Gavin Newsom addresses the nation

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Kingpin said:
You list public political speeches and yet crucify Newsom for doing so.
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My issue with Newsom was the televised primetime address to the nation -- something that is the domain of presidents. I would have had no objection to Newsom making a speech at a rally or calling a press conference -- which are normal things for governors to do.
 
Calheel said:
My plot has been consistent throughout.

I don't think phony politicians who opportunistically try to grab the spotlight are doing anything to help the cause. In fact, I think they do nothing but strengthen Trump's hold on the middle of America.

Do you honestly think Padilla is scoring points with Middle America by storming a Kristy Noem press conference? Do you think that is hurting Trump in even the slightest?
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I think you’re consistently looking at things in a vacuum instead of how these singular events build momentum over time, and you’re consistently pretending that i and others here care more about the performative acts of newsom et al than we do about substantive challenges to the Trump admin.

I think there’s a good chance for example, that Newsome‘s PR stunt will encourage more protesters to come out this coming weekend. That’s not a bad thing. In fact that’s the way movements gain momentum.
 
Calheel said:
My issue with Newsom was the televised primetime address to the nation -- something that is the domain of presidents. I would have had no objection to Newsom making a speech at a rally or calling a press conference -- which are normal things for governors to do.
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It was 6:30 pm, is that really to late for a Governor’s speech?
 
EyeballKid said:
I think you’re consistently looking at things in a vacuum instead of how these singular events build momentum over time, and you’re consistently pretending that i and others here care more about the performative acts of newsom et al than we do about substantive challenges to the Trump admin.

I think there’s a good chance for example, that Newsome‘s PR stunt will encourage more protesters to come out this coming weekend. That’s not a bad thing. In fact that’s the way movements gain momentum.
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There is no way to measure that. I'd bet that the No Kings protests were going to be huge no matter what, as they have been very well organized.

I say that you and @dukeman92 care more about performative acts because that it how your posts read to me. If your position is that you are hopeful that this kind of behavior eventually leads to something more meaningful, I can partly get behind that line of thinking.
 
1moretimeagain said:
It was 6:30 pm, is that really to late for a Governor’s speech?
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9:30/8:30 PM East Coast/Central time, which is where 75% of the population lives and when almost all presidential addresses are given. The timing of that speech was absolutely intentional and designed to make Gavin look like the president. That was part of my annoyance at that speech from the outset. That it was him cosplaying as president.
 
Paine said:
Truth is, millions of Americans are politically homeless. They are alienated from both parties. Not all of them are unreachable racists. Many are disillusioned, cynical, struggling, and desperate for something real.
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I would add indifferent to that list. They figure it's not going to make that much difference to their lives who is the president or the senator from their state. They've lived thru multiple election cycles and haven't noticed much real difference in their lives regardless of who won. Of course they and a great many more disaffected (or otherwise) voters would instantly vote for someone who promised to direct deposit $10K into their checking account. In fact, I'm not so sure that's a terrible idea. Most political promises are just offers to put more money back into voters' pockets, but the way it's packaged doesn't feel real to them. A $10K payment is real and I suspect it would move the needle for millions of voters. Why not?
 
Calheel said:
There is no way to measure that. I'd bet that the No Kings protests were going to be huge no matter what, as they have been very well organized.

I say that you and @dukeman92 care more about performative acts because that it how your posts read to me. If your position is that you are hopeful that this kind of behavior eventually leads to something more meaningful, I can partly get behind that line of thinking.
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Again, your reading of what I said is not supported by my posts. You’ve had such a hard on for Newsom that Im pretty sure you haven’t taken the time to thoroughly read anything that I or others have said.

First, you brushed it off as though we were all a bunch of Newsom advocates—which isn’t the case.

Now you’ve broadened your unfounded argument to suggest that we only care about these performative measures by Hochul et al.

My only point from my first post has been that I’m happy some Ds have started to find the tiniest bit of willingness to publicly and openly put up a small fight. I’m not on anyone’s bandwagon, and I’m not looking at these PR actions as some sort of be-all end-all.

But we have to start somewhere. Anything is better than sending Chuck Schumer out in front of cameras for one of his glasses-halfway-down-the-bridge-of-his-nose snoozefests.
 
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EyeballKid said:
Again, your reading of what I said is not supported by my posts. You’ve had such a hard on for Newsom that Im pretty sure you haven’t taken the time to thoroughly read anything that I or others have said.

First, you brushed it off as though we were all a bunch of Newsom advocates—which isn’t the case.

Now you’ve broadened your unfounded argument to suggest that we only care about these performative matters by Hochul et al.

My only point from my first post has been that I’m happy some Ds have started to find the tiniest bit of willingness to publicly and openly put up a small fight. I’m not on anyone’s bandwagon, and I’m not looking at these PR actions as some sort of be-all end-all. But we have to start somewhere.
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That's fair. I'm taking you off my list. But @dukeman92 is staying on the list. I can't cut dookies any slack.
 
