The Victory Lap...?
Tech took its hits but careful...
I intend to write a longer post today, building on the themes of the last couple days, but this one was needed to discuss one aspect of the election last night not waiting to be settled- Silicon Valley got beat badly.
Read Politico’s “welcome to the club” piece for Silicon Valley.
They lost.
There is no doubt.
The quote below shows Mahan’s campaign is already keeping the blame elsewhere, on events instead of the Candidate.
“The poor early showing amounts to a reality check for the billionaires and founders who viewed statewide politics as the next frontier for their ambitions — expecting to scale up the centrist, abundance-flavored formula that found success in places like San Francisco across California.
It’s an awkward start for donors whose unprecedentedly expensive push this cycle was meant to be the beginning of Silicon Valley’s transformation into a durable electoral machine.
Mahan and his wife, Silvia Scandar Mahan, alternately bemoaned and joked about the mayor’s late entrance into the race during his election-night party in downtown San Jose. The city’s first lady predicted her husband “would have been the leading Democratic candidate” with better name recognition (emphasis added)”
Name recognition? Durable machine? Spend money? No. Good excuses, but they do not explain the true failure.
Mahan failed because of intuition or lack there of.
He did not strike when the opening was there, plain and simple. We said it repeatedly that week after. We continued to bang that drum, consistently thereafter. He never went there. He never attacked those who enabled Swalwell, those who attacked him in March.
He never swung at the bigger picture. He was afraid or something else- that is why he failed. Gonzalez sensed it in March and he proved her correct.
The rest is conjecture, designed to cover up the abject failure of the week of Swalwell’s implosion. It was something which should be the death knell for future runs because he missed so glaringly. It is something his campaign and those aligned with it will also have to push aside, “explaining it away.” As long as they all sing the same song, nobody will go deeper, well except us here.
If Silicon Valley wants to create something enduring, learn this key lesson I was discussing with a tech political investor yesterday- “money gives you the ability to Play the Game, but Politics is about creating Power. If you do not created it or take it, and creating it is easier than taking it in a place like California as it exists today, you are not playing the Game. It is time to think differently.”
As Lorena Gonzalez said rightly yesterday on X:
”If you think I’m brutal, you should see what my staff prepared to send out as soon as the first results came in… good job billionaire tech bros! Bye bye Mahan!”
She called it in March. She repeated it throughout. She understands what I said.
She is right for now. As everyone in politics likes to say, “as things stand today.”
Your move Silicon Valley. Now what hotshot?