Gavin Newsom is Not a Progressive

There is a hot car with an infant inside and parent no where in site. Should you break the window and save the child? Breaking a window is bad so we shouldn't do it. They just shouldn't have locked the baby in the car. I'm not going to vote for vandalism.

-protest non-voter

As a Californian, Newsom is just the other side of Trump's coin. He has no principles. He puts his finger in the wind before he does anything. I'd vote for literally any other Democrat first. It's not about him being a Progressive or not. It's that he'd pursue literally any position if it was advantageous to him, including hard right ones.

OH boy I sure do love purity checks. It's worked out so great for us in the past.

Why is this shit always all or nothing, goddamn. It works for maga because they have no nuance and it's all groupthink, but the rest of the nation is far more complex and won't just go for a hard left progressive in the same way. It needs to happen but it won't happen in a single election.

I am in no way endorsing newsome, but at least he's doing LITERALLY ANYTHING.

Exactly, people tried that shit with Carney up here and we all knew we were not getting a progressive PM but we sure as hell didn't get a right wing mini trump.
Could we have gotten better? For sure but desperate times man, desperate times...
Yeah I might not vote for him in the primary but its not a deal breaker.

Don't care. Way better than fascism and besides, the tweets are hilarious.

...you expect the dems to run a progressive?

I fully expect to see a repeat of 2020. The party establishment will be split between Elderly Nepo-Ghoul With Fanatical Partisan Following and Young Pretty Boy Who Says Progressive Things To A Room Of Millennial Age Investment Bankers.
On the edge of the debate, you'll see a few genuinely progressive leftist voices saying things like "We should be against genocide" and "Homelessness is easily solveable if we put forward even the least amount of political capital" and "Granting DC statehood is the most obviously smart and moral Act any future Congress can pass". Maybe even a few "Medicare 4 All is still a good idea" die-hards shouting from the extremely cheap seats.
And then one (or both) of the insider candidates will pick up a few of the more popular slogans as their own. This, while denouncing any of the fringe voices as Anti-White Racists, Politically Toxic Far-Left Anti-Capitalists, Eco-Terrorists, and Fat Ugly Unfuckable Losers.
Come primary day, said fringe leftists will do shockingly well in some of the early states. At this point, the centrist candidates will panic, drop the kabuki of intra-party squabbling, align behind whomever the current Party Elder tells them to select, scream that a vote for Fringe Candidate is a vote for Fascism, blanket the airwaves with a deafening smear campaign, disavow every nice thing they said up until this point, and maybe squeak in to the convention by a few points on a technicality about who gets to be Superdelegates.
The Convention will be a coronation of a rotten corporate homunculus. Any leftist disgusted by the process or the annointed candidate will be denounced as a Far-Right Foreign Plant designed to undermine the fundamental principles of democracy itself. Said rotten homunculus will pick a Token Minority/Progressive as their running mate, then immediately dump that person to the sidelines and campaign exclusively with the reanimated corpse of Rush Limbaugh.
Trump wins by a ten point margin in 2028. Leftists are blamed for the loss. Democrats vow to purge their party of anything resembling progressive values or human decency even harder. By 2032, they're running a Bitcoin Billionaire in an uncontested primary, because it's unreasonable to trust an election process that's been infiltrated by Hamas.
This is exactly why they'll run him.

Reddit just called me a Republican plant for not liking newsom. Before the primaries have even started. Pisses me off

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.
- 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
- Nope. But I don't list to those trying to control me.
  I vote, and not for fascists.
Clearly you are in favor of an oceanic based monarchy.
- Poseidon?
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

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.

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 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.
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.

He also thinks children shouldn't be allowed to transition genders.

Ending purity tests doesn't mean we can't criticize or demand better of someone.

I agree with that...? People should be allowed to transition but with parental/guardian permission or are legal adults (18, in the US). Is that considered right-wing take? I thought I was a moderate!

Leadership will pick the least objectionable neolib to promote the shit out of, and they'll end up gambling - again - that voters care more about sticking it to Trump than achieving real relief from our capitalistic hellscape.

Newsom's only redeeming qualoty is his ability to get under Trump's skin. Literally everything else is focus-group tested neo-liberalism.

Early to be predicting anything but dems are fucked if Newsom is gonna be their guy.

Wow, never good enough is it. This is why progressives fail to accomplish much.

Backing big oil list my vote

Hopefully, the Democratic Party will go the way of the Whigs, and take Newsom with them. I want a genuinely good party whose mission is to overhaul America in all ways. UBI, a renewed Constitution, universal healthcare, the extinction of ICE and border patrol with minimized police, ect.

The America we have is a sick creature, that cannot be saved by Geronocrats.

He's rather brazenly pro-Israel. That is not a winning strategy for a Democratic candidate. Israel lost the public referendum, with something like a single-digit % of Democratic voters supporting the genocidal state. Time to accept this and move forward.

AIPAC and none of that shit matters if a significant segment of your voting base will outright reject you.

Friend I don't give a fuck I just don't want to live in hell anymore. I'm going to be first in line slamming my fist on the table for a progressive but apparently we need to be at Gavin Newsom before we can ask for a progressive. Lemmy and Current Affairs isn't the average American. We suck. That's abundantly clear to me now. You know what? If Mandani or similar figure was running for president I'm all in. I'm all in on that no matter what. I'm in for the most progressive candidate at all times. Unfortunately right now I just need to not be under threat of everything completely falling apart and not being fixable. Maslow's hierarchy I need that first foundational level to build my pyramid on. I don't necessarily mean this to convince anyone, sometimes you just have to yell into the void because it all feels so bad.

I'm not. If there's a Bernie or AOC like candidate vs Newsom, I'm voting for the Bernie AOC candidate. I've played it safe the last 3 elections I, no longer care if it hurts Dems chances because Dems have had their assses handed to them and were already in hell. I want someone who is going to fight Republicans and help get policies we actually want and they will fucking despise
- I voted for Bernie every time. It didn't do anything. This is where we are. I'll vote for the most progressive candidate who is on the ballot, but if it's Newsom versus Trump I'm not going to purity test gatekeep.
- As amazing as a Bernie , AOC America won’t let them win. America is too racist, and misogynistic to ever let that happen.
Damn, .ml is starting their crap early. They already got trump back in, now they are working to get more of the GOP in power by fomenting infighting....reruns suck.
- Thinking that an unliked party putting forward a candidate, who's only nominating quality is a second order connection to Obama, lost because of a triad of leftist servers on lemmy is genuinely delusional.
The path to progressivism does not run through assholes like Gavin Newsom. "Lesser-evilism" has brought us to Trump!
- It is more nuanced like that. You and I are not the average American voter. We can't assume all voters will act like us. We have to play the field and represent our true ideals as much as possible in balance.
- Pretty sure greater evilism brought us trump.
- You're not wrong

Damn this comment section reads like it's sponsored by the Newsom 2028 campaign.

History repeating.

I don't give a shit. Anyone effectively getting under the skin of that demented pedophile should be encouraged to do so. Fuck these purity tests.

CLOSE ENOUGH. for fuck’s sake if you wait for perfect you’ll get stuck with shit like trump again.

Hold on there partner, it can get so much worse.
Worked well the last time. Oh wait.

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.
- "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.
- Goddam. You guys sure love hoping someone else learns lessons. You ever hope democrats learn a little something?
- 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.
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.
This is the way.

Maybe he's not a progressive, but it's great to finally see a prominent Democrat loudly opposing Trump. Too many are obsessed with undermining their own party while letting the US go to hell.

The USA does not need a progressive rn. It needs someone who can stop the fascists. Newsom has the best chances of doing that.

This sort of dipshittery is exactly why the democratic party keeps trotting out center-right nobodies that fail to energize their base, and why actual progressives like Mamdani are doing so well despite widespread attempts by the left AND right to pretend he's not.
To be as polite as possible on the matter? Shut the fuck up, and take your lies elsewhere.
And Newsom is stopping them by?
No he doesn't. He would lose
This is absolutely the right way to steer this ship. We don’t need perfect. We just need a winner. From there, we can work towards perfect.

Nope he’s not. But he’s not as bad as trump.

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.
- What heart?

He threw Trans people under the bus. He can fuck right off.

Hey don't forget unhoused people!

He only looks good compared to the opposition.

Don't care. He's not a fascist and that's enough right now.

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.
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.

Perhaps. But I'd rather have this guy than a pedophile rapist.

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.
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.
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.
- It's really simple.
  You criticise the government of the day, whoever they may be.
  You do not criticise your own side when they're not in government or running for election.
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.
He threw trans people under the bus, and there's no way in hell I'm voting for that.
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? You thibk he won't throw you under the bus if it's politically expedient? 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.
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.

Obligatory “water is wet” post.

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.

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.

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
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.
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.

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.

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.

Ok, what’s the point of posting an article from 2 years ago?

Which part of the article is incorrect?
- Apparently old articles are bad now, even though it's not against the rules.
- The part where it said Douglass won the debate, when Lincoln got far more cheers.

Gavin Newsom offers more pain and suffering to trans and queer folk.

Not to mention the homeless considering he personally went out of his way to destroy the few things they own.

Can't trust anything written by prager

Which is why he’s probably going to be the nominee and if you don’t vote for him then you’re terrible.

Ah, so it's not about the Gaza Strip now, it's Newsome is feckless.

I swear if Bernie Sanders was back we'd be getting posts like this on him, or Jesus himself.

I don't want to be conspiracy minded... but the sheer attempts at driving division when we have a literal fascist takeover and yet somehow the democrat is as bad if not worse is starting to smell.

Ah, so it's not about the Gaza Strip now, it's Newsome is feckless.
You mean people can have more than one opinion at once?! How unthunkable!
I've had multiple people on Lemmy tell me that Bernie Sanders is a Zionist, and they can't in good conscience support him.
And yes, it's fake. I mean, some of it might be stupidity or useful-idiot-ness. But some of it is absolutely just people deliberately trying to hurt the left, and it's succeeding very very well.

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

No shit

2023

There's a reason it's coming back around to the fore, I suspect. Because it's time to play the favorite game of "This left person isn't left enough! Let's attack him!"
I mean yeah Gavin Newsom is kind of a POS. I don't even like the guy, he's not particularly left-wing and I wish the Democrats had more better standard bearers than this guy. But what the fuck, he is fighting against Trump and that's a good thing. Supporting Gavin Newsom for sticking his thumb in Trump's eye is absolutely in no way incompatible with supporting more genuine left-wing people (including supporting replacing Newsom with someone better as soon as that becomes feasible.) Just replacing him with "let's let the bad guys win instead" is fuckin' stupid.
- The point of reposting the article is that Newsom is using Trump to mask his own shittiness, so it's important to remember who exactly we're looking at right now. Newsom is not what America needs, no matter how much he tries to convince you otherwise.
- I guess the community doesn’t actually have a date rule on posts…. Which it should.
Yes, it's still a good read. They also reposted it today and it's going viral on socials.
https://x.com/curaffairs/status/1957510456157040993

So?