In December 2014, prior to Clinton announcing her candidacy, Robby Mook and John Podesta (who would become Clinton’s campaign manager and campaign chairman, respectively) discussed their preference to keep blue stats like California late in the primary process.

Mook had been contacted by another Democratic strategist, Chris Lehane, who served in Bill Clinton’s administration. According to the email, Lehane had called Mook about the California primary after speaking with Podesta, who had given Lehane the impression that he wanted to move the date.

Mook sought clarification, as he believed there was already a strategy in place to keep reliably Democratic states late in the primary process.

“FYI–Lehane called me about CA primary and I told him that the operating strategy is to keep blue states late (i.e. don’t move CA),” Mook wrote to Podesta. “He said he was at dinner with you and was under the impression that you wanted to move it earlier. He’s wondering how to proceed and I said I’d try to get us on the same page and go back with an answer. Are you ok with me saying that we both want CA to stay where it is?”

There was no reply from Podesta in the email dump. But an email from March 2015 — just weeks before Clinton officially announced her candidacy — showed Mook hoping California Senate President Pro Tempore Kevin de Leon would weigh in on the timing of the primary. 

“I met with Cal State Senate President. Super enthusiastic,” Podesta wrote to Mook in an email with the Los Angeles Democrat’s name in the subject line. “Do anything including travel to other states. Also volunteered to line up other state senators.”

“Fantastic,” Mook exclaimed. “Did he mention moving the primary date at all?”

A spokesman for de Leon did not immediately return requests for comment. Clinton’s campaign did not immediately respond as well.

Complaints of a rigged process

This election cycle has been rife with complaints and conspiracy theories that the Democratic nomination process was skewed toward Clinton.

Former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley complained the Democratic National Committee scheduled the debates to favor Clinton. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders had his own concerns. 

Indeed, the complaints of a rigged process from the public and Clinton’s primary opponents and their supporters — some of the complaints were supported by other Wikileaks dumps — were so great that Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz was ousted from her perch atop the DNC.

No biggie?

As voters know, the date of California’s primary did not change. And Clinton won handily in June, as well as in 2008 against Barack Obama.

According to John J. Pitney, Jr., a Roy P. Crocker professor of politics at Claremont McKenna College, those two facts should quiet concerns of a “rigged” election in a “Clinton-friendly state.”

“Conspiracy-minded Democrats might pounce on the staff chatter, but it’s not the kind of thing that makes a difference to voters,” Pitney said. “The issue might get more traction if there are revelations that states did shift dates in a deliberate effort to help Clinton, or if Clinton herself was involved in the effort.”

With a string of key donors left in the lurch by her recent health troubles, Hillary Clinton dispatched her husband Bill to California to fill in.

Political fallout

“She was forced to leave a 9/11 memorial event in New York,” as Yahoo News recalled, “and was seen stumbling limp-legged into a Secret Service vehicle. Clinton’s campaign initially said she had been suffering the ill effects of dehydration and ‘overheating.’ Clinton’s personal physician later disclosed she had been diagnosed with pneumonia on Friday, two days before the 9/11 event, raising broader questions about her campaign’s transparency.”

The ordeal — and the necessity of responding to it in a way that would play well in influential political and media circles — spurred the turn to the former president. “Plans for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to come to the San Francisco Bay Area and Southern California Monday and Tuesday for fundraisers and an appearance on ‘The Ellen DeGeneres Show’ were canceled,” NBC Los Angeles noted. “Huma Abedin called with an urgent request,” as Politico reported. “Could the former president drop his upcoming meetings in Washington, and take over for his pneumonia-felled wife on the campaign trail.”

Big money

Mr. Clinton took on three fundraising events — one in Las Vegas and two in California, hosted by Seth MacFarlane, Diane von Furstenberg and Barry Diller. “Donors were asked to give $5,000 to $33,400 to attend the gathering at MacFarlane’s home, while tickets to the von Furstenberg-Diller dinner were $100,000 a person,” the Washington Post reported. As NBC LA noted, $33,400 is the largest individual yearly contribution to a national party committee permitted by law.

