Divide and Rule: The "California Way"
California-style Identity Politics from Bearstar Strategies consultants
This post was written earlier in the Presidential Race (likely within a few days of August 10)
A History of “Divide and Rule”
In an earlier post, I noted how elites use the practice of “Divide and Rule.”
The British used “divide and rule” to build and maintain an empire. In the American colonies, American elites prevented white European and African laborers from banding together against wealthy landowning class by granting small special benefits to whites, thus creating racial division.1
The “Californian Way” of doing Politics
On Glenn Greenwald’s podcast with guest host Michael Tracy, Lee Fong described how California elites use identity politics to distract voters from candidates that avoid taking substantive positions on many issues. As an example, Fong pointed to the fact that Kamala Harris didn’t even have an “issues” page.
Source: Glenn Greenwald’s “System Update”, host: Michael Tracy, guest: Lee Fang
Prioritize Identity Politics over Issues
I feel like I'm going crazy that more people people aren't disturbed by this or kind of astonished at how somebody who's now the Presidential nominee of a major Party 3 months before the election has not had to answer any questions at all even as a major wars were on the verge of exploding in the Middle East what do you think of that is that something that is is as confounding to you as it is to me it's confounding it's frustrating but in a way it's the California way it's the form of politics we've practiced here in the Bay Area and in California for a very long time that perhaps we're projecting now on the country so her to get back a little bit to her Personnel because I think this is interesting I've noticed a pattern here uh her Consultants be Star Strategies they're not really known in Washington but they dominate here in California.
They ran the campaigns of our former mayors in San Francisco ran the campaigns for Gavin Newsom for Jerry Brown for Kamala Harris uh one of the most Democratic congressional seats in the entire country is in the Bay Area it's the Berkeley seat that's being vacated by Barbara Lee they're running the person who's likely to to win that seat Latifa Simon now what's the common threat here with Alex Padilla uh Gavin Nome Kamala Harris. Look at their campaign sites -- there's no issue page there's nothing about their policies or where they stand and they're very clever in deploying uh left-leaning culture war. You know Gavin Newsom of course ran abortion related ads in Florida knowing that you know he could tweak Ron De Santis and generate endless headlines for himself and perhaps fundraising uh Kamala Harris has leaned on her identity and talked about her identity quite a bit especially her surrogates have played it up um we see this kind of politics of identity and culture war on the left that can galvanize voters and certainly generate media attention that seems to obscure the fact that there's no discussion with with reporters there's no press conference there's there's no policy position on their website so I it seems to be a an intentional strategy to kind of stop uh to prevent or curb uh scrutiny and to not have the discussion that you we've been having over the last half an hour of where she actually stands.
Let me ask you about uh California politics because just like I think there's an assumption that black women are automatically sort of more left wing I think there's an also assumption that people who come from California a very blue state known for you know Hollywood leftist or whatever but also specifically from San Francisco are people who are almost assuredly very left wing I remember in the 80s during the Reagan Era and then into the early 90s you know the famous notorious papuk Canan speech where he often talked about what he called the San Francisco Democrats because the Democrats just had their convention at San Francisco to kind of signify this far- leftist Marxist degenerate type of left-wing Democrat it's San Francisco was a standing for that they often talked about Nancy Pelosi that way because she was from San Francisco as though she was some far leftist when in reality you can't find more a pro-establishment candidate or politician than she.
More Information (Lee Fang)
Bearstar Strategies 2021 Reel, Vimeo (archive)
Harris is also in negotiations with Bearstar Strategies,2 a consultancy firm that is largely unknown in DC but presides over California’s political scene. Known for their cunning use of deep “opposition research” and sensitivity to culture-war issues to market centrist, business-friendly causes and candidates, it was Bearstar strategists who shepherded Harris from her perch as the state’s attorney general to the Senate and her last presidential campaign. And it was Bearstar strategists who, over the past decade, elected a cadre of prominent Democrats in California, while simultaneously advising the state’s largest corporations on political strategy. Until last year, California senator Laphonza Butler also worked for the firm, where she advised Uber on its campaign to avoid classifying drivers as employees.
At its core, this is a very Californian way of doing politics. Governor Gavin Newsom — who served alongside Harris in San Francisco when he was mayor and she was district attorney — also owes his election victories to Bearstar. His leadership style bears a striking resemblance to his former colleague: just like Harris, he panders to the Left, but governs largely from the center. In 2019, in an attempt to mobilize progressive votes in his gubernatorial primary, Newsom promised the moon to the Left, campaigning on single-payer health care and a “Marshall Plan” to build huge tracts of new housing. Once in office, however, both goals fell by the wayside.
Nine years earlier, during her first bid for attorney general, Harris campaigned in a similar fashion: she promised a crackdown on corporate criminals, much to the delight of Left-leaning voters, but enforced the law sparingly once in office. Most contentiously, she eschewed cases against big business, declining to criminally charge financial industry firms such as OneWest Bank, which had been accused of fraudulent foreclosure practices and PG&E, the utility giant that ended up killing eight San Bruno residents with a gas pipeline explosion.
not fall into the Trap of lesser evil voting we are going to utilize our votes some other way. (18:30)
Seeing White podcast, Part 3, page 5
Suzanne Plihcik: The story of race, folks, is the story of labor. They needed a consistent, reliable labor force. And they could not have a consistent, reliable labor force if that labor force was banding together and challenging the authority of the colony.
John Biewen: Colonial America was deeply unequal. Most people of every color were poor laborers – farm workers, builders, seamstresses. And those workers were prone to getting restless and pulling out the pitchforks. There were lots of worker uprisings. The disparate sentencing of John Punch was one of the first examples, Plihcik says, of what would become an ongoing practice by the rich landowning class and their political representatives: The practice of giving the poor people who looked like those in power, people of European descent, advantages—usually small advantages—over Africans and Native people.
Suzanne: And what did that do? It switched their allegiance from the people in their same circumstance to the people at the top. It eventually created a multi-class coalition of people who would later come to be called white. It created a multi-class coalition. So this was a divide and conquer strategy. It was completely brilliant.
I added this link to Bearstar Strategies