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 only looks good compared to the opposition.
Perhaps. But I’d rather have this guy than a pedophile rapist.
He threw Trans people under the bus. He can fuck right off.
He might not be a progressive but he’s not a Russian cum rag, so speaking as a member of a (for the moment) allied country, he is lightyears ahead of your current guy.
No fascism is better than fascism. Hopefully if he runs and wins he actually fixes the problems that led to fascism. He needs to tax the wealthy at 98%.
Hopefully if he runs and wins he actually fixes the problems that led to fascism
Neoliberals like himself are a huge cause of where we are right now.
He needs to tax the wealthy at 98%.
He will never do that, unless he has a sudden and complete change of heart.
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.
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 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.
This is the way.
If you want someone better then they need to elevate their profile by being as openly defiant and pissed at Trump like he is. I don’t care if Newsom’s acting insincere he’s at least doing something to push back instead of writing another strongly worded letter. For the meanwhile stop letting perfect be the enemy of good.
Which is why he’s probably going to be the nominee and if you don’t vote for him then you’re terrible.
Can’t trust anything written by prager
Don’t split. I don’t like the guy much if I have better options, but anytime he’s punching right I’m for him.
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So sick of the division amongst the left. He is far from perfect, but I’d much rather take a neoliberal over a fascist.
Neoliberals Don’t oppose fascists.
He will work with the fascist to come up with a compromise that the fascists can live with. That probably means sacrificing vulnerable groups and rallying around right wing talking points.
He is right wing. Gavin newsom is just right wing. the fact that there’s a uneven deeper more belligerent right wing out there doesn’t mean that he is somehow an alternative to it.
This attitude is how you ended up electing Trump.
Its bonkers that you guys are spiralling into a dystopian shitscape day by day and just cant bring yourself to acknowledge that any alternative has to be better.
just cant bring yourself to acknowledge that any alternative has to be better.
That is not true. Slower fascism isn’t appreciably better than faster fascism. The you of four or eight years in the future doesn’t have any less of a right to not live under fascism than the you of right now. If by choosing the “better” alternative you throw away your ability to actually stop fascism you’re missing the forest for the trees.
This is how I feel. I can’t stand neoliberals but some people on here are delusional for saying they won’t vote for Newsom if he is nominated.
I’ve been voting for those alternatives for a quarter century and it hasn’t stopped the dystopian hellscape from happening.
Oh fuck you, you tell the left they can’t critisize these people during elections and now we’re not supposed to critisize them aftet elections too? When are we supposed to ask for things that keep us from dying then? You’re part of the problem.
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He threw trans people under the bus, and there’s no way in hell I’m voting for that.
With all due respect, as I understand where this sentiment comes from, that is how Trump gained momentum and won.
I think the blue no matter who approach has failed more than worked considering Hillary failed, Biden did win but really it was more Trump lost, Kamala lost (she got a shit deal yeah but still neolib vs unchained Trump should have been a no contest) and going further back Gore and Kerry lost to Bush. Clinton basically was the centrist Republican neolib that got Dems a roadmap that they keep to this day.
The time for half measures is over and the DNC needs to adapt or they will end up like the Whig Party. If you dont believe me look at their approval right now, No one likes the Democrats
Newsom is an establishment figure and telling the next generation of voters this is going to be a candidate for change won’t yield the results you think.
With all due respect, as I understand where this sentiment comes from, that is how Trump gained momentum and won.
Trump gained momentum and won because the people in this country don’t know their ass from their elbow in terms of what is happening, and their whole picture of politics is based on confusion and incredibly effective weaponized propaganda.
You presented a child with a pretty unappealing fast food burger that had gone cold anyway, and a big lump of shit laced with (and labeled as) rat poison, and then he selected the shit and ate the whole thing. And your reaction is, “Well the burger should have been better.” I mean, it’s not at all an incorrect statement. But I feel like the way it played out should be automatic proof that the burger quality wasn’t the core of the issue.
I would say the citizens that experienced the fall out from NAFTA that gutted blue collar jobs and created the rust belt would say “the big lump of shit with rat poison” was the Democrats that threw the working class overboard years ago.
Speaking of poison, it is the same reason residents of Michigan would rather vote Trump because the Democratic party and Obama would rather gaslight them about their water being safe to drink instead of charging the corporations that cut costs that polluted the water with federal charges. Obama also bailed out Wall Street and left hard working Americans with a shell of an American dream.
