The Best Case for Tom Steyer Might Be “He’s Full of Shit”

Searching for positives anywhere

Built from a photo by Gage Skidmore.

Without a doubt, the funniest moment in Tuesday’s California governor debate was Chad Bianco responding to Antonio Villaraigosa calling him an Oath Keeper — which is a far right militia group — by responding that yes, he does value the keeping of oaths. When that happened, I couldn’t put this together fast enough:

But a respectable second for funniest moment came when Tom Steyer complained that the revenue from California’s proposed wealth tax “doesn’t go to education and teachers and students.” I do not believe for a second that Tom Steyer — who made billions in finance — does not understand that money is fungible. This is an intuitive concept: If I have two items in my budget — baby formula and heroin — and I find $1,000 lying in the street, I can tell my wife “every penny of that money will go to baby formula!” But all that’s happened is that I’ve freed up money to ride the brown serpent as far as $1,000 will take me. Tax revenue is always “for” nothing, specifically and everything, generally in a budget. Steyer surely knows that and was just repeating a line that tested well.

Steyer’s whole campaign seems to be an elaborate apology for his fortune. He calls himself “the billionaire who wants to tax other billionaires”. He wears sneakers with a suit, which forces me to confront the grim fact that there is something worse than a 68 year-old man going for “cool poetry teacher” vibes, and that is a 68 year-old man going for cool poetry teacher vibes and failing. Steyer seems determined to not get out-flanked on the left: He’s joined Katie Porter to make an absurdly implausible call for single payer health care, and he, Porter, and Xavier Becerra are doing the teamsters’ bidding by seeking to limit autonomous vehicles despite mounting evidence that the cars save lives. Steyer has a long history of supporting progressive causes — I don’t think he’s a complete shapeshifter — but to me, his protestations seem performative. The political climate demands that he atone and garment rend and prove his commitment to The One True Cause, so that’s what he’s doing.

The California governor race is such a clusterfuck that “clusterfuck” isn’t a strong enough word. California has unlocked some new, multi-dimensional realm of political hell — they are in the ultrasückshitzen. Matt Mahan strikes me as a good option, but he — unlike the state he seeks to govern — simply cannot catch fire (…too soon?). Beyond Mahan, I have no idea who I’d vote for if I lived in California. I continue to be amazed that the largest, most dynamic state in the country has a political culture that seems like a Clarke and Dawe sketch written by a sadist.

A case for Steyer — if one were compelled to make such a case, which I am not — could be that he believes the dumb shit coming out of his mouth less than some of his opponents. IMHO, the debates have been mostly off-topic progressive claptrap interspersed with Trumpy goofiness and lame personal attacks. One of the strongest things any candidate could say is “I know that this is nuts”. Steyer won’t say that, but his strong incentive to lie combined with his willingness to play dumb in at least one case could be interpreted as a feather in his cap.

The political question of our age might be: Which is worse — someone who believes goofy things, or someone willing to pretend that they believe goofy things in order to get elected? I don’t know the answer. I look at someone like JD Vance and see the total absence of a moral core, but that might actually be better than Stephen Miller, who has strong convictions that are awful. The more that politicians feel the need to pander to their base, and the more fringe-y each base gets, the more relevant this question will become.

It’s possible that any Democrat who wins will do what Newsom did and abandon the Quixotic push for single payer health care and pick spots to break with the base. That would be consistent with the longstanding American tradition of politicians paying lip service to policies that they have no intention of enacting. We’re sure to get more of this as each party’s base continues its descent into madness. And in that world — strangely — being an opportunistic liar might be one of the most appealing traits that a candidate can have.

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