A Month Before MidTerms Dems Launch Civil War

Is this some 3D election strategy to turn back the threatening Red Tide?

The big political story from yesterday had to be the release of a recording of a strategizing meeting among top Hispanic Dem politicians in LA. Specifically, the group included City Council President Nury Martinez, Councilmembers Kevin de León and Gil Cedillo, and Los Angeles County Federation of Labor President Ron Herrera. So, heavy hitters. They were getting together to discuss redistricting issues. Specifically, they wanted to do something about the statistically accurate fact that Blacks, from an ethnic-demographic standpoint, are heavily over represented on the City Council. They wanted to work out a way to get more Hispanics on board.

Now, some might shrug and say, That’s just typical woke identity politics, but the point is that identity politics on the Left is only supposed to be directed against conservatives—or, as proxies, Whites. Within the Left everyone is, theoretically, supposed to fall in line with Left ideology and forget who they are—except that they’re all equally victimized. But we all know that that isn’t how things work in the real world. There’s a hierarchy of victimhood, and Hispanics are a few rungs down.

The people at the meeting know that, and they expressed some of their resentments. In the city of the angels the talk was less than angelic. With Nury Martinez leading the way, they expressed their views of Blacks, homosexuals, and Oaxacans pretty freely—as one might expect in a a private meeting, where all in attendance trusted one another. Ah, there was the rub.

I first became aware of the Oaxacan issue, so to speak, back in the 90s when I worked on a squad with quite a few Hispanic agents. Some of them used to freely ridicule a particular agent as an “Indio” whose relatives “rode out of the mountains on their little burros.” Short, dark people with prominent noses who spoke sub-par Spanish. Unbeknownst to many Americans, there are quite a few of these people now in the “Latino” community, forming a sort of underclass—although, paradoxically, some of them don’t even speak Spanish (in Oaxaca as many as half the population don’t even speak Spanish—at all). In the recording Martinez referred to Oaxacans (who live in what used to be Koreatown) in these terms:

In the course of the discussion on redistricting, she commented, “I see a lot of little short dark people there” in reference to Koreatown. “Oaxacan Koreans. Not even like Kevin. Little ones,” Cedillo replied. She then continued, “I was like, I don’t know what village they came from, how they got here, but whatever.” She can also be heard to remark, “tan feos” or “they’re so ugly” in Spanish.

Anyway, someone recorded the meeting and leaked the recording. The guess is that, while the participants would appear wildly Left to mainstream America, they were regarded as not nearly Woke enough for California Dems. But keep in mind, we’re talking here about very prominent Dem politicians in a Dem stronghold, so this amounts to a coup of sorts—that’s what it is when you try to oust the City Council president and the head of Labor in greater LA. And they’re all Hispanics, at a time when even in California the GOP is making inroads among Hispanics.

Interesting timing, with the Midterms less than a month away! But Woke trumps all, on the Left, so it looks like they’ve formed a circular firing squad. Woke may trump all on the Left, but I’m betting on Identity trumping Woke. This will almost inevitably devolve into a Black v. Hispanic trial of political strength, given the language that was used. It promises to be feo, er, ugly.

Red State describes all this in somewhat prim terms:

Pressure Mounts on LA City Council Members as Powerful California Politicians Demand Resignations for Racial Slurs

Their discussion, however, was peppered with coarse language, insults, and racist tropes. Martinez was the worse offender, expressing her dislike of District Attorney George Gascon (“f**k that guy; he’s with the blacks”), calling City Council member Mike Bonin, a gay man, a “little bitch,” and describing Bonin’s adopted son, who is black, a “little monkey.” She also compared Bonin’s son to an “accessory,” while de León agreed that the boy was handled like a Louis Vuitton bag. Martinez also called the child “su negrito,” a Spanish diminutive term for a Black person that can be considered demeaning. Still not finished, she criticized the child’s behavior, adding, “I was like, this kid needs a beatdown. Let me take him around the corner and then I’ll bring him back.”

Martinez tried to finesse the brouhaha by resigning as City Council president, but the Woke Left isn’t satisfied—they want a scalp, and they’re calling on her to resign from the Council. For many Hispanics, her scalp will be viewed as an Hispanic scalp sacrificed to Wokester elites.

Mayoral candidates Rick Caruso and Karen Bass, the Los Angeles Times editorial board, LA Mayor Eric Garcetti, Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA), Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), the president of the NAACP Los Angeles branch, Los Angeles Unified School Board President Kelly Gonez, LA County Supervisor Sheila Kuehl, Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, and many lesser-known names have all have called on three Democrat Los Angeles City Council members to resign after they were caught using racist language in leaked audio. Notably missing from the list: Governor Gavin Newsom.

Note the bind that Newsom—with his presidential aspirations—is in. He’s been openly trying to insert himself as the Dem leader on the national political stage. Now he may find himself in a no win position, caught between two key demographics that will demand he pick a side. In other words, literally almost within minutes this whole thing went national. All that’s needed now is for Zhou to engage, perhaps with references to an Apocalypse right here in America. Or Kama Sutra.

Steve Sailer weighs in, too, but lets the NYT do a lot of the heavy lifting—and, in fairness, the NYT does a pretty good job of it in a phenomenological sense:

The Coalition of the Fringes Comes Apart at the Seams in Los Angeles

Here’s how Sailer finishes up, with extensive quotes from the NYT. Note that this is all happening within the context of a mayoral race pitting a White candidate against a Black candidate, with each being backed by different Hispanics who were present at the meeting and were recorded. And the implications for statewide politics should be obvious. Interestingly, Nury Martinez is backing the Black candidate. Will Karen Bass now renounce Martinez’s support? This promises to be very complicated:

… Latinos are by far the largest demographic among the city’s 3.8 million residents. But the Black community in Los Angeles — with 20 percent of the Council seats and powerful civic leaders dating back to Mayor Tom Bradley — has long wielded greater clout than would be suggested by its 8.8 percent of the population. And the Asian community has become a rising political force with nearly 12 percent of the population. White Angelenos, with more than 28 percent of the population, have long controlled much of the city’s wealth and power.

…

Residents of the city routinely tout their diversity as an asset, and, since the 1992 riots, have expressed pride in the strides they have made in race relations. In polls, Latino residents of the city repeatedly say that their Black neighbors understand them better than do any other ethnic group in Los Angeles, and vice versa, said Fernando Guerra, whose Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University regularly surveys the city’s residents.

Saying you understand the other race might not mean what Professor Guerra thinks it means.

… In drawing a fair map, the Council “had to talk about race,” Mr. Guerra said. “Although not like this.”

In a searing joint statement on Sunday, Mr. Bonin and his husband, Sean Arian, said that they were “appalled, angry and absolutely disgusted” by Ms. Martinez’s comments and called on her, Mr. de León and Mr. Herrera to resign from their positions. The couple added that “it hurts that one of our son’s earliest encounters with overt racism comes from some of the most powerful public officials in Los Angeles.”

In condemning the entire conversation, Mr. Bonin and Mr. Arian said that it showed a troubling level of coordination in an effort to “weaken Black political representation.”

But blacks have more than two times times as many seats on the City Council (3 out of 15) as their share of the residents (but not their share of citizens or voters) would suggest. Why shouldn’t Hispanic politicians conspire to take representation away from over-represented blacks, other than that blacks are higher up the totem pole of Wokeness than are Hispanics?

In other California news, California’s pork law has reached the SCOTUS. California wants to deploy its health inspectors nationwide to inspect the pork industry regarding how they treat their pigs. The idea is that pork producers nationwide would have to conform to California’s standards for “humane” treatment of pigs, or be banned from selling in California. So, it’s a bit like a coup against the rest of the nation. Is that starting to sound familiar?