Top Democrats are fighting a billionaire tax in California. Their voters are on the other side

The unprecedented measure has enormous potential nationwide. The clash exposes the party’s corporate-progressive divide

By Norman Solomon, The Guardian

Midway through this summer, a high-quality poll found that Democrats in California were overwhelmingly in favor of the upcoming ballot measure for a one-time 5% tax on billionaire wealth.

The ratio was more than 4 to 1. But the state’s most powerful Democrats – including the governor Gavin Newsom, his near-certain successor Xavier Becerra and the Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass – have lined up with Silicon Valley billionaires who’ve raised upward of $340m to defeat the initiative.

While Newsom has led the charge against the measure, most Democratic leaders in the deep-blue state have opted to duck. California’s senators Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff have stayed mum on Proposition 40. The same is true of the former vice-president Kamala Harris and the former House speaker Nancy Pelosi.

“Neither wants to alienate wealthy donors or their allies in labor by publicly opposing it,” the San Francisco Chronicle noted in mid-October. “But their silence on such a high-profile measure is giving cover to the billionaires” fighting the measure.

Nine-tenths of the billionaire tax revenue from Proposition 40 would go to healthcare for Californians in need. As the New York Times reported this month, “California stands to lose around $100 billion in federal Medicaid funding over the next five years, threatening healthcare coverage for millions of low-income residents, as well as the potential closure of hospitals and other facilities.”

With so much at stake in human terms, refusal to back Proposition 40 runs directly counter to standard rhetoric from Democratic politicians about standing up to the ultra-wealthy on behalf of the disadvantaged.

The stance of Newsom and other Democratic heavyweights in the state puts them on the side of billionaires in ongoing class war. The effect is that party leaders are offering a kinder, gentler oligarchy as an alternative to the far more corrupt Trumpist version.

Overall, a semblance of party unity has taken hold with the midterm elections looming. But clashes between corporate Democrats and progressives will soon begin to escalate.