politics

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.

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...

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.

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.

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.

He's not on the left though. He only ran as a dem because he is in California and Republicans have no chance there

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.