On Tuesday, the man who truly represents the American people stood on a stage in Sacramento, flanked by officials, and delivered an angry speech. “We’re doing what we can in a free society to stop a juggernaut,” Jerry Brown said. “It’s a battle not only for the soul of America but for the future of America … We have an evil here. We’re fighting it. Will there be more evils? Most certainly. And we’ll attack them as they show their ugly head.”
Those ugly-headed evils denounced by Mr. Brown, who is approaching the end of his fourth and final term as California Governor, were U.S. President Donald Trump’s environmental policies – against which he, along with the governments of several other states, launched a series of lawsuits.
He also has condemned, sued and worked to undermine the President’s immigration-enforcement policies and protectionist trade policies. And he has worked to link California’s successful policies to other countries, including Canada, by stepping over Mr. Trump’s inert form.
Mr. Brown, after five decades in elected politics, is staking a claim as the more legitimate leader of Americans.
And it is a credible claim. Mr. Brown’s office is the sort of place where real American power, and American political representation, are coming from.
First, Mr. Brown is a far more legitimate leader. He, unlike the President, has not only received more votes than his opponents but has also been elected all four times by decisive majorities.
Second, he and his policies are unbelievably popular. Seven years after re-entering the governor’s office, he currently has a “favourable” rating more than 50 per cent – despite having raised taxes twice. I can’t think of another leader who has been more popular at the end of his fourth term than after coming into office. (Mr. Trump’s hasn’t topped 43 per cent during his time in office.)
His climate and anti-emissions policies are especially popular: A poll last year by the Public Policy Institute of California found that almost three-quarters of voters say they favour their state’s aggressive carbon-emission-cutting mandate and the green policies that drive those reductions. There’s a reason why both Quebec and Ontario have joined California’s cap-and-trade program to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.
Third, he isn’t just popular in California. Mr. Brown now represents the majority political views and electoral choices of Americans far more than Donald Trump does.
In 1975, when a very young Mr. Brown was first elected to the governor’s office, he was widely seen as the most left-wing elected politician in the United States, derided as “Governor Moonbeam” and as an intemperate liberal out of tune with the more conservative views of most Americans.
That has changed – both on Mr. Brown’s part and on the part of American voters. In recent decades, and especially since he regained the governorship in 2011, Mr. Brown has not just delivered some of the country’s most progressive politics, but also among its most economically conservative, fiscally restrained leadership.
He was elected on a promise to terminate the US$27-billion “wall of debt” erected by the free-spending ways of Republican governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. He paid it down, without losing popularity or abandoning his climate pledges, leaving a US$6.1-billion surplus this year, likely to double by the time he leaves office in 2019.
Mr. Brown is no centrist – his politics are unapologetically liberal, but delivered in a hard-heartedly pragmatic way that appeals to many moderate conservatives (and that annoys the left flank of his party).
And these aren’t just California politics – the rest of the United States has caught up with the Pacific coast. A strong majority of all Americans now hold strongly liberal views on such social issues as birth control, gay and lesbian relationships, unmarried motherhood, doctor-assisted death, on climate change and immigration, and on economic issues such as inequality and the minimum wage. Yet they don’t like big government spending or debt.
The fiscally conservative, socially liberal approach of Mr. Brown should be a presidential winner, too – and a majority of Americans voted for just such a platform in 2016. But the electoral college prevents those views from being reflected in the presidential outcome – a fact known very well to Mr. Brown, who has run for president, unsuccessfully, three times.
The Democratic Party, if it wants a sure victory in 2020, will need someone whose political message is to the right of Mr. Brown, Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. But when it comes to actual governing, Mr. Brown has shown what Americans want.
U.S. President Donald Trump told reporters on Monday that he had pitched the idea of holding the proposed summit with North Korea at the Peace House on the border between North and South Korea, as preparations for the meeting advance.
Reuters
Doug Saunders