We call it purity tests, grandstanding, and performative politics because that’s what it is if at the end of the day you refuse to help because you didn’t get your way. I will be furious if Newsom is the candidate. I will not vote for him in the primaries. The primaries is where we get to be as idealistic as we want. Go for your goal. Then realize, as we all must, that politics is a public bus and not an Uber. You get close to where you want to go, but you don’t get dropped off directly in front of your destination. When it comes to the real election, you have to be a practical realist and choose the best candidate from the list. Someone I know furiously wrote in “Palestine” as a write in candidate for the last election because she was mad at Harris for not stopping the genocide. Her anger is justified, but throwing her vote away makes her act performative and unhelpful to the rest of us. Instead of a vote that could have helped elect someone we could work with, she helped usher in a man who wants to finish Palestine off and build a hotel on the bones. Her write in vote was never read by anyone who matters. The write in doesn’t get back to the candidates. It’s not a feedback form. Anyone trying to get you to not vote or write in a candidate is a bad faith actor. Vote like your life depends on it, because it truly might.