Apparently techies in NoCal are either a very liberal bunch, or they aren't paying attention. Pelosi should have been gone ages ago, but she wins every time by a huge margin.

SF voters are largely not techies. People who vote tend to be boomers or older, and organized (union, other political types, more organized or regulated industries). Techies tend to be younger, more transient, often non citizens, etc, so not a great voting bloc, even in SF.

Her district, CA-12, is SF City and County proper; there are probably only 50k techies by any definition in a city of around 800k. I'd estimate around 10-15k voters. Out of that group you probably have a higher than usual number of libertarian or green or other third-party voters too; probably far fewer party-line Democrats.

I know a good number of boomer techies...

More seriously, we should get the unions riled about this. Increased police powers and surveillance have not, historically, been kind to labor.

Do police like increased police powers? http://iupa.org/ - Police AFL CIO (unions of course)

They're not necessarily big on handing them to the NSA.

True, while warrants are not necessary for the NSA to snoop, they don't like sharing with local LE.

Depending on the quality of your local police, they have nothing to gain and a lot to lose.

I think it's safe to assume that lawmakers in the pocket of the surveillance state are going to continue to be 're-elected' as many times as they wish.

I think it's dangerous to assume that.

Both of California's senators sponsored PIPA. Tech is a weak force compared to Hollywood, mostly because it is apathetic.

CA should be two states, at least...

The thing with west coast states (and others, but shut up!) is that, as they were "settled" later than other states, they tend to have very dense urban areas and very sparsely populated rural areas.

This is OK in the House, where people have reasonably proportional representation (although districting is notoriously prone to corruption), but the senate seats and electoral votes tend to belong to the urban areas.

I'd be more than happy to cede everything east of about 121ºW to Nevada. It wouldn't necessarily resolve the problem, but it just feels right.

Oddly enough, people have multiple priorities in life. For most people their economic prospects or issues related to freedom of choice, or stopping abortion happen to be far more important than what the NSA does. These people are not confused as to what they think is important. As surprising as that may seem to the HN echo chamber.

More generally, I'd note that actual political change often takes decades of struggle. One sees a lot of bitching on this topic, but very little "I sent a check to EFF" and even less "We are organizing for action is this way."

I doubt anyone startup success is attributable to actionless moaning.

I hear ya, but will a credible opponent arise in that district? no democrat will run against her given her clout. is any republican electable in sf?

Don't hold your breath. SF is one of the liberal strongholds. Reps probably won't even bother to go there - unless of course they see a real chance (see Scott Brown) but they wouldn't.

Which means Pelosi is free to do anything she wants, as her own party would never restrain her (especially at the time she promotes the agenda of the President from her own party) and Reps have no real political power to oust her. Be thankful to the people of California for this gift that keeps on giving.

She wouldn't even debate the republican in 2010...

http://youtu.be/D0JrUhHv8kI

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2010/10/15/pelosi_won...

Last voter data I saw has registered Republican's in the low teens as a percentage of registered voters.

The only way I could see a Republican winning SF is if he/she were a fiscal conservative/social libertarian.

> Last voter data I saw has registered Republican's in the low teens as a percentage of registered voters.

Not that high; per current registration data [1], 37,719 registered Republicans of 437,529 total registered voters, so Republicans are 8.62%. Low teens is about what the typical Republican running in San Francisco gets on election day

> The only way I could see a Republican winning SF is if he/she were a fiscal conservative/social libertarian.

If the political mood in San Francisco was running in a way that social libertarian positions were strong enough that they'd get enough liberal voters to hold their breath and vote for a fiscal conservative, then a left-libertarian would probably end up as the Democratic candidate in the general election, and win. (Although the main effect, given the way California's "open primary" works, would likely be a contested primary among Democrats resulting in the two candidates that make it to the general election both being Democrats.)

I suppose, though, if you the the surge of social libertarianism happens after the primary but before the general election, and the Democratic candidate isn't a social libertarian, you might end up with a chance for the Republican. But that's a pretty freakish scenario.

[1] http://www.sfelections.org/tools/election_data/

Also note that's "the typical (republican running in San Francisco)", as distinct from "(the typical republican) running in San Francisco", who would likely get even fewer votes.