- cross-posted to:
- progressivepolitics@lemmy.world
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Do I like seeing him fuck with Trump? Yes.
Is he a dirty neo liberal? Yes.
Would I support him in a primary for President in 2028? Probably not. I sure hope someone better shows up.
Would I support him if he won the Democratic primary? Yes. Assuming we get elections. Assuming the DNC hasn’t fully fractured and a third party candidate cannot reasonably win.
Would he fix our country? No. See item 2.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk. Its not hard, people.
This is the way.
I desperately wish it was this straightforward to the majority of people who shape our future in this country.
I am firmly convinced that most of our population doesn’t have internal language, no internal tools for abstracting ideas into mental words for comparison and evaluation, and just spout rhetoric by instinct. Literally, this is why everyone seems so stupid… they’ve changed the way their minds work by scrolling all day, every day, and not socializing and not changing habits.
Nuance is something that you can only arrive at if you have this mental narrative tool that lets you see multiple angles of an issue.
This means that our future of politics is going to be entirely grifters riding on this fact and creating over-the-top caricatures and WWE theater style politics. And people will eat it up because everyone just wants something to be all-in for or all-against so they can fight with the opposing fans. We’re so fucking cooked.
Yeah it can’t be that people are frustrated about living in a country where they’re in a permanent minority and will never be happy with their government.
Thank you for the non-sequitur response. I will return in kind with “Banana kneecap caterpillar establishment.”
Libs and dismissing any criticism from progressives. Can’t name a more iconic duo.
I am dismissing your complete lack of effort in engaging with a point, if it makes you feel better to think of someone who called that shit out as a “lib” then have it, meanwhile I will continue to rally people behind the point that a third of our population is too stupid with to continue to engage with using the same liberal political methods of inclusion and mediocrity and financial status-quo. I don’t know where that leaves you, but please do it over there on the other side of the curb.
You said people are stupid and lack a sense of nuance.
I pointed out that people are frustrated and don’t give a fuck about nuance anymore, and that’s why we’re fucked.
Sorry I didn’t spell that out for you.
Yes, you do have to make an effort to connect topics when communicating.
And sure, there is a problem with apathy, but that’s not THE problem. The last three presidential elections have seen the highest voter turnout in American history, it’s not a problem with people not caring as much as being too easily swayed to care about the wrong things, and this comes from a lack of education, lack of language skills, lack of cognitive ability broadly. When you say “People are too frustrated to care about nuance” yes, this IS stupidity. Stupidity isn’t some magic potion, it’s caused by things. In this case, it’s been designed by corporate interests using fascism to further this goal of a dumb, easily manipulated population.
Good take. Maybe the Kamala protest abstainers will have a fresh enough dose of Trumpism to remember that halfway-kind-of-decent-sometimes is better than literally-the-worst-possible-decision-at-all-times. I hope we still have elections. I hope we are not stuck with Newsom as the only choice. But if we are, he IS the only choice, and even though he’s not nearly a progressive, he is far closer to it than whatever the GOP rolls out with in 3 years (whether it is Trump again, Trump Jr., Vance, or a new piece of shit far right authoritarian). We need to make sure he wins, and that means getting your asses to the booth. All of us. Even you.
I also have noticed that literally 0 of the “we can’t vote for Democrats, stop voting for them, that is the way to progress” strategists have anything to say about candidates to support before the primary, protest organizations to join in the meantime, anything generally productive that is outside of the general election they’re so gung-ho about giving their input to.
Right now would be the time to be looking around for good midterm or primary candidates who aren’t corporate whores, talking up third parties or reforms that would make third parties viable, all that kind of stuff. Nope. Just “let the Republicans win” in the general election, and then, crickets. And now occasionally popping up to shit on Gavin Newsom when he’s tangling with Trump, like a romantic partner who is grabbing on your arm and screaming “stop it!” while you’re in the middle of a fistfight. Just fuckin’ helping, the lot of them, from morning till night.
