To get a whiff of how bad things are in San Francisco – not in its aromatic streets, but in its sanctuary city status – consider two cases both going on around the issue of reasonable modifications toward the city's extremist succor for illegal aliens.

First, Gavin Newsom, the former mayor of the city who's now the frontrunner for the California governor's job.  The Sacramento Bee has the goods:

As mayor of San Francisco, Gavin Newsom in 2008 spearheaded a citywide policy requiring law enforcement officers to report juvenile undocumented immigrants [sic] to Immigration and Customs Enforcement when charged with committing violent felony crimes.

Newsom, a Democrat and the front-runner in the race to succeed Gov. Jerry Brown, now says that was the wrong approach.

"These were people charged ... but not convicted.  Some people ultimately were exonerated that got caught up in it," Newsom said in an interview with The Sacramento Bee.  "I'll just say this to my critics: fair game.  Looking back, there were things we could have done differently.  I'm very honest about that."

The context was the 2008 MS-13 slaughter of an entire family, the Bologna family, in San Francisco by illegals who were well known to cops for their past murders.  There also was the 2015 pierside murder of 30-year-old Kate Steinle, for which the five-times-deported illegal got off scot-free, as the jury suggested that it wanted to punish President Trump.  Lots of illegals, young or otherwise, pretty well know they have nothing to worry about on the deportation front when they live in San Francisco and commit new crimes on top of their old ones.  Newsom caved following activist blasts from the left.

Newsom's move was a reasonable modification to the city's sanctuary city law that had created sanctuary for avowed criminals and enabled them to commit new crimes without fear of the migra.  At the time, it had widespread public support.  But the fringe left, led by a top Democratic Party operative named David Campos, a former illegal, an ex-Board of Supervisors extremist, and now a leftist with a cushy city job in nearby Santa Clara County, excoriated him for it.  And Newsom caved.

What a pathetic, runny, melty, blow-with-the-wind, yellow-bellied governor Newsom would be.  With that disavowal, it's obvious he has no intention of representing the interests of Californians in this illegal alien dilemma – just the illegal alien lobby.  He's their creature.

Case two is quite a bit nastier.

Angela Alioto, a former San Francisco supervisor and former acting mayor (and the daughter of the much beloved old San Francisco mayor, Joe Alioto), introduced an important resolution to the Democrats' platform, calling for convicted criminals in the city illegally caught a second time to be turned over to ICE.  She introduced that in response to a serial rapist running around who'd been wanted for deportation already and still hasn't seen the inside of an ICE holding cell after his latest spree.  Unlike Newsom, Alioto didn't back down.

The response to her?  Campos (him again) blasted her as pro-Trump and referred her to the Democratic Party's discipline panel for "action" and "discussion," which sounds a helluva lot like Communist Party discipline, complete with "self-criticism."  Campos may well have such a communist background; he arrived in the U.S. in the 1980s as a kid from Guatemala to join his meteorologist father, who was in the U.S. illegally and sure doesn't sound like an illiterate peasant.

Former Bay Guardian honcho Tim Redmond posted a post from Alioto's Facebook page, where Alioto wrote:

David Campos is attacking me again because I want to make sure that our Sanctuary Law does NOT protect rapists, murderers and people who do mayhem. ...

Campos, CHAIR of the DEMOCRATED COMMITTEE that I was elected to has put me on the agenda for the July 25th meeting at 630pm.  Here is what the agenda says: ...

10. Resolution Supporting the Decriminalization of Immigrant Communities and Condemning Any Action by San Francisco Democratic Party Leadership to Weaken Protections for the Immigrant Community (DeJesus) (Discussion and possible action)

The operative words are "possible action".  I have a First Amendment Right to speak and several other Constitutional Rights to put an ordinance on the ballot.  I cannot in America be punished as they are suggesting.  They are over the top unhinged ideologies that will only make Trump president again.

Not to mention what they are doing to me is absolutely militant and should they "act", they will be saying "good morning judge" for a very long time.

Redmond dismissed her alarm at the outrageous treatment she got as oh, woman's emotionalism or something.  Nothing tops illegals, see.  He even doubted that she knew what she was talking about, despite her being a civil rights attorney by profession who most certainly did know what she was talking about.  After that, Redmond focused on a non-issue, which was some commenter in Texas on her site sounding as though he was making a threat on Alioto's Facebook page, which the man says he never intended.

The real story is how badly Alioto was treated for just trying to assuage the festering blanket sanctuary policy in San Francisco, which is making it a cesspit of ever more outrageous crimes by illegals.  Alioto, understand, is no conservative.  But she is a realist, and she knows how badly the crimes of illegals from her city play out nationally.  Trying to make something a little less awful – if, for nothing else, preserving the status quo on sanctuary cities – got her attacked by the more extremist elements in the party, facing party discipline, no doubt with self-criticism and show trials.  It's the old Leon Trotsky, Grigory Zinoviev, and Nikolai Bukharin thing.

Worst of all, she gets called a Trumpster.

Alioto herself has warned that extremism is what gets more votes for Trump.  For that, she gets called pro-Trump again.  There is no listening to her argument among the ruling elites of the Bay Area.  They are going to rake her over the coals if she doesn't back down, because nothing trumps illegals in their extremist minds.  They got Newsom; now they are going for Alioto.  It shows that the illegals business in that city is the work of fanatics.