In California, Clinton holds a virtually insurmountable double-digit lead over Trump, despite the Trump campaign’s periodic claims that he could put the deep blue state in play come November. What’s more, Clinton has maintained a sizable war chest advantage relative to Trump’s. But polls have tightened nationwide, including in key swing states, and the Clinton camp has come under internal fire from nervous Democrats. “Clinton remains far ahead of GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump in fundraising, bringing in $143 million in August in conjunction with the Democratic National Committee, compared with the $90 million that Trump raised with the Republican National Committee,” the Post added. “However, his strong small-dollar operation appears to be close to matching hers: Trump now boasts 2.1 million donors to Clinton’s 2.3 million.”

Safety and risk

The use of Clinton’s husband as a surrogate reflected the campaign’s sense of urgency– as well as the importance it placed on coming as close as it could to a satisfying sense of normalcy for the influential backers clustered along the West Coast. “Other than a prime-time speech at the Democratic convention, Bill Clinton’s general election schedule has been purposely low-key, reflecting the Clinton campaign’s desire to keep him from overshadowing his wife or creating unnecessary distractions,” the Sacramento Bee observed. “But those concerns became secondary this week.”

“For all his political gifts, Bill Clinton has been an imperfect messenger on his wife’s health this week. He volunteered in an interview that she’s had episodes like this before and on Wednesday he said she had flu, not pneumonia. A spokesman said he misspoke and meant pneumonia, but such moments provide grist to conspiracy theorists who think Hillary Clinton is hiding health issues.”

Analysts have largely agreed that Hillary will swap back in for Bill as soon as the Clinton campaign decides it is possible for her to do so. “We need to hear directly from the candidate at this point in the election,” a longtime Clinton ally and DNC member told Politico. “It’s nice to have him, but the only real surrogate who works at this point is President Obama.” The sitting president, who has faced heavy lobbying from California Democrats to expand coastal environmental protections and support an extension of Obamacare coverage to unlawfully present immigrants, could soon find himself asked to stump for Clinton on the West Coast as well.

Although Hillary Clinton has benefited from a post-convention bounce, Gov. Jerry Brown’s recent counsel to complacent party members resonated sharply for Democrats, many aligned with Bernie Sanders, concerned that Donald Trump will win the presidency come November.

Calling the horserace “very uncertain and very threatening” to Clinton’s fortunes, Brown recently suggested the campaign and the party go on “full alert,” as The Hill reported. Recalling the bygone rivalry between Brown and the Clintons, the governor made the remarks upon arrival in Philadelphia, site of this year’s Democratic National Convention. “Most famously, in a 1992 Democratic primary debate, Brown, who had served his first two terms as governor, accused Bill Clinton of funneling money for state business to Hillary’s law firm,” as Roll Call recalled. “Jerry Brown caused a ruckus at the 1992 Democratic convention in New York, when he tried to parlay his 600 delegates into a prime-time speaking slot without promising to endorse Bill Clinton.”

A Clinton crisis

The smugness and sense of entitlement Brown has cautioned against on the established Left has sent some left-leaning political analysts into similar alarm. “[T]he insistence in Philadelphia that Democrats represent harmony and inclusion often brought to mind less the Beatles on a BBC ‘Our World’ satellite broadcast in 1967 and more the Ministry of Love on a bender in 1984,” wrote T.A. Frank at Vanity Fair. “At a time when many splits among Americans resemble war more than disagreement, and the Left has been as happy as the Right to stoke rage and hound people out of jobs or public life, neither side gets to call itself the party of love. At least not without being insufferable.” With historic unfavorables for a Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton has had a unique challenge striking a balance between her party’s touchy-feely aspirations and its often strident tone.

As a result, Clinton has struggled to put Trump away, even when she has managed to put polling daylight between him and herself. In a recent CNN/ORC poll, “voters by an 11-point margin think Trump would better handle the economy as president,” The Hill noted. “By a similar margin, voters think Trump would respond better to terrorism than Clinton.”

