people for whom our minimum wage seems like a good daily wage. Or maybe a good monthly wage. Wages for low-skilled work would plunge, and the disparity between those workers' lives and the successful rich at the top would be almost intolerable in a modern democracy, inevitably corroding equality of respect.

Common sense tells you that if we're going to stop half the world from moving here, we need a border that works. We need to tell some people "no." Common sense also tells you that if we draw the line, and people for understandable reasons cross the line illegally, granting them amnesty isn't going to discourage others from following them. It's going to encourage them. Look what happened to the people that went before us. They got in!

Ah, the Chamber of Commerce and the Dems say, but we have a "comprehensive" immigration reform. Sure, we offer legalization--a "path to citizenship"-- to the 12 million illegals who are already here. But we'll also toughen border enforcement--employer sanctions, and border patrol aircraft! So you don't have to worry about a new wave of immigration.

But we tried exactly this "comprehensive" bargain before, back in 1986, when we were all honest enough to call it "amnesty." It failed. Oh, the amnesty part worked fine. It was the border enforcement that failed. And sure enough, the result was the 12 million illegals we're now talking about giving another amnesty to.

Why do I get the feeling that too many Democratic politicians eager for new voters--and businessmen eager for cheap labor--wouldn't really mind if it failed again? After all, then there would be a new group of illegal immigrants to legalize -- more potential Democrats! A new way to rev up the Latino "base" vote. And more ways to call anyone who wants to break the cycle of amnesties "anti-immigrant." Or worse.

We need a Democrat honest enough to stand up to the "amnesty" lobby and tell undocumented immigrants living here that they will have to wait. Amnesty isn't happening anytime soon. We need to get control of our borders first--through steps including 1) A requirement that employers verify the legal status of new hires; 2) stiff sanctions on employers if they don't; 3) an actual, physical border fence (not mass deportations). Plus 4) some system to monitor entries and exits to deter visa overstays and 5) greater avenues for legal immigration, including immigration from Mexico. If these measures work, survive the inevitable lawsuits, and send a clear message to the world that the game has changed--then in a few years we can start talking about some kind of legalization.

That’s what the voters, in poll after poll, say they want. Fix the border first. But the politicians—of both parties--don’t listen. They listen only to the Latino political elite. Dazzled by the prospect of millions of new voters, they insist on an immediate amnesty and exclude even the possibility of the sensible, border-first, solution. It's not "comprehensive" enough, they tell us, as if that ends the argument.

Now, I haven't traveled around the state on a "listening tour." I've been living my life here in Los Angeles. But almost every day I run into someone--my doctor, maybe, the friend of a friend, a neighbor walking his dog--and I hear a version of the same thing. "I'm a good Democrat. I've been a Democrat all my life. I'm for all the good Democratic things--ending discrimination, fighting poverty, health care, the environment. But I don't like what's happening. I don't like what the unions are doing to the schools." ... Or "I think we're going broke because we're paying too many government employees too much money to retire." ... Or "I don't like what the Democrats are doing on immigration." ... Or "this isn't the Democratic Party I signed up for."

I call these people Common Sense Democrats. I'm running for the Senate to give them a way to make their voices heard. They’re not being heard now.

If you are a Democrat who venerates the historic achievements of labor unions, but who has doubts about whether the immense power of the teachers' unions to protect bad teachers has been good for the public schools and for California's children, is there a place for you in Barbara Boxer's Democratic party?

If you are a Democrat who believes government should help those Americans who work hard for little pay, but you have doubts that giving amnesty to undocumented immigrants before we secure the borders will serve that end, is there a place for you in Barbara Boxer's Democratic party?

If you are a Democrat who venerates the achievement of labor unions, but who looks at the fate of General Motors and has doubts about whether more UAW-style, adversarial, Wagner Act unionism is the tonic the economy needs--is there a place for you in the Democratic party?

If you are a Democrat who believes we need government, but a government that works, at a price taxpayers can afford--not a government that cuts services to pay for the bloated pensions of its own workers--is there a place for you in the Democratic party?

If you're one of these Democrats, join me and let the party machine know you can't be ignored any longer.

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Portions of this were published in the Los Angeles Times and the Orange County Register.