Jon Stewart, 2028.
The problem with Reagan and Trump isn’t that they were actors. The problem is that they were complete pieces of shit long before they were elected.
Actor-presidents have demonstrated a natural propensity for revolutionary disruption of entrenched attitudes. Reagan completely fucked over economic policy; Trump is completely fucking over the fundamental concept of democracy.
Imagine that same degree of revolutionary disruption moving us toward egalitarianism rather than corpo-fascism.
Jon Stewart is no progressive, and some of his takes are frustratingly bad. Just this Monday, he made the case to his interviewee that there’s basically nothing we can do about climate change except maybe a little carbon scrubbing after the fact.
He makes his position clear at 7:50 of that interview that he defers to climate scientists on the issue and continues to ask the writer “what can we do”? Which in my mind is all we can hope for in a politician.
It seems your referencing his suggested response at 8:30. But he then works off her response, that there is no clear path forward, which is inline with his previously stated position frankly.
I guess I expect more from a progressive leader than “Welp what can we possibly do on climate in the face of consumerism?” I think there is a clear path forward, and that’s making investments to move off of fossil fuels. Part of that means stopping government handouts to fossil fuel companies, stopping the lowering of CAFE standards, etc.
And before the usual: “Oh but we don’t have the political will.” … I’d counter that, yes, the mainstream Republicans and Democrats that are beholden to fossil fuel companies don’t have the political will, because of course they don’t. They know on what side their bread is buttered. And that’s exactly why we have to stop electing them and primary them all, putting progressives in their place.
(I also wasn’t particularly impressed with the interviewee in that interview, even if she did have some good comedic timing. I realize she’s a writer and not a talking head used to generating pithy soundbites, but still.)
This guy fuckmurders the homeless while whoring for billionaires. Why the fuck should anyone vote for this prick?
His sales pitch is centered around “I’m not a Republicantm!”
Most people on this planet don’t lose a second of sleep or shed one tear if the poor die, including the poor.
On the assumption that we are able to vote at the time, if it’s between him and
<insertAuthoritarianDouchebagHere>, I’ll vote for him.However, I’d imagine that most of my fellow U. S. Citizens are well aware that this sheister is not some sort of “friend” of the poor and the middle class.
I’d vote for him over Trump, but he has not won me over by any stretch, just like Harris, Biden, and (Hillary) Clinton.
A fun PR person sending tweets is insufficient to win my vote. I wouldn’t be voting for him, I’d be voting against Trump, as has been the case each time Trump has been on the ballot.
And so it begins. Abandon all progressive ideas to appeal to the “centrist”, only to lose to the fascist again. I hate it here.
Gavin never supported progressive ideals?
Eh, early in his term he did a bunch of good stuff, it’s just rightly overshadowed by the bad stuff.
I mean c’mon, let’s not get too carried away, next thing ya know they’ll be wanting to tax the billionaires or something.
If Newsom wins the primary, I’m out. I’d rather fight fascism on the streets than play this stupid ass good cop, bad cop game for another round. Fuck you, Democrats. Learn.
They’ve been doing this game for a while. (They, being establishment politics, Dems and Republicans working together)
They push the needle further right, put up less and less progressive, human candidates, and hope more and more people either tune out of politics or say “I’m out.”
The unwillingness for people to wait out the hard shit as long as it’s pushing the needle back the left has brought us to the point that we have to choose between demons and ghouls. We could have nipped this back when we were forced to choose between “boring and not-quite-progressive-enough” but there were vast numbers of people saying “I’m out” that far back, and I know for a fact most of ya’ll would love one of them “boring” presidents if it means we have institutions back.
Hot take: he isn’t good but would have been better than Biden during that debate
I don’t think, for as long as I live, I will ever stop being mad at whoever let Biden on stage in that condition.
I don’t think that that’s a hot take. If we’re listing people who would’ve done better than Biden in that debate, just about every living person and perhaps a few dead ones could’ve gotten over that absurdly low bar.
We need everybody to fucking vote in the primary so we can put somebody better on the ballot for the general election. I don’t want to be forced to choose between newsom and vance or desantis or noeme or whoever they run. I’m glad he’s willing to get dirty in his fighting back, but he still just sucks so much.
At some point the left needs to realize that sitting out voting doesn’t work. Yes the candidate sucks from your political stance but they are better than the alternative and it gives a platform from which to push left. This has been the playbook of the right for decades and is why they have been so successful in shifting the Overton window. They vote in any circumstance even if the candidate isn’t as right leaning as they would prefer but to them at least it’s not a dem.
Edit: to be clear I’m all for taxing billionaires and corporations far more.
We still have ample time to get someone better than Gavin.
Your vote is your voice. A vote is earned not expected.
Every vote is a push in one direction or the other in the US. You can vote to push right, you can vote to push left, or you can avoid voting and let the rest of us decide for you. But the last time a bunch of leftists weren’t thrilled with the options, the electorate voted to push right. From your valid gripes against Newsom, I’m gonna guess that was not what you wanted.