Insurgent solidarity

Gov. Brown has tried to help Clinton strike the elusive balance she seeks, portraying her as a seasoned party favorite Bernie Sanders supporters can rally behind in good conscience. But his praise for this year’s insurgent candidate has been forceful. “Sanders made it real clear that things aren’t right,” said Brown at a Washington Post-hosted convention-time event, according to the Sacramento Bee. “The legacy of Sanders is a wake-up call.” In his open letter endorsing Hillary Clinton late in the primary season game, Brown heaped praise on Sanders while conceding that he’d simply been beaten fair and square by Clinton. “I have closely watched the primaries and am deeply impressed with how well Bernie Sanders has done,” Brown wrote. He has driven home the message that the top 1 percent has unfairly captured way too much of America’s wealth, leaving the majority of people far behind. In 1992, I attempted a similar campaign.” Yet “Clinton’s lead is insurmountable and Democrats have shown — by millions of votes — that they want her as their nominee.”

Meanwhile, although considerably more conciliatory in Philadelphia toward Hillary Clinton than Brown had been to Bill Clinton at the 1992 Democratic National Convention, Sanders reaffirmed a message that in key respects sounded more like Brown’s did. “Like Sanders, Brown, who accepted no contribution greater than $100 in 1992 — but who has now amassed millions of dollars from large donors — said ‘we’re at the beginning of a long journey,'” the Bee noted. In Brown’s 1992 address, he sounded populist themes now associated most closely with Sanders: “We have to break the growing and dangerous tie-in of economic and political power. We have to save our souls as Democrats, return to our roots, listen to our ancestors and once again fight on the side of the people who pay the bills and fight the wars but never come to our reception.” 

Unfavorable opinions among voters of both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton — the presumptive presidential candidates of the Republican and Democratic parties, respectively — create a do-or-die moment for Libertarians and the Green Party.

But the question is how high can they climb?

In California, probably not very high. But nationally, there’s a great opportunity to get a candidate’s name, party and message out there if they can reach 15 percent in the polls to make it to a debate. From there, ballot access is the main challenge.

The two main third-party candidates are Libertarian Gary Johnson, a former two-term governor of New Mexico, and Jill Stein, a Massachusetts physician and activist whose highest-held elected office was local, who will likely be the Green Party candidate.

Both were their parties’ nominees in 2012, but failed to gain any significant traction — Johnson won almost 1 percent of the popular vote and Stein won one-third of 1 percent. Neither won any states, which is still the biggest challenge for any third-party candidate (Johnson got 3.5 percent in New Mexico and outperformed Stein in Massachusetts). 

So why now?

It’s an open seat, so there won’t be a popular incumbent president, like Barack Obama was in 2012, to contend with.

Also, Americans widely dislike the two (presumptive) major party candidates outside of their core groups of supporters. According to the Real Clear Politics average, 61 percent of Americans see Trump — a Republican business and reality T.V. tycoon — unfavorably, while Clinton — the former first lady, former senator and former secretary of state — fares only slightly better at 55.5 percent unfavorable. “We have never had an election in which both major candidates were so unpopular — many people want to vote against Trump or Clinton without voting for the other,” said John J. Pitney, Jr., a Roy P. Crocker professor of politics at Claremont McKenna College. “The third party option gives them the chance to register their disapproval without giving support to a candidate that they also despise.”

More than an emotional victory

The immediate goals for Libertarians in 2016 are securing ballot access in states and appearing on stage at the debates. Being on the debate stage alongside major party candidates would greatly affect how Americans see a third-party candidate — a victory in itself.

“But of course, you want to win,” said Janine Kloss, the executive director of both the Sacramento County Libertarian Party and the state party.

Kloss — who is awaiting the results of her write-in campaign for a Sacramento-area Assembly seat where a Democrat ran unopposed — noted that this election has proven anything can happen.

“We have someone under FBI investigation and someone who woke up one morning and decided he wanted to be president,” Kloss said.

Third-party candidates of yore

To gain traction, third party candidates usually need a major party candidate to fall apart. In 2006, Joe Lieberman lost the Democratic nomination in his Senate re-election campaign, but won the general as an independent because the Republican candidate collapsed. Bernie Sanders won his two Senate races in Vermont running as an independent because there was no Democratic challenger.

Jesse “The Body” Ventura was an exception to the trend. In 1998, the former pro wrestler beat two relatively strong candidates from the major parties by a narrow margin, winning the Minnesota governorship with 37 percent of the vote.

“They can be factors in a race, but winning is a different story and threshold,” said Nathan L. Gonzales, publisher and editor of The Rothenberg & Gonzales Political Report. “Our country is polarized and primed for the two major parties.”

Spoiler Alert

Often, strong third-party runs play a spoiler role for candidates, as Republicans were worried Trump would do earlier this cycle when they asked him to sign a loyalty pledge. In 1912, Bull Moose Party candidate Teddy Roosevelt stole (a lot) of votes from Republican Howard Taft, paving the way for Democrat Woodrow Wilson to become president.

Prominent segregationist George Wallace — the southern Democratic governor of Alabama who in 1968 ran as an American Independent — took a substantial amount of Electoral College votes from Hubert Humphrey in 1968 to help Richard M. Nixon become president.

Nixon actually had enough electoral votes to beat Humphrey without Wallace’s help, but Wallace still played a prominent role. And in a it’s-a-small-world way, Humphrey’s son was the Democratic-Farm-Labor candidate who lost the gubernatorial race to Ventura in Minnesota.

And Ross Perot, a Texas business man who ran twice as an independent, largely helped Bill Clinton, a Democrat, win the presidency from Republican George H.W. Bush in 1992 and then retain the presidency in 1996 against Republican Bob Dole.
In those races, Roosevelt received 27.4 percent of the popular vote, Wallace received 13.5 percent, and Perot received 18.9 percent and 8.4 percent. Roosevelt and Wallace won several states a piece, Perot won none.

“If more states allocated their Electoral College votes on some sort of proportional grounds, something Perot pushed for, then a third party ticket would be plausible,” said Mark Petracca, chair of the Department of Political Science at UC Irvine. “Right now only Maine and Nebraska have such an allocation scheme.”

Does the three-time White House hopeful read about Hillary Clinton’s slide and left-winger Bernie Sanders’ surge in their presidential duel and wonder whether party leaders might, in desperation, turn to a popular, seasoned big-state governor who’s just a few years older?

This prompted some reaction in political circles before it was drowned out Saturday by reports former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg might make an independent bid for the presidency.

But there are two interesting angles here worth noting. One is that the presidential candidate that Sanders most sounds like is arguably … Jerry Brown, the 1992 version.

Sanders 2016 = Brown 1992

Veteran California political analyst William Bradley, writing in the Huffington Post in 2014, described Brown’s “Take Back America” campaign of 1992:

Running a not infrequently angry populist campaign, Brown vowed to “take back America from the confederacy of corruption, careerism, and campaign consulting in Washington.” He called for term limits on Congress and vowed to take contributions only from individuals and in amounts no greater than $100. In those pre-Internet days, Brown financed his campaign largely through an 800 number, which he flogged relentlessly. Just as some do with web sites URLs today. …

 

In addition to his now customary themes on renewable energy and climate change, Brown championed a progressive version of a flat tax (in which corporations and some wealthy individuals would pay more), living wage measures and a single-payer health care system, and questioned international trade deals.

In 2016, this sounds far more like Bernie Sanders than Jerry Brown’s current iteration as fiscal hawk who plays mostly small-ball politics, except on the environment.

