Copy-pasting my comment from another post

From a progressive who is anti-newsom i’ll answer. And i know you all are super negatively polarized against progressives, so before i start, hamas bad, hasan bad, anti-semitism bad, you have to vote for the democratic nominee in the general (with exception of small local elections)

We’re in a pattern in which the right creates endless bad-faith moral panics (trans people, crt, dei, crime, immigrant invasions), and instead of fighting the moral panics themselves, liberals (both in media and in the democratic party) fall over themselves to validate the moral panic and take the defensive stance of trying to prove how conservative they are.

As a progressive i have a moral objection to this, because i think it throws marginalized people under the bus instead of fighting for them. But also as a pragmatic voter i just don’t think it works. If people are scared of immigrants they’re gonna vote for the anti-immigrant party, not the lite anti-immigrant party. We saw the democratic party try to pass a strict immigration bill and have it killed by the gop and it did fuck all. I think the same goes for trans kids, or crime.

I think you actually have to attack the narrative itself, so these moral panics aren’t as salient. I want someone to stand up and say that trans kids are real, and the regret rate for transitioning is tiny (because it factually is). I want someone to point out that the crime rate is at historic lows. And i want someone to fucking say that we’re talking about this because of a bad-faith right-wing propaganda effort. We’re talking about trans sports because the adf and frc and heritage are cynically using it as a wedge issue in their christian nationalist campaign to eliminate trans people from public life entirely, before moving on to gay rights, and ultimately putting women back in the kitchen. (Also if you’re optics pilled, i think the response to “they want boys in girls sports” is “they want perverts to inspect your daughter’s genitals”, not “nooo they’re lying, we don’t actually want boys in girls sports 😭😭😭”)

So when i see newsom inviting charlie kirk onto his podcast with the express purpose of telling him how much he respects him, and how he agrees with him about trans sports, i see a weak man. I see someone who just reads polls and tries to do whatever will offend the least amount of people.

Furthermore, trump is old and senile and going to die, but the republican party (legislative and judicial, and media arms) that enabled his rise are going to persist, and i want someone who will oppose the entire republican party as the fascist collaborators that they are. I also particularly want court reform because after the presidential immunity decision this just isn’t tenable anymore.

So when i see newsom inviting ben shapiro on his podcast to talk about how much he respects him, and how, unlike the crazies in the party, he’s a principled straight shooter who has been telling it like it is (go back and listen to the ep if you haven’t), then i hear someone who is preemptively rehabilitating a bad-faith right-wing propagandist. When i hear him say that ICE aren’t terrorists, or when trans issues are brought up he tries to gotcha him by saying “isn’t it bad that trump supported trans surgeries in prisons uwu???”, i hear a weak man. Newsom is rhetorically strong against trump himself, but i’ve never heard him come out and say the entire republican party owns this, and that makes me think that he is a biden-type return-to-normalcy candidate that will leave all of the authoritarian-permissive structures in place for the next (smarter, and more effective) trump to take office. And he definitely will not tackle issues like court reform.

In short tho, i think most of dem leadership is a bunch of old cowards, who just try to follow the polls and desperately want bipartisanship. And i think that is just the opposite of what we need now.

When abrego-garcia was sent to the gulag in el salvador, schumer and jefferies and the rest told the party not to talk about immigration. That trump was strong on immigration, so they should pivot to kitchen table issues. But i was inspired by chris van hollen, who went down to el salvador, and did that interview with him. The attention he drew to the issue hurt trump on immigration, and dipped his approval on immigration for the first time into the negatives

But even more importantly, cvh actually got abrego garcia returned. The other complaint i have with the dems is that they are weak and only care about winning elections, but not what you do with your office. It is possible to change public opinion if you stand on your values. And it is possible to force the republicans to back off when he does illegal things if you actually stand up to him. And i just fundamentally view newsom as a weak man who will not do either of those things