For California people -- this is important.  Of course you all have a favorite candidate for governor, but in this instance, being more strategic and less independent may be called for. Imagine California with a Trumpista for a Governor!

--Kim

Marlene McCall

sdSooetrnpcm378g7c8h101mhic1u9g1465i45lu47ml85914mf94ug00u67 ·

To my friends who are California voters: Please read what Brent has written. His words are so much better than almost anything I've read about the CA gubernatorial race, and what democrats/progressives decide to do -- what YOU do -- is so crucial.

Hat tip to Carol Holdstock for the original share.

THE CIRCULAR FIRING SQUAD: HOW PURITY TESTS ARE SHAKING THE CALIFORNIA GOVERNOR'S RACE

by Brent Molnar: A Voice of Reason

May 7, 2026

In the vacuum of a wide-open 2026 gubernatorial primary, California Democrats are doing what they do best: building a high-tech circular firing squad. With the June primary rapidly approaching, the airwaves are thick with "disqualifying" narratives. Whether it’s Xavier Becerra’s management of federal agencies, Katie Porter’s office temperament, or Tom Steyer’s billionaire status, the party is currently locked in a series of purity tests that threaten to do the one thing Democrats fear most … splitting the blue vote so thin that a Republican walks into the Governor’s Mansion.

Every major candidate has been assigned a specific "original sin" by their detractors.

The Bureaucrat: Xavier Becerra is being hammered for his tenure at HHS, specifically for the "speed over safety" mandate that led to thousands of migrant children being placed with unverified sponsors. To his critics, this isn't just a policy failure; it’s a moral one.

The Scold: Katie Porter, once the darling of the whiteboard-wielding progressives, is now fighting a "toxic boss" narrative. Resurfaced videos of her snapping at staffers have been weaponized to suggest she lacks the executive temperament to lead a state of 39 million people.

The Plutocrat: Tom Steyer is facing the classic "wealth vs. values" critique. Despite spending over $130 million to save the climate, he is dogged by his hedge fund’s past investments in coal and private prisons. Critics ask: can you buy your way to a clean conscience?

The problem with these purity tests isn't that the criticisms are illegitimate … they are based on real records and real actions. The problem is the scale.

In the current political climate, we have begun to treat "bad management" or "rude behavior" as equivalent to "existential threat." We argue endlessly about whether Becerra was "ineffective" or whether Porter is "mean," while ignoring the actual math of the primary.

Under California’s top-two system, a fragmented Democratic field is a gift to the GOP. Currently, polls show Republicans like Steve Hilton and Chad Bianco hovering at the top of the pack simply because their base isn't split four ways. Is any of this truly "damning" enough to warrant a dropout?

Did Xavier Becerra commit a crime? No. He managed a broken, overwhelmed federal system that has defied every secretary for thirty years.

Did Katie Porter violate the law? No. She had a "bad day" on a Zoom call that was caught on tape.

Did Tom Steyer break the state? No. He used the capitalist system to build a fortune that he is now using to advance progressive causes.

None of these candidates have done anything that justifies handing the keys of the fourth-largest economy in the world to a candidate aligned with the national Trump agenda. Yet, by engaging in these "all-or-nothing" character assassinations, the Democratic base is effectively doing the GOP's opposition research for them.

The "Top-Two" primary doesn't care about our feelings; it cares about percentages. If Becerra, Porter, and Steyer each take 12-15% of the vote while the Republican block consolidates around one or two names, the November ballot could end up without a Democrat on it at all.

We are currently watching a race where the "perfect" is not just the enemy of the "good" … it’s the architect of the "disastrous." If the eventual goal is a California that remains a firewall against the policies of the Trump administration, then perhaps it’s time to stop looking for a saint and start looking for a Governor.

We can argue about who has the "least" baggage until we’re blue in the face. But if we keep litigating the past with this much vitriol, we might find ourselves in a future where we don't have a choice at all.

See less

ANS -- Pluralistic Demand Destruction

This has a couple of turns of phrase that I liked in it -- "Strait of Epstein" for one. And "the Gretacene" for another. It's mostly about something called "demand destruction" -- which is when something destroys the demand for a product.  It's more interesting than that sounds. 

--Kim

Rebecca Solnit 

edSonsotpr0833c990g97041u531h89mhlul3a043m9ah7m60t5f48441c4l ·

Thrilled and honored the great Cory Doctorow's newsletter today is riffing on my newsletter yesterday.

In her latest, "Truth, Consequences, Climate, and Demand Destruction," Solnit is nothing short of inspirational – not because she downplays the horror and misery of Trump and his war of choice in Iran, but because she tells us what we stand to salvage from the wreckage:

[link in comments and all links in Cory's newsletter]

Solnit starts by explaining some of the (many, many) things that Trump doesn't understand. Principally, Trump doesn't understand the concept of "demand destruction," which is what happens when shortages prompt people to make durable, one-way changes in their behavior that permanently reduce the demand for fossil fuels.