Brown alleged Clintons were corrupt

The other interesting angle is that there may be no more prominent Democrat in America to publicly hold a low opinion of Bill and Hillary Clinton than Brown. In  the 1992 presidential race, as the Christian Science Monitor notes, the bad blood was plain to the world:

They slammed each other’s positions and records, sometimes falsely – Clinton suggesting that Brown had raised taxes during his first stint as governor, Brown alleging that Clinton (as governor of Arkansas) had directed state contracts to Hillary Rodham Clinton’s law firm in Little Rock. And of course it’s all on tape.

Since then, Brown has had little good to say about either Clinton. In a March 2015 Washington Post story about his decision not to run for president again, Brown was asked about his relationship with Bill and Hillary Clinton. His vague response: “It’s all been written about.”

And Brown wouldn’t give her a pass on a controversy that is still in the news.

When asked about the recent controversy over Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email account as secretary of state, Brown said he is not convinced the issue is a passing storm, as many other Democrats contend.

 

“I don’t know that,” Brown said. “With these things, what makes a difference, you often don’t know until it unfolds because nothing is just what it is. It’s always in part of a larger context. Things unfold and things happen.”

Brown singled out Arkansas to mock

More recently, during his only debate with Republican challenger Neel Kashkari in 2014, Brown held up the Clintons’ home state for ridicule when he was asked about California’s ability to deal in the long term with its large unfunded pension liabilities.

“Are we in Arkansas or Mississippi? This is the eighth-largest economy in the world,” he said, ridiculing the idea that the nation’s richest, most populous state would struggle with such a challenge.

When singling out states that are considered the most socially and economically backwards, comedians and social media yuksters usually cite Mississippi or West Virginia. But not Jerry Brown.

Like clockwork, the national media took the hints. On Friday, Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post, one of the nation’s most influential political reporters, wrote a column entitled “The Case for Jerry Brown.” It’s lead:

Amid the breathless speculation as to whether Vice President Biden will get into the Democratic presidential race — and, if not Biden, then who else? — there’s one name that’s consistently overlooked: Jerry Brown.

Cillizza noted not just Brown’s plausibility as a national candidate but his enmity for the Clintons.

When Brown ran for president in 1992, he stayed in the race all the way through the June California primary — where he lost to Bill Clinton by only seven points. The Clinton team made no secret of their unhappiness about how long Brown lingered.

 

Then there was the moment in a March 1992 debate where Brown savaged Clinton over his and his wife’s ties to the Rose Law Firm. “He is funneling money to his wife’s law firm for state business,” said Brown of Bill Clinton. “It’s the kind of conflict of interest that’s incompatible with the kind of public servant we expect.” If you think the Clintons — or Brown — has forgotten about that accusation, you don’t understand how politics works.

Here is a link to a minute from the debate. Bill Clinton’s disgust with Brown is apparent. It’s worth a look.

Singling out Arkansas for ridicule

Brown’s low opinion of the Clintons continues to turn up in obscure ways. In a fall 2014 debate with GOP challenger Neel Kashkari, the governor mocked a question about whether California would be able to pay its vast unfunded pension obligations with this potshot: “Are we in Arkansas or Mississippi? This is the eighth-largest economy in the world,” he declared.

Mississippi is the nation’s poorest state. But according to a report based on government data issued by the liberal Center for American Progress, Arkansas isn’t even in the bottom 10 of impoverished states. It’s home to six Fortune 500 corporations, including giant Walmart, and has a more diversified economy than most Southern states, with civilian aircraft its top export and a booming aquaculture industry. Yet Brown jumped at the chance to belittle Bill Clinton’s home state.

Whatever one thinks about the governor’s record, he is entertaining to watch. He understands how politicians and the media interact better than just about anyone. He knows how a feint can prompt a specific reaction. He enters his high-profile interviews with an agenda, than acts on it.

So what Jerry Brown’s next step when asked about a possible last-minute presidential bid?

A non-denial denial would keep the speculation percolating. We’ll know soon enough.

Brown depicted that as an absurd question for a wealthy state with a proud history and vast resources. “Are we in Arkansas or Mississippi? This is the eighth-largest economy in the world,” he declared.

Yes, of course, the great majority of people would rather live in California than Arkansas or Mississippi. Summers that are like a humid version of Las Vegas kill the soul.

But if Brown is going to mock these states, that invites comparisons.

So here we go. The governor of California holds up Arkansas and Mississipi to ridicule even though …

— They have a much lower poverty rate, according to Census Bureau statistics that also include the cost of living.

— They have much lower unemployment, using the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ more refined U-6 measure that is based on adults who want full-time work but can’t find it, instead of treating part-time workers who rarely have benefits like full-time workers.

— They have far higher rates of home-ownership, too.

As in 1992, Brown takes debate potshot at Clintons

But I get a great kick out of this because I think Jerry Brown knows exactly what he’s doing.

Jerry has had bad blood with the most famous Arkansan of our time since early 1992. That is when, during a Democratic presidential candidate debate, he alleged that Gov. Bill Clinton had funneled state money to the Little Rock law firm of his wife, Hillary Clinton. Bill Clinton was, er, peeved. Here’s a link to a great short clip in which Bill tells Jerry off.

In Thursday night’s debate, Brown could have made his haughty point a number of ways.

He could have said Mississippi and West Virginia. He could have said Mississippi and Alabama. He could have said Mississippi and Louisiana.

But he said “Arkansas or Mississippi.”

If you’re a political junkie, this is delicious.

It worked, and Davis ended up edging out hopeless GOP hopeful Bill Simon — a bland, cookie-cutter social conservative — in 2002.

Jerry Brown was hardly in the same sad shape as his former chief of staff earlier this year. But he could’ve acted in similarly tricky and mendacious fashion, had he wanted. Carla Marinucci of the San Francisco Chronice was the first to make this point:

“It may be one of the biggest mysteries of the June 2014 primary: why didn’t the California Democratic Party weigh in with money and resources — and ‘pick’ the Republican candidate to go up against Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown in the fall?

“Especially since the choice of Tea Party favorite Assemblyman Tim Donnelly, strategists in both parties predicted, would have helped Democrats, and haunted the GOP and its candidates until November. And since the more moderate former Treasury official Neel Kashkari has the potential to appeal to more independents and crossover voters in November, while possibly helping to lift downticket candidates.

“’The California Democratic Party is sitting on a lot of money,’ and Brown has amassed a $20 million war chest, notes Mike Madrid, the co-director of the USC/Los Angeles Times poll and a longtime California politics watcher.

“’For a very small amount, the party could have launched attacks on moderate Republican Neel Kashkari, and ‘assured that Tim Donnelly was the GOP nominee.'”

Two theories on why the gov took the high road

The gov is no dummy. So here are two theories about why he didn’t pursue this monkey-wrenching:

1) He didn’t think it was honorable. I know this will be laughed off by some, but the Jerry Brown on display for much of the 1990s consistently sounded like a populist idealist who hated coarse politics. If this was in any way genuine, Brown might actually find the idea of manipulating Republican voters to pick his opponent to be distasteful.

2) He didn’t think it would help him, or maybe even California, to have the state GOP be even weaker than it is. It has hardly reached the levels of Bill Clinton, but Brown is a triangulator as well, offering himself as a third point of reference in Sacramento’s political wars between his own free-spending Democrats and allegedly heartless Republicans. He likes the current balance of power.

The possibility that I don’t buy is that the governor didn’t think about manipulating the GOP race. Especially given what Gray Davis did in 2001, it had to have been on his mind.

His campaign message — California is back, I fixed a state ruined by Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, I’m solving pension and other problems and can do the same for America’s — could resonate in 2016 with Democratic primary voters.

The Washington Post just ran a humorous story on Brown’s feud with the Clintons going back to the 1992 primaries. So if Hillary runs, as seems likely, Brown would get another chance to tweak them by running in the primaries.

True, Brown today is 76. But Hillary is 66 and would be 69 if elected in Nov. 2016. That’s a year shy of how old Ronald Reagan, the oldest elected president, was when he entered the White House in 1981.