Calheel said:
So who is moving the goalposts now?

Kingpin asked if Padilla was engaging in a publicity stunt. I answered.

Now you are talking about "publicity gathering."

You typically don't engage in bad faith arguing so I'll cut you a little slack. But again, for you to compare the Selma marches with Alex Padilla is absurd. And you obviously know the difference between a cheap political stunt and a publicity "gathering" .
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Gathering was used there as a verb. It was attempting to be a generic term for the process of obtaining publicity. I didn't even think about the noun form.

My contention was that all politics is about publicity. I used the example of the civil rights movement because it is usually considered among the most honest, good faith political movements in history. But even that was publicity seeking. In fact, that was the whole point.

I wasn't comparing Padilla to Selma; just saying all politics is about publicity. Your gripe with Padilla isn't actually that he's seeking publicity. It's that you don't agree with his method. And that's fine. Confusing those different senses can cause friction.
 
dukeman92 said:
Man, that thread has him farther in his feelings than than a 40 year old single woman at a wedding.
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phys.org

Single women are happier than single men, researchers find

Single women are happier, on average, than single men. That's among the findings of a recent study by University of Toronto psychology researchers. They say the results suggest that men may have more to gain than women in heteronormative romantic partnerships.
phys.org phys.org
 
Paine said:
I appreciate the response, even if it was shorter than usual. ;) I still think there are contradictions in your framework that you haven’t really resolved.

You say it’s not your assumption that every MAGA voter is motivated by hate, but earlier you said “literally all of MAGA is hate and xenophobia.” Then you listed examples to back that up and concluded the entire movement is rooted in grievance. So when you now say “I don’t believe they’re all haters,” it reads more like a disclaimer than something that actually informs your analysis. If you believed these voters were more complex, your language and framing would reflect that.

The KKK comparison only reinforces the issue. Yes, the KKK created a toxic form of belonging. But the fact that belonging can be dangerous doesn’t mean it isn’t also powerful. Every successful political movement has used it: from labor unions to civil rights to Obama’s 2008 campaign. The challenge is to offer a better kind of belonging, not to pretend that the emotion itself is illegitimate whenever it shows up on the right.

Historically, the most powerful democratic movements, from the labor movement to the civil rights movement, did create cross-racial, emotionally resonant political communities rooted in dignity, justice, and shared struggle. Was it hard? Yes. Did it require organizing, leadership, sacrifice, and moral clarity? Of course. But it happened. And it can happen again. It requires a broad political imagination.

Here’s where your logic breaks down: You say “let’s talk to them,” but you also describe them in terms so sweeping and moralized that there’s no real political reason to do so. If they’re unreachable and beyond reason, what exactly are we planting seeds for?

And that ties into your point about Port Huron. You treat Hayden’s ideas like a quaint failure because they’re old, not because they’re wrong. But 60 years later, many of the same forces SDS identified (elite consolidation, political alienation, economic dislocation) have only gotten worse.

Regardless, what I’m proposing isn’t a replay of Port Huron or the campus-centered politics of the New Left. That vision, while idealistic, was often disconnected from the everyday lives of working people and too wrapped up in cultural rebellion to build majoritarian power. My project is rooted in material politics, not abstract moral appeals or lifestyle radicalism, but the concrete promise of dignity, belonging, and economic security for a multi-ethnic working class that has been abandoned by both parties. It’s not about purity or protest; it’s about winning AND building something real and durable in the process.

Meanwhile, the alternative strategy you seem to endorse (technocratic governance paired with moral condemnation) has left millions of voters feeling abandoned and fueled the rise of right-wing populism.

If Democrats want to compete on the emotional and cultural terrain the right has claimed, they can’t do it with moral distance and data points alone. They have to offer people something real, not just in terms of policy, but in terms of meaning and solidarity. If you thinks that naive, then fine. I think it’s how we start taking actual politics seriously again.
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1. Haha. My point was completely missed. That's what happens when, oh I don't know, brevity takes precedence over clarity. I write longer for a reason.

2. There's a distinction between MAGA and MAGAs, right? Like there was a Soviet Union, and then individual Soviets. If it was any other pair of words, it would be pretty dumb of you to confuse them. But, MAGA is sometimes used to mean the movement but also sometimes to mean the people. That's not how I use them at all, and it would never really be my style; but I should be more explicit going forward. In my defense, it's hard to **always** be *perfectly precise* on a message board.

3. I wasn't making a comparison to the KKK. I was offering a hypothetical situation, though again the shorthand might have obscured the meaning. If we orient our politics around belonging, following MAGA, there's a risk that we'll end up reinforcing the growth of white supremacy. It would be really, really important to ensure that strong racial diversity, with class being a unifier only if everyone's included.

And the reference to Tom Hayden was simply to say: it's really hard in America to sustain unity across racial lines. We've been trying for a long time, and we seem to be getting further away. Maybe my post was little more than the banal point that some things are easier said than done, but whatever.

4. You're probably familiar with Gil Scott Heron but you might not have listened to the bulk of his spoken word. I really like the way he describes the interactions between "SDS paleface motherfuckers" and "everyday black people." Unfortunately, this was pre-feminism and there's some misogynist imagery in the first two minutes, but the part I'm most interested in starts around 2:10. None of it is safe for work.

 
Paine said:
On the MAGA vs. MAGAs distinction: I hear you, and sure, we can be more precise going forward. But when you say “literally all of MAGA is hate and xenophobia,” that inevitably bleeds into how readers interpret your view of the people who support it. If you really believe many of them are motivated by other things, like economic dislocation, cultural alienation, or distrust in institutions, then that nuance has to show up in how you describe the movement. Otherwise, the line between condemning the ideology and writing off the people gets blurry fast. That matters, especially if the goal is persuasion or political outreach.

Same thing with the belonging point. I get that you weren’t equating MAGA with the KKK, but the rhetorical move still does some work. You brought up the most toxic form of belonging in American history in response to a point about building emotional resonance and solidarity. That suggests a deep skepticism of affective politics in general, unless they come from the “right” moral posture or social class. My point wasn’t that belonging is always good, but that it’s always powerful. It’s the job of democratic politics to channel that power toward justice, not pretend it only exists on the wrong side.

And on Hayden: I’m not saying it’s easy. Of course cross-racial, class-based organizing in America is hard. It always has been. But to bring that up just to say “we’ve been trying for decades and it hasn’t worked” feels like a kind of strategic surrender. Especially when the current strategy of technocracy, moral scolding, and elite managerialism has also failed, and arguably helped fuel the alienation we’re talking about.

Ultimately, I still think the core tension remains: you say we should “talk to them,” but the way you describe these voters as fundamentally unreachable, or so far gone that we risk enabling white supremacy just by engaging them, undercuts any real reason to do so. You warn against the dangers of populist affect but don’t offer a compelling alternative that can compete with it. And the longer we cede emotional resonance, symbolic politics, and the language of common cause to the right, the more they win by default.
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I think you're reading too much into something I dashed out pretty quickly. I already said that my use of MAGA wasn't clear because of the particularities of the word. I didn't think about the KKK mention very much. It was just a shorthand way of introducing the point that belonging isn't a great politics if you can't reach across cultures.

As for the last point, I ain't gonna be doing the talking. I promise you that. Not because I'm unwilling to or anything like that. I'm just not good at it. Sure, I might seem like a superfly smooth operator but actually I'm socially awkward. So it doesn't matter all that much how I talk.
 
EyeballKid said:
Again, your reading of what I said is not supported by my posts. You’ve had such a hard on for Newsom that Im pretty sure you haven’t taken the time to thoroughly read anything that I or others have said.

First, you brushed it off as though we were all a bunch of Newsom advocates—which isn’t the case.

Now you’ve broadened your unfounded argument to suggest that we only care about these performative measures by Hochul et al.

My only point from my first post has been that I’m happy some Ds have started to find the tiniest bit of willingness to publicly and openly put up a small fight. I’m not on anyone’s bandwagon, and I’m not looking at these PR actions as some sort of be-all end-all.

But we have to start somewhere. Anything is better than sending Chuck Schumer out in front of cameras for one of his glasses-halfway-down-the-bridge-of-his-nose snoozefests.
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Up to now only AOC, Bernie, Jasmine Crockett, Pritzker have not been cowering in a corner. About time.

This whole damn Trump 2.0: The Appendicits show has all been orchestrated TV. Mango Duce has admitted it and MSM has just gone along...
 
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EyeballKid said:
My only point from my first post has been that I’m happy some Ds have started to find the tiniest bit of willingness to publicly and openly put up a small fight. I’m not on anyone’s bandwagon, and I’m not looking at these PR actions as some sort of be-all end-all.

But we have to start somewhere. Anything is better than sending Chuck Schumer out in front of cameras for one of his glasses-halfway-down-the-bridge-of-his-nose snoozefests.
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God yes. This times a million. As everyone else is making any points I may have regarding Newsom, I'll only add to the chorus that one doesn't have to be a Newsom supporter or admirer to praise his willingness to actually speak up and out against what Trump is doing in his state, of which he happens to be governor. And that's really all this is - people being happy to see a prominent Democrat (other than Bernie or AOC) willing to forcefully speak up and out against Trump. As you said, Democrats have to start somewhere. That doesn't mean that I or anyone else actually supports Newsom for the Democratic nomination or admire him as governor.
 
BlooVooDoo said:
Was he not released after they removed him from the building?
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I believe so. The reporting is a little fuzzy. It does not appear he has been charged with anything yet, although I wouldn't put it past the Trump Gestapo to charge him with something. So, I don't think it was crazy for @heelwithnoname to use the "arrest" word there. Getting thrown to the ground and handcuffed is pretty darn close to an arrest.
 
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