High prices sometimes create demand destruction: for example, if a transient shortage in eggs pushes prices up, people might discover that they prefer tofu scrambles in the morning, so even when the price of eggs comes back down, they buy two dozen fewer eggs every month, forever.

Beyond high prices, shortages and rationing are far more likely to lead to demand destruction. In the 10 years following the 1970s oil crisis, US cars doubled in fuel efficiency, and the gas-guzzler didn't return until car manufacturers exploited the American "light truck" loophole to fill the streets with deadly SUVs:

But to really max out on demand destruction, you need both rationing and a cheap, easily installed substitute, and that's what the Strait of Epstein crisis, along with solar and batteries, offers the world today. Solar is incredibly cheap, and getting cheaper every day. Batteries are also incredibly cheap, and they're getting cheaper too. For decades, fossil fuel apologists have insisted that we'll never stop setting old dead shit on fire because "the sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow," but thanks to battery deployment in China and California (and more places very soon), the sun shines all night long:

In starting this stupid, unforgivable war, Trump has vastly accelerated the process of demand destruction. Rather than buying American oil, the whole world has undertaken a simultaneous, rapid, irreversible shift to electrical substitutes for fossil fuel applications, from induction tops to balcony solar to ebikes and EVs:

As Solnit writes, Trump's stupid war follows on the heels of another unforgivable and cruel blunder: Putin's quagmire in Ukraine, which catapulted Europe into the Gretacene, with a wholesale, continent-wide shift away from fossil fuels to renewables and the devices they power. Now, the rest of the world is following suit. In South Korea, President Lee Jae Myung is leading the charge to transition the country to renewables, framing fossil fuels as an existential geopolitical risk.

Trump's demand destruction accelerates Putin's demand destruction: China and India both increased their energy consumption in 2025 – but reduced their fossil fuel consumption over the same period. In 2025, coal accounted for less than a third of the world's energy for the first time in modern history. 2025 was the year that solar and wind overtook coal globally.

Meanwhile, Trump and his oil baron buddies keep trying to make fetch happen. On the campaign trail, Trump told the oil industry that if they slipped him a $1b bribe, he would give them anything they wanted, and he's kept his promise. Trump will let Big Oil drill anywhere they like, from sacred sites like New Mexico's Chaco Canyon to the Arctic. He'll even let them take all of Venezuela's oil. The problem is that banks can see the demand destruction writing on the wall, and they are conspicuously declining to loan the oil companies the money they'd need to get that oil.

Truly, Trump's a machine for creating stranded assets at scale. As Solnit writes, that's because Trump has no strategic foresight; strategy being "the ability to plan for things to arise that may counter your agenda, so you can continue to pursue your agenda." Trump's a bully, and he's accustomed to intimidating his adversaries into capitulating. That's why Trump keeps making moves without ever thinking about the countermove he might provoke. He can't metabolize the strategic maxim that "the enemy gets a vote."

This is the GOP's whole vibe these days: "how dare you do unto me as I have done unto you?" Solnit points to GOP outrage in response to Democratic gerrymandering in blue states, which Democrats undertook in direct, explicit response to shameless gerrymandering in Texas and other red states. Solnit says that the GOP has "confused having a lot of power with having all the power" and is perennially surprised when their attacks on Iran and Minneapolis evince a reaction from the people in Iran and Minneapolis.

This is the defective reasoning that caused Comrade Trump to hormuz the world into the full Gretacene. Whereas once the case for the energy transition was driven by activists who warned people about the future consequences of inaction, Trump has summoned up a new army of people who are worried about the present consequences of inaction: such as not being able to drive your car, use your gas stove, or fertilize your crops. Trump has summoned up another army of people, who are worried about the politics of oil, the fact that oil leads to wars and can be mobilized as a weapon when it is withheld from your country.

Activists couldn't deliver the energy transition on their own – but now there's a coalition that's driving rapid, irreversible change: activists concerned about the future of the planet, in coalition with economic actors concerned about the consequences of not being able to cook, heat your home, or keep the lights on; in coalition with national security hawks worried about the geopolitics of oil. That's Comrade Trump's three-part mobilization: human rights, finance, and national security, all insisting that the enemy gets a vote, and voting unanimously for a post-American world.

Last week marked the first Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels conference, attended by representatives from 54 countries who sidestepped the US- and China-dominated UN to ratify the Fossil Fuel Nonproliferation Treaty Initiative, whose 18 signatories include Colombia, a major oil producer.....

A post-carbon future is a post-petrostate future is a post-American future. It will run on solar and wind and batteries, which can be brought online cheaply and quickly, every time demand-destruction surges, using materials that are widely distributed around the world. It won't be a nuclear future, and not just because nuclear materials are (like oil) concentrated according to accidents of geography, nor merely because fissiles are geopolitically catastrophic (like oil). Nuclear plants take at least a decade to bring online, which means that they will always arrive ten years after some future Comrade Trump-type kicks off another orgy of demand destruction, and by the time we turn them on, the world will have already bought, improved and recycled two generations of batteries and panels.

pluralistic.net

Pluralistic: Demand destruction vs fuel-superseding infrastructure (04 May 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow