California Dems keep using the same plan for political failure. Are they done being embarrassed?

San Francisco Chronicle​

10-05-2025

Over the past several years, Democrats in the California Legislature seem to have developed a bizarre, five-point political playbook that goes something like this:
Take a highly unpopular stance that's almost impossible to defend or coherently explain to average voters and residents.
Face severe public pushback.
Double down on that stance.
Face even more severe public pushback.
Battered and humiliated, reverse course and adopt the very same policy they'd argued so fiercely against.
The latest about-face happened Tuesday, when Democratic leaders of the California Assembly backtracked on their opposition to a proposal to strengthen penalties for offenders who purchase 16- and 17-year-olds for sex.
Last week, Assembly Democrats overwhelmingly voted to strip AB379, by Assembly Member Maggy Krell, D-Sacramento, of its key provision: strengthening punishments to match those for offenders convicted of purchasing kids 15 and younger for sex. Democrats then inserted amendments that vaguely promised to 'adopt the strongest laws to protect 16- and 17-year-old victims.'
Of course, the strongest law would have been passing Krell's original bill.
Legislative leaders not only didn't do that, but they also ignored strong pressure from Gov. Gavin Newsom to do so.
Predictably, severe public backlash ensued. Also predictably, Democrats backed down.
They now plan to amend AB379 to impose felony penalties for adult offenders convicted of soliciting sex from 16- and 17-year-olds — as long as they're at least three years older than the minor, according to an outline of the deal Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas' office shared with me. (If the adult offender is less than three years older than the minor, the crime would still be classified as a misdemeanor.) The bill also creates a state grant program to help district attorneys streamline the prosecution of human trafficking. Krell is also being reinstated as a bill co-author after Assembly Democrats stripped her name from its original version.
This bill recognizes what should long have been obvious: that buying minors for sex is an egregious and horrific crime, regardless of whether the kids are 15 or 17. And it takes a far more common-sense approach to resolving some Democrats' concerns that young adults in romantic relationships with minors (i.e., in a high-school relationship) could inadvertently be targeted.
So why did legislators expend so much political capital dying on a hill they couldn't defend for more than a week — when a far more rational alternative was readily available?
That remains to be seen. It's also unclear if they've learned anything.
The state Senate still has to sign off on the bill if it clears the Assembly, where it's scheduled for a hearing Wednesday. Are Democrats ready to get to the serious business of improving outcomes in California? Or will they continue to give Republicans and other critics easy political ammunition to portray them as out-of-touch ideologues?
After all, Democrats have been here before.
In 2023, the Assembly Public Safety Committee killed a bill authored by state Sen. Shannon Grove, R-Bakersfield, to classify human trafficking of minors as a 'serious' felony. The committee's reasoning? Such crimes could already be considered 'serious' if additional offenses had been committed — such as inflicting great bodily injury on the child victim.
That absurd rationale sparked immediate backlash and left Democrats in damage control mode. Newsom and Rivas raced to intervene, and Grove's bill was revived and signed into law.
Then, in 2024, Democrats embarked on a series of convoluted maneuvers — each more nonsensical than the last — in a failed attempt to head off a proposed November ballot measure to overhaul portions of Proposition 47, the controversial 2014 measure that lightened penalties for some drug and theft crimes.
First, Rivas and Senate President Pro Tem Mike McGuire, D-Healdsburg, floated a mob-like proposal to kill their own public-safety legislative package if voters approved the proposed ballot measure, later dubbed Prop 36. But their nakedly transparent effort to force the measure's proponents to withdraw it from the ballot alienated both Republican and Democratic lawmakers, and Rivas and McGuire ultimately sacked the plan.
This prompted Newsom to introduce his own last-ditch proposal for a competing ballot measure to reform Prop 47, even though Newsom, Rivas and McGuire had repeatedly said Prop 47 didn't need any changes. Knowing the proposal faced an uphill battle in the Legislature, Newsom proposed manipulating an arcane election procedure to circumvent the two-thirds super majority required to place it on the ballot and instead allow it to be passed with a simple majority.
Less than 48 hours later, however, Newsom scrapped the proposal, stating that lawmakers couldn't reach a consensus on proposed amendments by the ballot deadline.
To the surprise of absolutely no one who had set foot in California in recent years and had sensed voters' mounting frustrations with crime, Prop 36 passed with more than 68% of the vote.
In all of these examples, Democrats have spent significant time, energy and resources fighting against what most Californians clearly view as common sense. In all of these cases, they've been forced to retreat with their tail between their legs.
Does anyone know what kind of political strategy this is? Because it sure doesn't make any sense to me.
Emily Hoeven is a columnist and editorial writer for the Opinion section.