Many of the fake “leftist” that refuse to vote, have also never voted and don’t know how elections work. Dig around on Lemmy enough and you’ll find whole arguments with several hundred people that have no clue what a primary is. I know because I’ve been involved with trying to educate them. I’ve learned to just ignore idiots. Similar to other sites, I just had higher expectations for Lemmy.
They aren’t Americans and probably not “leftist”
Goddam. You guys sure love hoping someone else learns lessons. You ever hope democrats learn a little something?
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No, they’re the ones who failed to win that election. They’re the ones who willfully did everything they could to avoid taking principled positions and connecting with voters. Will they do it again? You betcha. Go ahead and be mad at millions of people, or demand a bit more from the couple of hundred of your “leaders” whose entire job it is to win elections.
Wish I had your faith in American voters.
I’m not sure how to take your comment in this context. Do you have more faith in the dem party to run popular and successful campaigns? Whether you have faith in the voters or not, you still need to get them to vote for you.
So, you think that if the Dems run a candidate with principled stances and popular positions that people would support them.
I have no such faith in the American voter. They can’t tell the difference between principles and propaganda, and they have no idea what’s good for them.
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Aw shucks pardner, you’ve convinced me to vote against my conscience! Adding my vote will surely put us over the top. What’s that? We need to convince millions more? Well, okay, sure seems like it might be easier to scare a few politicians into doing what’s right, but I’m down to hear your plan. The plan is to gaslight and browbeat people who recognize the moral bankruptcy in the Democratic party until they just vote for them anyway? Can I at least pretend that genocidal dementia patients like Joe Biden are actually “the most progressive president in history”? I can? Damn, I’m really understanding the attraction now!
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I very clearly said that I hope we are not stuck with him. Hoping that Dems get their shit together and act right or at least get out of the waybof those who do is a constant state for me.
“halfway-kind-of-decent-sometimes”
You mean the same person that refused to say “Genocide is bad, and we shouldn’t support it”? The same person who proudly stood behind Biden when was bombing innocent people? The same person who put people in prison for marijuana, then laughed about it when talking about smoking herself? The same person who campaigned with the Cheneys?
I think your definition of “halfway-kind-of-decent-sometimes” might be different than mine. All we’re looking for is someone who isn’t a monster, and she couldn’t even pull that off.
This is why the Democrats keep losing, and have such a low approval rating: They keep normalizing monsters, and can’t figure out why the voters don’t like that.
I mean someone who will not literally destroy our democracy to remain in power. The bare minimum.
You mean the people from the DNC who pretty openly refuse to have fair elections? The same party that has shit on civil rights for decades? How is that not destroying our Democracy?
You’re right. Better to just actively or indirectly (through inaction) support the party that is currently actively revoking civil rights on a national scale, and planning to rig/end elections to stay in power indefinitely. That will fix the broken system.
That will fix the broken system.
That’s what gets me about this whole thing. There’s plenty of core of truth to the idea that the Democrats are very bad, although yes the alternative currently is infinitely worse. There are thousands of things that any given person could do to try to fix that or work for better things in American politics. Refusing to elect Democrats anymore, no matter what, is 0 of them, and will make things quite a lot worse.
It’s like punishing your child for bad grades by refusing to feed them anymore. One, it doesn’t address the problem, two, it will make even the thing you say you are upset about and trying to fix, infinitely worse.
Functionally, things are the way they are because the people that want to change things for the better do not make up the majority of people yet. Plenty of the boomers are still happy with the status quo since most of it doesn’t directly impact them. Gen X even was more right leaning than the boomers in 2024.
Just looking at the number of people that actually vote, neo-liberal boomers and Gen Xers will still be dictating policy for another decade at the least. If they aren’t progressive, most of the policy getting passed will not be either.
