He is right to make a fuss about this. Newsome is likeable, moderate, and establishment. He is Biden. He is Harris. He is Clinton. He will win over moderates and make water-weak liberals go “this is the guy with the solutions!” And then he will fund Israel, turn a blind eye to genocide in Palestine, and spend his whole presidency struggling against insurance companies to make healthcare affordable in a way that works better for Americans but also doesn’t upturn the system or truly put it within reach of the average citizen, and pleases mostly the middle classes.
He is the guy who will block AOC by having more powerful friends and then lose massive swathes of voter support and miss vital economic opportunities for total reform because he is a moderate.
Newsome built his popularity from forcing homeless people off the streets. This is incredibly popular with moderates because it is so very reasonable it is on its face due to the resources and housing offered to the homeless at the same time. It is a kinder and more effective means of reducing visible homelessness and the effects it has on the urban population without resorting to policies that are viewed by most as cruel and not supportive of the vulnerable populations it is being enforced against.
But it is still compulsion. It is still paternalistic. It is still the removal of choice from people the state has let down. It still prioritises the comfort of the middle classes over the autonomy of the vulnerable. It still demonises addicts and the mentally ill and those living in poverty.
It is a good political policy, and he is a good politician. It is a good compromise that prioritises the position of the majority of the populace and provides a more ethical and effective solution than mere move on orders, which are a tool and preference of the right. It connects the impoverished to social services
This may shock you, but the battle between moderatism and meaningful transformation of the system is not an American phenomenon. It is not Hassan’s fault he falls on the side of an issue in which his personal values will pit himself against the establishment democratic candidate. I cannot and do not blame him for refusing to support, in the preliminaries, a candidate who is promising to keep America complicit in the genocides and wars in the middle east. And the “threat of not voting” has become the only genuine means of interfacing with the democratic party, which is why this rhetoric abounds. Every. Time.
I do not support third party voting in America, and I dislike rhetoric that proposes it as a real protest vote. But at the same time, when that is your only leverage, your only real way of influencing the party and its core base, I can’t condemn a middle eastern man for opposing the unflinching genocide and imperialist conquest of his own people, or the (mild) rhetoric he employs.
Newsome is Hillary. Literally. He is the Dem’s pick to contest the seat against the same guy the real left actually love: Bernie Sanders, now with AOC in tow. They are the alternative STILL, a DECADE after losing to Hillary in 2016. If Bernie had won the primary, I truly believe we would have avoided both Trump presidencies. But he lost because the establishment rallied around the establishment candidate with moderatist positions that would not upset their donors too much, and then that candidate could not beat Trump because it was clear to voters that is what the establishment had done.
Newsome’s popularity promises a repeat of 2016. If y’all want to go down that road, fine by me, I’m not an American. But the idea that this is Hassan’s fault or that Hassan is in the wrong for opposing and expressing frustration about this endless Democrat stranglehold on leftist politics that puts pro-war, pro-genocide, pro-imperialist, anti-transformation candidates into the only position that can possibly compete in the real election over those with genuine grassroots popularity is so insane it makes me think this rhetoric has come directly from the right. Certainly “makes his money fomenting political discord” is a right wing accusation (made by people who do exactly the same thing to discredit entirely credible moral positions). And I don’t think we need to help them out with that, do you?
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