Come election day, one of the two candidates is guaranteed to become president. You cannot stop that. I won’t try to say Newsom is ideal or even a good candidate. I’d love to see someone else run instead. But if you want an even more leftist candidate next time, the country has to show they’ll tolerate movement in that direction, and that means not electing another fucking Republican.
As a permanent resident who cannot vote but pays 6 figures in taxes. VOTE. Some of us aren’t so lucky
I’ll never vote for Newsom. I’ve stated that on here before. He’s anti-trans and deep in corporate pockets. The Getty family owns him.
So you’re ok with Trump. Got it. How’s his stance on Trans people?
Staunch third party voter reporting in. Voting for the big two feels like an obligation given to me by the powerful. Third party is vastly more exciting!
Here we go again… “If you don’t vote for Biden you support Trump!” … “If you don’t vote for Harris you support Trump!” … “If you don’t vote for X you support Trump!”
I wonder how that works in solid color states. If you vote third party in a solid blue state, does that mean a vote for red? Or is it actually a vote for blue if you ask for a red voter’s opinion on the matter?
Going off the theory that your vote is actually for the person a particular voter opposes, does that mean your protest vote is actually determined by the popular vote? For example, if you protest voted the 2024 election, does that mean you actually voted blue because red won the popular vote? Assuming that every color says the protest vote voted for their enemies.
Every action is a vote for something. It never hurts to consider the consequences.
By all means push forward a better candidate than Newsom. And I hope you succeed. But if you don’t, and it turns out that in the end it’s going to be either Newsom or Vance (or even Trump), then who would you rather have?
At this point in time I’m pretty sure you would win in a landslide if you ran on taxing billionaires. Is being greedy a requirement to be a politician in the US?
If you’re not greedy, the billionaires won’t fund your campaign. Then you lose.
No surprise to anyone who’s been paying attention to what he does instead of what he says.
I’d vote for Newsom if he’s the nominee, but I really hope he’s not the nominee (assuming, obviously, the relative utopian future where we get to vote in 2028).
I’m glad when his media exposure goals overlap with doing actual good things, but - and I may be putting too fine a point on it - he’s basically Hillary if Hillary had a penis and was super jazzed about it, and I am fairly confident I know the smug look he makes when he smells his own farts.
He’s fully bought by aipac. A vote for him is a vote to murder children and civilians.
Real shame that our voting choices are kill children and kill children at turbo speed but alas
I don’t think he’d do well in a primary taking a proactive stance against a billionaire tax
The DNC has a plan for that where they just ignore the vote and nominate him anyway.
Much like this old gem.
They fixed that. It’s part of why Schumer caved. The lower influence of the DNC in primaries meant he couldn’t use that power to whip votes and keep control of the party.
This and he was married to that thing Don Jr. was with.
Yuck.
Liberals gonna liberal.
I’d still rather have a capitalist than a fascist.
Scratch a capitalist and you’ll find a fascist. But yeah gun to my head, I’ll take it. Figuratively speaking, at least for now.
Bang on.
But milquetoast is losing. People want change. The time to start thinking about alternatives to him is now.
I think AOC will have a better chance frankly. Particularly if Memdani’s momentum continues.
A lefty needs to win a governor seat in a major state first to continue that momentum to the White House. That will give the average blue voter the confidence to vote for a social democrat or socialist in the primaries.
Yeah that’s the thing about capitalists: They come as a package with fascists.
I really hope that Democrats are starting to realize that corporate captured performance artists like Gavin Newsom are why we have been lurching rightward into fascism for 40+ years. They are why there’s been no meaningful opposition. Newsome doesn’t believe in anything beyond a vague allegiance to capital interests and his own career advancement. Sometimes that ethos will cause him to say some good things, and sometimes he’ll do the opposite. But, he’ll never, ever meaningfully change anything at all.
The best case scenario with a Newsom presidency is that he will preside over a temporary slowing of the collapse, while sowing the seeds of further escalation by the white-identity, religious authoritarian dominionists that are flourishing under trump. Democrats, Americans, and the world deserve much more than him.
I really hope that Democrats are starting to realize that corporate captured performance artists like Gavin Newsom are why we have been lurching rightward into fascism for 40+ years.
So there are two possible interpretations for why the Democrats are so stubbornly useless:
-
It’s a big club and you ain’t in it.
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You can’t get a man to understand something when his salary depends on not understanding it.
Either way there’s no “realizing” anything.
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Slimey as fuck I hate that guy
And Newsom is different from Trump, how exactly? Dude hosted Charlie Kirk and Steve Banon on his podcast, that he wasn’t required to do, and didn’t question them, just nodded along like Joe Rogan.
Newsom is shaping up to be a DNC approved Trump at this rate. Loves Nazis, hates taxes, claims to love the real America, hated COVID protections being applied, doesn’t care about brown people… Fucker needs to lose in the primary quickly. Assuming we get a fair one.
This and he was married to that thing Don Jr. was with.
Yuck.
Eww explains a lot