This isn’t even taking into account the way that land has more power than people in the US either. Sparsely populated red states hold just as much power in the Senate as New York or California. The House is currently capped on the number of Representatives as well, meaning that those small red states are over represented and larger blue and purple states are underrepresented.
The best shot at changing anything before another decade passes is by starting locally to each of us. We can try to do what New York City did and implement an alternative voting system in our own cities, that will help immensely to get more people like Mamdani in office. If we garner enough support at the city and local levels, we might even be able to be like Maine or Alaska and get an alternative voting system in place at the state level.
Alternative voting systems are pretty much the only real way third parties will have a chance to get off the ground and have a seat at the table on a national level. The main reason for that is because it helps mitigate the spoiler effect; where your preferred candidate and the safe candidate knock each other out allowing your least preferred candidate to win elections.
Want to help? Get the word out about alternative voting systems and organizations that promote them. Get involved locally.
Underrepresented Fediverse Social Media Accounts:
Involvement Links:
Who said to do that? I certainly didn’t. I push for parties that and actions that are actually trying to do something against the current party. The Democrats are the ones that have spent their time propping up and actively supporting the current party.
You started this conversation by advocating for not voting for Newsom if he is the only candidate with a chance against the GOP. If your “other parties” have fractional support of the democrats come general election day, they’re not viable alternatives and your vote for them is functionally identical to not voting at all.
By all means, I 100% support advocacy for change, for reform, for new people and ideas in power. But we also have a shitty voting system that means you usually need to pick the least of two evils come election day. And you need to be practical and make peace with that. I wish we had something like Approval voting where there was no push to a two party split and everyone could vote for every candidate or party they like, and I would support voting reform in that direction all day every day, but that is not what we have now.
Hard disagree. The voters very clearly do like monsters.
Some do, sure. But the two major parties have only put monsters on the ballot for the past few decades, so we don’t really know how many would pick a non-monster given the chance.
Parties didn’t put those politicians on the ballot, voters did. The Democratic party got rid of smoke filled rooms and contested conventions in the 1970’s and the Republican party followed suit in the 1980’s.
If you are disatisfied with the pols on offer, you have only to look to your neighbors.
lol, you mean the same DNC that said “…the DNC charter’s promise of ‘impartiality and evenhandedness’ as a mere political promise—political rhetoric that is not enforceable in federal courts.” ?
The same party that openly rigged the past two elections for the candidates that they wanted?
Rigged how? Do you think they flipped votes? Who got more primary delegates? Sanders? Biden? Or Clinton?
The voters are often just as behind at times as the politicians they put into office. The lion’s share of the voters are neo-liberal Boomers and Gen Xers, of which the Gen Xers are more conservative than the boomers as of 2024.
We’re not going to look much different for ant least another decade unless suddenly a ton of Millennials and Zoomers show up to vote in record breaking numbers.
Changing our voting systems locally and on the state level is the best chance we have at making a difference within the next 10 years, imo. It opens up access for third parties to grow and it lets progressive have a better chance of squeaking out wins against the neo-liberal incumbents.
Ranked choice voting is a good idea, but time will not save us. Millenians are shifting right, just a decade behind other generations.
Backing big oil list my vote
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Today Texas Democrats will be present for the session that will gerrymander their state, they could have stayed out of the state to keep it from passing, but the decided to return and allow it to pass.
The gerrymandering that Gavin says will happen in California is going to be voted on in November, it will probably not happen.
This chain of events will result in Republicans gaining extra control in the house/senate, because of the choices and lies made by Democrats.
probably wont happen, what makes you say that?
It’s been the cycle for the last 40 or so years
The way we stop the cycle is to stop it
The gerrymandering that Gavin says will happen in California is going to be voted on in November, it will probably not happen.
I will say this. They aren’t waiting until November 2026 to vote on it. So they’re at least pretending to take this seriously.
