Daniel vs. Donald: Which White Hope? What Hope?

Okay, so here we are. Again. A city on the edge, balancing a budget with a hole so deep you could drop every good intention into it and never hear them hit the bottom. And at the same time, in the exact same America, Donald Trump is back in the White House, signing executive orders like a man trying to cross things off a list before his plane takes off, stripping federal money from cities that don’t show him the proper reverence.

And San Francisco—oh, beautiful, self-satisfied, cracked-mirror San Francisco—is at the center of it. Because of course it is. Because for a certain kind of person, the kind who rants on AM radio about “coastal elites,” San Francisco is the symbol of everything wrong with America. The city where they imagine people eat avocado toast while stepping over human misery. Where tech billionaires and homeless people live in the same three-block radius but seem to exist in completely different dimensions. Where the government, to hear some people tell it, is an actual villain, a bureaucracy that would rather give free needles to junkies than keep a business district alive.

Which is, you know, not totally untrue, but also not the full truth, which is that San Francisco has been set up to fail for a long time. The social services that were supposed to keep people from falling through the cracks? Underfunded for decades. The economic system that was supposed to allow people to afford to live in the city? Hijacked by wealth inequality so vast it doesn’t even register as real to most people. The solutions that were supposed to come from Washington? Gutted by one administration after another.

And now, with Trump in power again, it’s about to get worse.

Which is why we need to talk about Daniel Lurie.

Mayor Lurie, the son of wealth, the man with the nonprofit background and the fresh-pressed optimism of someone who hasn’t yet learned just how exhausting it is to be in charge of San Francisco. Right now, Lurie is talking about fiscal responsibility. He’s talking about cutting $1 billion in “overspending,” about getting rid of what doesn’t work. He’s taking meetings, reading reports, trying to find the exact right amount of budget-slashing that won’t make people too angry.

But here’s the thing, the thing people know but don’t say because saying it out loud means you have to deal with what it implies: The system is broken beyond what budget cuts can fix.

And not broken in a way where a tough, no-nonsense businessman can come in and streamline things. Not broken in a way where, if we just stop “wasting money,” everything will get better.

It’s broken because America is broken. Because homelessness is a policy choice. Because drug addiction is a policy choice. Because pretending that cutting social services will somehow make the problem of human suffering go away is the biggest, dumbest, most fraudulent lie we tell ourselves every election cycle.

And Lurie has a choice to make.

He can be like every mayor before him. He can talk about efficiency and balance sheets. He can tell us that sometimes tough choices have to be made and that we all have to tighten our belts, except of course for the people whose belts are already so tight they can’t breathe. He can play it safe, try to fix the machine without really changing it. And then, in four or eight years, we’ll be here again, with the same problems, with the same holes in the budget, with the same human lives spilling out into the street, unwanted, unaccounted for.

Or—or—he can be the hero.

He can do the thing that people don’t say out loud because it sounds too big, too unrealistic. He can stand up and say: The system is broken, and we are not going to fix it by pretending it isn’t.

He can refuse to play the game the way it’s always been played. He can turn to the city’s billionaires, the tech gods and finance wizards, and say: You live here. You profit off this city. You do not get to sit on the sidelines while the people who make this city run are left to rot.

He can go to Washington, stand in front of cameras, and say: Donald Trump wants us to fail. He wants San Francisco to be proof that liberal cities don’t work. And I will not let him have that proof.

He can use every ounce of political capital he has to tell the truth that no one else is brave enough to say: We need more money, not less. We need to be spending more on housing, more on addiction treatment, more on long-term care. Not because it’s charity, but because it’s the only thing that will work.

This is his moment.

Trump is coming for cities like San Francisco. Not just with budget cuts, but with a whole philosophy that says people who can’t survive on their own don’t deserve to survive at all. Lurie can either stand by and let that happen, or he can fight.

And here’s the thing: If he fights, if he really fights, he might not win. He might lose everything.

But if he doesn’t fight, if he just plays it safe and does the responsible thing and makes the “hard choices” that always seem to mean cutting from the people who need the most—then he’s already lost.

And so have we.

The city is hot today. Unnaturally hot, the kind of heat that makes people nervous, that makes you feel like something is off, like something is coming.

Lurie has a choice. Stand up or stand down. Be the mayor who tried to manage a slow decline, or be the mayor who took a risk, who put everything on the line, who made history.

Jessie Street is waiting. The city is waiting.

And whether he likes it or not, Donald Trump is watching too.

Tocayo! I have hope...