The Post on the 1992 campaign:

After Clinton locked up the nomination, Brown pushed for the ability to give a speech from the floor of the Democratic Convention, hosted that year in New York City. He wasn’t allowed to do so, but was eventually allowed to second his own nomination. He used the opportunity to launch into a restating of his campaign themes: fighting the “growing concentration of wealth” and banning “political action committees so people and corporations are on the same level.” (If he does run in 2016, he’s got his platform all-but-set.)

It used to be any prominent politician, Republican or Democrat, could get at least a few minutes to speak at his party’s convention. But the Clintons began the unfortunate policy of freezing out those they didn’t like. Also prevented from speaking at the 1992 Democratic National Convention was Pennsylvania Gov. Bob Casey (father of current U.S. Sen. Bob Casey Jr.) because he wanted to give a pro-life speech.

In a similar fashion, after Pat Buchanan gave his infamous “Culture War” speech at the 1992 Republican National Convention — which didn’t “declare” a culture war, as it’s often portrayed, but only announced one already existed, which in 2014 is obviouis — the GOP shut down any dissenting voices beginning at their 1996 convention.

That’s why, except for Clint Eastwood’s extempore performance at the 2012 GOP Convention — you don’t tell Dirty Harry how to make his day — since 1996 both party conventions have been staged and boring.

Here’s some of the fireworks from the Brown vs. Clinton debate in 1992:

“SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — A bill that passed the Assembly with unanimous bipartisan support Thursday encourages California schools to teach students about the racial significance of Barack Obama’s presidency.

“The Assembly approved AB 1912 with a 71-0 vote and no debate or discussion. It now heads to the state Senate.

“The bill by Assemblyman Chris Holden, D-Pasadena, asks state education officials to include Obama’s election in history and social studies standards laying out what students are expected to learn.

“High school history students already learn about recent presidents. But Holden says lessons about Obama also should focus on what his election meant for racial equality and civil rights.

“He said on the Assembly floor that the 2008 election ‘should not just be a mere footnote within textbooks, but rather focus on the significance of Americans overcoming our nation’s past and acknowledging that Americans are moving in the right direction.'”

Just how will ‘racial significance’ be framed?

But flash-forward a few years to when these lesson plans are in place: How will the “significance” be explained?

Republicans, conservatives and libertarians who have witnessed the amazing media protection racket for Obama have every reason to fear the worst.

In normal circumstances, they could assume Holden’s bill yielded a classroom narrative in which Obama’s election was depicted as a societal triumph because it shows how America was now a place where a member of a once-enslaved race could become president.

In our present swamp, however, media assertions and insinuations that racism drives criticism of Obama are everywhere. even though Republicans hated Bill Clinton every bit as much as Barack Obama. So I won’t be surprised if Obama’s election is depicted as a triumph not over historical racism but rampant current racism.

Still, I harbor a tiny hope that historians are less baldly in the tank than the media for our fiasco-in-chief.

Any scholar who is able to pull back and look at the Obama presidency from a bigger perspective than daily journalism is going to notice the absence of foreign-policy triumphs and the groundswell in nations that like the U.S. less under Obama than his predecessors; the list starts with such fundamental allies as Canada, Britain, Germany and Israel.

Any scholar who contemplates Obamacare from a bigger perspective than daily journalism has to see the astoundingly inept implementation of the sweeping law as a presidential debacle — even if one thinks it was a great goal.

Any scholar who looks at the economy from a bigger perspective than daily journalism will see that probably half the counties in the nation never recovered from the great recession — and that the states that flourished the most under Obama (Texas, North Dakota) did so in spite of him, not because of him.

Will he be graded on (absent) accomplishments — or symbolism?

Historians usually — usually — grade presidents more on execution than on their good intentions and/or cultural symbolism. So for now, at least, when it comes to who is in the tank for Obama, this is my equation:

Broadcast media > print media > historians > bloggers > pro golfers

C’mon, academia: Reward my faith by being appropriately tough on the 44th president.