On the one hand, it’s no surprise to me that so many San Francisco Democrats are a bunch of mean girls. On the other hand, I can sort of see how the establishment was suspicious when a woman named Cyn Wang wanted to create a new Democratic club aimed at making the Democratic Party more family friendly. That would absolutely set off alarm bells with the average San Francisco Democrat and it did.

Cyn Wang voted for Elizabeth Warren and later Joe Biden in 2020. She’s a progressive Democrat who is married to a woman and who is concerned about social justice. But when she tried to set up a new Westside Family Democratic Club she was accused of being a closet racist or worse, a closet Republican.

Wang and other parents living on the city’s sleepy, politically moderate west side asked the San Francisco Democratic Party  last week to charter their new club, the Westside Family Democratic Club. They want to register more voters in Districts One, Four and Seven in time for next year’s big elections and persuade families to get involved in civic life rather than bail on our struggling city.

But party members rebuffed them over a host of ill-defined concerns: They invited Supervisor Joel Engardio, a leader in last year’s school board recall movement, to an event! Their members include some well-off families! They say they’re Democrats, but what if they’re actually closeted Republicans? What if Republicans are funneling dark money into their bank accounts? In the most out-of-nowhere chatter of all, some party members speculated that the club co-founders are racist…

The club wants to improve the city’s public schools, make its streets cleaner and safer, get more housing built and strengthen public transit — a platform most Democrats across the political spectrum say they support. They met all the criteria to get chartered, including getting enough registered Democrats to join and filling out the proper paperwork.

Their attempts to charter the new club eventually led to a Zoom call with all the people who needed to approve it. Two people on the call spoke against them being chartered. One was Brandee Marckmann an opponent of the school board recall that Cyn Wang had supported.

“I know a Republican when I see one,” Marckmann said of Engardio and the club founders, all Democrats.

Tenant activist Jordan Davis also opposed the charter, saying the word “family” is “a common dog whistle on the right,” that the club would be a funnel for Republican dark money and that the club wants to turn San Francisco into a “bland-ass gated community.”

“F– you, Westside Family Democratic Club!” Davis shouted into the computer screen. “I yield my time! F– you!”

I don’t know who Jordan Davis is but I’d recognize the shriek of the woke left anywhere and that’s definitely it.

After that outburst one of the voting members of the DCCC on the Zoom call questioned one of the group’s other founders, asking him to explain why they used “family” in their name. He did his best to answer but several DCCC members voted to table plans for the new club. In other words, it didn’t get approved even though it had met the requirements. One of the people on the Zoom call who supported the new club told the Chronicle, “It’s very, ‘You’re not even allowed in.’ It’s very ‘Mean Girls.’ ”

The chairperson on the call plans to schedule another vote and she told the Chronicle she things the real concern is that the new club might help put up a moderate challenger to the City Supervisor in District One. So maybe there’s a bit more than just mean girl politics going on here but not much.

As an outsider to all of this I hope the same moderating forces that recalled members of the school board and DA Chesa Boudin continue to organize and counteract the extremists in the party. Of course if the Democrats really want to stick with the idea that families are solely a Republican concern, that works for me too. Eventually the extremists will learn but it’s more fun to watch when they learn the hard way.