The core of the issue is the Democrats use to be for the everyday man and they lost their way and eroded trust, that will never be gained back. What that leaves voters in fly over states with is a choice to vote their better interest or have a candidate that “tells it like it is” aka lie and get back at the party that screwed them over.
It’s not as black and white when you’re in the thick of it, as difficult as it is to reason with that base.
The greatest trick the devil pulled was convincing people he didn’t exist. The greatest trick the Republican party pulled was convincing people that its most unpopular ideas are entirely Democrats’ fault.
NAFTA was championed by, majority supported, and voted in by mostly Republicans. It was ultimately bipartisan, but Democrats were significantly more opposed to it than Republicans (of Republican Congress members, only 10 in the Senate and 43 in the House voted against it; of Democrats, 28 in the Senate and 156 in the House voted against it).
This isn’t to say that NAFTA is objectively bad policy; most economists argue that it ultimately benefited the whole country. However it did expose US manufacturing to significant competition, reduced bargaining power for manufacturing workers, and shocked communities which were solely reliant on the sector to support them. Larger cities were mostly unaffected due to their more diverse economies, and in many cases thrived off increased trade and lower prices for goods. As a reminder, urbanites trend Democrat, rural folk trend Republican.
The trope that urban liberals successfully screwed over rural conservatives just isn’t true. Instead it seems that, at screwing themselves over, urban liberals failed and rural conservatives succeeded.
https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_votes/vote1031/vote_103_1_00395.htm https://clerk.house.gov/Votes/1993575
When you don’t have a choice that didn’t back NAFTA then you vote for the ones who are currently saying it sucks. Not the ones pointing to obscure economic indicators and saying everything is fine.
Jesus Christ he hasn’t even announced he’s running yet. Why are we already pretending these are the only two alternatives?
We don’t need to choose a neoliberal over a fascist… we can push for someone better.
I’ve never tried to choose the neoliberal but I’ve never not had to vote for them.
If it’s not Newsom then it’ll be someone else I don’t like.
Do we need to start the purity tests already, though? I don’t like Newsom and would vote against him in most any primary but I will absolutely vote for him over Trump or any other current republican. I can’t name a single republican I’d vote for at this point because they’re all complicit.
Yes. People won’t vote against him if we don’t articulate our criticisms against him.
He’s a bad governor who is widely disliked in California. This carnival show he’s putting on is his only claim to fame and it depends on democrats in other states not knowing anything else about him or his record.
Like, I don’t understand the implications of what you’re saying here. That we can’t criticize any politician who’s not a fascist? How is that a reasonable strategy?
I’m not saying that we can’t criticize but does it need to start now? Can’t it wait until we see who the field of candidates are so we can avoid tarring the candidates before they even start debating? I am mainly worried that the democrats are going to rip themselves apart again before campaign season even starts.
I completely disagree. This is the best time to be brutally honest so that bad candidates don’t launch and it’s easier to have a united front once most voters start paying attention during the campaign.
I’ve lived under Newsom (and to be clear, voted for him over republicans every time) so I don’t need to see him debate or anything to make up my mind about him. He blocked more progressive legislation in California than the republicans here did. He’s also a rich, corrupt slime ball who has nothing but disdain for ordinary people. He’s not a good candidate.
He’s also a rich, corrupt slime ball who has nothing but disdain for ordinary people. He’s not a good candidate.
Completely agree with 100% of this. I hate that he’s sort of the default “big white guy face of the Democrats.” But also, I like that he’s at least making some substantive effort to fuck up Trump’s attempt to seize control of the country and throw all his enemies into the camps. I wish there were a few more people in power who were doing that. If he’s only doing it because he’s being a ponce who wants to make a name for himself, fuckin’ great, I hope he gets turbo narcissism tomorrow and starts doing it twice as hard.
There needs to be a united front to get Trump out. Newsom is welcome to join in, and at least he’s bringing the fight to MAGA and not just whining. And I say this as someone who despises Newsom’s sleazy corporate centrist politics.
But I’m going to keep pushing for progressives, and even more, for grassroots organizing outside the Democratic Party. The Dems will only change when events force them to.
