Dispatch from Oakland: The Last Blue Place

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Looking out on the floor of the Fox Theater in downtown Oakland, you’d never think that the 2010 elections have been an utterly catastrophic disaster for the Democratic party. As I’m typing this, there’s a conga-line—or something close to it—forming on the floor below the stage, and a dozen or so couples are cutting a rug to the swing band up above. Occasionally, the crowd will get restless, and a chant of “Jer-ry! Jer-ry!” will begin, and then sputter out after a few short bursts. They’re all here for Jerry Brown, the state’s once-and-future governor (and secretary of state, and attorney general, and mayor of Oakland), who’s just defeated Meg Whitman and is expected to address supporters here later tonight.

California might be the one state in the union tonight where Democrats can feel legitimately good (if still a little confused) about the way things turned out. Sure, they’ll lose a few House seats, but Barbara Boxer held onto her senate seat, and Brown, despite a $141 million-challenge from former eBay CEO Whitman, returned the governor’s mansion to the Democrats for the first time in seven years. Proposition 23, the ballot provision that would have reversed the state’s progressive climate change law, went down to defeat. All is well for Golden State Democrats. Or at least as well as you’d hope, given the circumstances.

“I don’t care what’s going on in the rest of the country,” says Marianne Kearney-Brown of Napa. “Because we’re gonna have Jer-ry Brown!” 

Really, the only real setback was the defeat of Prop 19, which would have legalized marijuana. But to the provision’s supporters, who assembled just down the street from Brown’s victory party, in the parking lot of the pot-centric Oaksterdam University, losing was hardly the end of the world.

As Nela Mendoza of Oakland explained to me, “If it passes, well, fuck, we’ll burn, dude! And if it doesn’t pass…we’ll burn anyway.” Word.

WE'LL BE BLUNT:

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't find elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate