California uses "jungle primaries" where the top two vote getters regardless of party advance to the general election. You can't blame the two-party system here, voters could easily choose another Democrat if that's what they wanted.
Yep, and in this case, it's isomorphic to the question, "Why didn't Kevin De Leon(D) defeat DiFi in the 2018 election?" - question whose answers can range from, "not enough votes," to "less money," to "why did the CA coast prefer DiFi and CA's interior prefer KDL?"
The problem is last time her opponent wasn't reputable enough to be a good counterweight. I wish Katy Porter had run and replaced her. I think she was barely in politics then.
Unless it's ranked choice doesnt it still fall to the "least bad" fallacy? Like, people aren't sure that everyone else is going to vote the democrat they want and are afraid if they don't vote for the most likely, then they'll dilute the vote to the point that none of their chosen party wins?
I mean, sure, if the democratic vote was a monolith that was capable of making a single choice or even knowing what its own choices would be we could say that it must be this way because people want it like this. Rather than it being yet another consequence of antiquated voting systems incrementally improving while claiming all the hard work is already done
I think you misunderstand: in California, all candidates, from all parties, run in a single primary (there is no separate "Democratic primary" or "Republican primary"). The top two candidates for each office from that primary are the only ones who advance to the general election. Since California is so heavily Democratic, often what happens is the general election is Democrat vs. Democrat. That was the case in 2018, when Kevin de Leon (another Democrat) ran against Feinstein and lost. Though not by a landslide, only by about 9 points.
Definitely. IMO, the issue in California's particular case is that the Democrat senior leadership isn't too keen to oust one of their own, creating a culture that permeates down. Thus the only candidates willing to run against Feinstein are more fringe members of the party. If a relatively middle-of-the pack Dem ran, it would probably be a much closer race. Anthony Rendon, our current Speaker of the CA Assembly would be an obvious choice, with a largely inoffensive (to the CA Democrat majority, anyways) platform and voting record, but anybody with a bit of experience would do.
