All that cowardly waffling and hedge-betting by members of our supposed opposition party about calling ethnic cleansing and genocide what they are made me nauseous, so I couldn’t finish the article.
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Newsom seems to have couched it very well. In his proposal, it only triggers if Texas hyper-gerrymanders their districts (I don’t call what they are doing “gerrymandering” - Texas is already gerrymandered on racial lines) and it’s only a temporary measure for the 2026 election. It should appeal to most voters, including some Republicans who are sick of the lawlessness of the T**** admin.
And as a reminder (that should be unnecessary) voter registration does not equal voting. What matters is actual voting. And Newsom got 60% of the vote in his last election. By tying this measure to his popularity vs T****’s popularity in California (38% in the election and worse since then), he’s probably made the measure a slam dunk.
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“When southern states resisted school desegregation in the 1950s and ‘60s, they often did so under the banner of local control. Letting the federal government enforce Brown v. Board of Education, they argued, was federal overreach. Local school boards should decide when, and if, to integrate. When cities introduced busing plans to accelerate racial integration, the resistance came wrapped in the same language. This is best handled locally. Translation: let us delay. Let us dilute. Let us decide whether equality is convenient.”
Snip-
If Buttigieg truly believes school boards are the proper venue for resolving questions of dignity and inclusion, then perhaps he should run for one. Let him hold office hours at the local library. Let him pledge to consider all sides. Let him go on record about how children should be treated by adults.
But let us not mistake that for leadership. Because civil rights are not a local issue. They never have been. They are not preferences to be weighed or compromises to be managed. They are realities to secure. And when those rights are under attack, the role of the federal government is not to sit it out.
American history already has volumes about what happens when national figures say this is not our fight. Let’s not add another chapter.
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A gay man apparently seriously suggesting that basic human rights should b e a matter of local voting says he has no grasp of history or how this all plays out.
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Or he’s trying to win over Trump voters by pushing a set of talking points that he thinks will appeal to them.
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Third option, he’s just a fucking bigot.
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Absolutely could be the case. White gay men have long had a problem with pulling up the ladder for other groups in the LGBQT+ community.
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Considering how he treated black police officers, this is the correct answer. It’s never just one group with these guys.
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This is mostly about the genocide in gaza, but also about the next couple of election cycles.
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Cross-post; election-related:
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I keep wondering whether it wouldn’t be just as well for texans at least to encourage the Texas GOP to gerrymander to the absolute extreme because after a certain point they really would begin to create candidates that would be at the very least very prone to primary pressure and at the worst (for them) seats that could potentially be flipped with strong enough campaigning. At a certain point they would begin to dilute the voices of rural Texans with the more massive populations of the urban centers beyond what they could control, wouldn’t they? Of course they balance their strategy with as much disenfranchisement in the cities as they can get away with, but again this can only go so far. Especially with some suburbs and exurbs that are realistically 
but also way to wealthy to fully disenfranchise.
If California could render the effort moot at the national level then maybe this would end the unchallenged 40 year one party rule here ultimately?
I dunno. Thought experiments.
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Gerrymandering by its nature tends to take some voters from districts that heavily lean towards the party in power and move them into districts where the other party previously may have had a slight lead, with the idea being to win more districts but by a smaller margin. So a side effect is that some districts that used to be won by the majority party in a landslide actually start to become more competitive. If the majority gets too greedy and tries for the maximalist gerrymander map that can sometimes backfire, in what’s known as a “dummymander.” We can always hope that something like that happens in Texas.
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A similar thing happened in Oregon with the “compromise” maps that Dems put in place last redistricting as Oregon gained a House seat. Republicans demanded that half the districts favor them, despite an overall 60-40 split statewide, and did what Texas Dems are doing now, leaving the state, in order to try to force the legislature’s hand. Overall, there were three maps under consideration - the Republican’s 50-50 map; a compromise map with one safe Dem seat, two Dem leaning seats, two competitive seats, and one safe Republican seat; and one heavily gerrymandered map in favor of Dems. The legislature ended up selecting the compromise map, and the Republicans in the 2022 election took 2 out of 6 seats. But in 2024, as they moved increasingly to the right, Republicans ended up losing the competitive seat and only have one seat. If the election were to happen today, there’s a decent chance they’d even lose that seat as the rep in that district has been utterly corrupt and complicit as his district, in which 50% of people depend on Medicaid, contend with the fact that they will be losing most of their hospitals and many won’t have health insurance at the end of 2026.
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And that’s just the normie Dems!!
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I’ve had what I assume are similar conversations to the ones mentioned in the second post with my own mother. She is also a normie Dem.
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Yep.
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My wife is a sweet Southern lady who rarely utters a foul word, but now rarely if ever mentions Trump without “fucking asshole” or some similar term of endearment attached. I know for a lot of us “fuck” is an all-purpose word (it’s been said the only more versatile word is “smurf,” but i think you have to be of a certain age to get the reference) but i went decades without hearing her say it. Comes up pretty frequently now. I am frightened. Nothing is more terrifying than the wrath of a kind and gentle woman. Like, you know, Demons run/When a good man goes to war sort of thing.
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