How about we start with a primary race? When was the last time the democrats ran a presidential primary that didn’t come across as a fait accompli? Maybe 2007?
First, criminalizing homelessness is fascism. If you can’t take a stand for the homeless how can you expect anyone to take a stand for you? Second, do you intend to repeat the same song and dance that got Trump elected twice? The definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results. Third, why are you compromising from now? Like come on it’s still 2025, even if you’re going to vote blue no matter who, now you should be projecting strength not compliance.
vote blue no matter who
Literally the only time I hear this is from people on Lemmy who are trying to criticize some potential ally by being embittered.
Nobody is talking about voting for Gavin Newsom. We’re talking about it being good that he’s irritating Trump by taking concrete steps to preserve our democracy. You would be the guy in the revolution who’s constantly trying to root out “counterrevolutionaries” in the ranks and snitching people to the secret police because they’re not revolutionary enough, right during the run-up to the big battle to see if the movement can even survive.
Nobody is talking about voting for Gavin Newsom.
The article is pretty explicitly talking about that, and the parent comment of this thread is responding to that by saying they’d “much rather take a neoliberal over a fascist.” If you’re not talking about voting for Gavin Newsom, you’re in the wrong thread.
Back in 2023, when this article was written when we were trying to figure out who to vote for, it made perfect sense to talk about that. Now that people are talking about how to not get thrown into concentration camps for being a Democrat, people are talking about something different.
The fact that one of the most infamous of the “anti Biden all the time” trolls elected to suddenly become nail-bitingly concerned about Newsom’s progressive credentials, and repost this thing from a whole nother pre-CECOT era as if it was relevant, doesn’t change what people are talking about presently, present tense.
I’m aware that you would like them to be talking about various holes and nitpicks in Newsom’s agenda and reasons why he is deeply problematic, and change the subject away from reasons why he is in the news, present tense. Who knows, you may succeed, it worked gangbusters in the last election and I see no reason to think it would stop working now.
I disagree with your argument, but more relevantly this whole comment chain is predicated on the assumption that “Newsom is not your friend” is a position worth debating. If you don’t agree with this assumption, the place to make that point would be a parent comment, maybe a reply to a parent comment. As it stands your response has nothing to do with what I’m talking about.
I’m aware that it has nothing to do with what you’re talking about. I’m making a whole different point, directly addressing what you’re talking about but from a different point of view (distinct from “what ‘we’ are talking about” in your parlance). That’s generally how it works.
Leftists: “Democratic politicians are feckless. They need to get on social media to call out Trump’s bullshit on daily basis! When is a leader going to step up?!”
Somewhere, a finger curls on a monkey’s paw.
Calling him out on social media is absolutely not what I want and is definitely feckless.
Don’t care. He’s not a fascist and that’s enough right now.
Do you know what a primary is?
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.
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.
Newsom is your average neoliberal. As much as I like seeing someone troll Krasnov it’s important to remember that neoliberals are not going to help anyone but themselves and their corporate donors.
Hmm, who do I support: Someone who I don’t necessarily agree with on every issue or the guy actively working to destroy my country and those of our allies? Tough call.
I’ll take the neo-liberal over the outright nazi fascist, thanks
Well, history has shown that your fellow Americans do not agree with you. There is plenty of time to find a candidate that will actually be popular with voters
History actually shows that crying “that candidate isn’t progressive enough” ends in actual fascism.
Exactly.
Progressives should learn their place and do what they’re told.
It’s not like there’s enough of us to change things.
Who benefits from this anti-Newsom rhetoric? Trump and Co
I suppose in the same way that tornado sirens always ends in a tornado tearing through a trailer park. But I’m sure that this centrist liberal will finally be the one to beat fascism
Keep doing the fascist’s work for them
Yeah but he’s one of the few Democrats actually doing something against Trump and co.
What’s he actually doing? Having his social media manager write zingers for him? I’m sure Trump is so scared.
He’s been pushing back in a lot of ways. I don’t like him and would vote against him in a primary, but I’d absolutely vote for him if he wins the nomination.
As to what he’s done, here are a few things off the top of my head:
- Began the process of redistricting CA to offset what TX is doing.
- Sued to keep the national guard from being deployed to LA.
- Pushed back on repeal of the EV mandate.
Again, I don’t like him. He’s slimy. I still will vote for him if he’s nominated.