But I’ll also say that some right-wing court is going to decide the ballot measure is unconstitutional. And the California Dems are going to throw up there hands, announce collectively “Oh well we tried!”, and then find a way to blame Transgender people for the Permanent Republican House Majority.
Wow, never good enough is it. This is why progressives fail to accomplish much.
Obligatory “water is wet” post.
Sorry to Steven but with a last name like that, you gotta work to get me to trust you. If Jesus came back as a Prager, I’d be the first to sell his ass for a shekel.
‘Vote blue no matter who’ lasted long, I see.
Don’t care. Way better than fascism and besides, the tweets are hilarious.
You Americans don’t learn, constantly punching left, nobody is good enough to be an ally. While the right is unified and eating your lunch
He’s not on the left though. He only ran as a dem because he is in California and Republicans have no chance there
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You want me to go though his entire polical history to show how he’s only on the side of whatever he thinks is popular instead of being principled?
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So yes you do on a thread about this article?
https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/2023/11/gavin-newsom-is-not-a-progressive
Or you just want it from other sources?
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Newsom was sworn in by his father and pledged to bring his business experience to the board.[23] Brown called Newsom “part of the future generation of leaders of this great city”.[23] Newsom described himself as a “social liberal and a fiscal watchdog”.[23][24] He was elected to a full four-year term to the board in 1998. San Francisco voters chose to abandon at-large elections to the board for the previous district system in 1999. Newsom was reelected in 2000 and 2002 to represent the second district, which includes Pacific Heights, the Marina, Cow Hollow, Sea Cliff and Laurel Heights, which had San Francisco’s highest income level and highest Republican registration.[25] Newsom paid $500 to the San Francisco Republican Party to appear on the party’s endorsement slate in 2000 while running for Supervisor.[26] He was reelected.[27]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gavin_Newsom
You want more?
This is true to an extent, but when you look at the history of the moral majority (new right movement) and what actually unified the right, it should give you some context about how the Dems aren’t really doing themselves any favors by distancing themselves from progressive values. The right were always willing to offer some concessions to what were once considered fringe voters (and now is essentially the base of the Republican party) in exchange for their vote.
I say this as someone who is almost always willing to vote blue no matter who, continuously catering to the wealthy and failing to follow through on promises is going to be the nail in the coffin for Democrats (and possibly American democracy in general). Midterms will probably be their last chance to get it right (if we’re even allowed to vote) and they are definitely not off to a good start by giving the cold shoulder to Mamdani.
It’s very hard to battle voter apathy and “both sides” disinformation when Democrats will not even acknowledge that much of what progressives are asking for is pretty reasonable. Establishment Dems seem to believe once they’re accused of cultural marxism (which btw is a term that was popularized by the same people that created the moral majority/new right) they will lose centrists voters that might help them gain an edge over the competition. Meanwhile they seem to be oblivious to all the support on the left that they’re absolutely hemorrhaging.
Some of that support is going to the right (and those are the people Gavin Newsome seemed really be worried about reaching with his podcast that “reached across the aisle” to some absolutely vile people), but a big chunk is being lost to people who just no longer see a point in bothering to vote for an establishment that seems to intentionally exclude and dismiss them.
Punching Newsom is punching up. Telling voters they are wrong to criticize him in regards to economics, Zionism, LQBTQ rights, and social safety nets IS punching left.
I believe what I believe, and whoever shares my values, will get my support. Compromising on my values to get some kind of “strategic alliances” is something I don’t do. If you look across the world and across history, that generally doesn’t end well in the long term.
Bruh what do you think political parties are?
Unions, national alliances, society… It’s all people compromising on their individual values.
Good for you for letting perfect be the enemy of good, bet you feel so vindicated as the world burns down around you.
And where did partisan politics bring us to? The world is burning down around us even without my help. I think this validates my point.
I dunno, I’d say the left tried it your way in 2016 and 2024 and how’s that working out?
As long as you vote for someone I don’t care whether you choose the candidate that I would vote for. There’s no wasted votes, I’ve voted 3rd party when the major candidates aren’t someone I can vote for in good conscience.
If you abstain on “principle” because there isn’t a politician that perfectly aligns with your values then yeah, you’re just dumb and you’re part of the problem.
About 60% of the country votes in the general election, much less in the primaries, and much, much less in local elections. People that don’t vote because they can’t be assed suck, but the ones that sit on a high horse and scoff at the system that they play a huge hand in perpetuating through some misguided moral high ground are literally the worst.
newsom could have just not done a photo op while clearing encampments.
between that and pandering to conservatives on trans rights I see no reason to trust the guy further than I can throw him
Listen, I know we are the tiny bubble, so posting this here has no negative effect — but 2028 has to be about people on the right and left joining together to repudiate fascism and totalitarianism. Who cares about the past under these circumstances. I hope that Newsom’s lack of prog cred gives him cred with the pugs who hate Trump. Or are lukewarm on Trump.
The right does not think this is fascism. So, there goes that fantasy.
There has to be economic pain so bad that they can’t refute it anymore. That’s our only hope.
That or Trump dying before the end of his term.
2028 has to be about people on the right and left joining together to repudiate fascism and totalitarianism
not pictured are all the ignorant morons that believe billionaire news media that sanewashes the people those pictured in hoods follow.
reality has nuance, removing it hurts us all.
The Harris thinking Cheney would sway voters pipeline again? Oof.
The right wants this. You are hopelessly deluded if you think they will lift a finger to prevent it. Double if they have to work with the libs they despise.
the “right” that you refer to doesn’t exist, because the overton window has been slammed really fucking far right. There is a sea of idiots somewhere in the middle, Trump was able to take advantage of that, telling them he would fix it all quickly. That lie will only become harder to ignore as these same idiots struggle more and more to afford groceries.
These are the people that are not hard right, but they are hard dumb. Reality and struggle is the best teacher and they’re about to get a lesson they have never had before in their safe relatively comfortable American lives.
By just crossing them all off as ‘the right’ and that they want fascism is foolish and self-defeating. Yes the far right DO want this, but everyone that isn’t some semblance of ‘left’ are absolutely not the only ones that don’t.
Blanket statements provide no value, only serve to remove nuance, and the removal of nuance only serves fascists.
Prager? Is that the Prager U guy?
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Don’t care. He’s not a fascist and that’s enough right now.
Do you know what a primary is?
He also wants to win an election in 2028 not pander to left wing donors in 2025.
Not to mention avoiding the mistakes Harris made. It is perfectly clear that it is impossible to veer left enough to stop the left from attacking you for not veering far enough to the left.
It’s just as clear it is impossible to veer right enough to scrape a single vote off the republican ticket. The left will criticize, but veer left and at least some will hold their noses and (protest sign in hand) vote anyway.
This is a huge problem in mindset in my opinion. Yes he’s better than Trump. But I can grab a random person off the streets and they’d probably clear that bar. Our economic and political systems will always pool power into fewer and fewer peoples hands. We need drastic rethinking of how our society is going to work because Newsom will 100% sales out the American people when the rubber meets the profits. The old system are dead. We are just experiencing the symptoms and only wanting to stop the pain. Not cure the sickness.
Reddit just called me a Republican plant for not liking newsom. Before the primaries have even started. Pisses me off
It’s the “if you don’t like Biden you’re a Russian troll” all over again. It’s started.
It’s happening here too
Remember when we were told that we could criticize Dems during non-election years?
Or primaries were the time to have debate, but I guess that too has gone out the window with the DNC tiping the scales since 2016.
Nope. But I don’t list to those trying to control me.
I vote, and not for fascists.
Exactly. Like, I’m not going to be happy if he gets nominated, but I will vote for him. But before primaries is the time to debate and find the best candidates
Clearly you are in favor of an oceanic based monarchy.
Poseidon?
