Not necessarily. There are two items on the ballot where I live: Proposition 50, and a local bond measure for our hospital district.
The success of the Trump administration lies, at least in part, with the excesses of Liberal policies and control over the media and social media. You don’t win against that by maintaining that strength, sense of group-boundaries, and a call to arms.
So while, yes, there’s the path where the two sides just keep doubling down and eventually start taking up weapons to shoot each other, there is the other path where one side stops doubling down and just moves back to being normal.
While there may be a path back to normalcy through fighting and the mutual destruction of attrition warfare - getting normal people into positions of influence, and building a following behind them is the better path.
California is on the way to being the guiding light for the path out of political craziness. As time has gone on, they’ve passed legislation to allow assigning homeless people a conservator; they recently got ride of whole language education, etc. It takes time to rotate the old guard out of office and get a more reasonable group in there. That process, created by independent district lines and the open primary system, is just beginning to take hold.
If you don’t have that leadership in place, to make a pitch for a sane path through the middle, then there’s no one to push politics in the safe direction on the national stage.
Which voice is it that’s going to be there arguing for sanity, rather than battle? Everything in politics follows the popular sentiment. I personally believe that the popular sentiment would back sanity, and the instant that one side raises that as an option, that political support will simply rush in like air into a vacuum. The disenfranchised third of the nation suddenly has a place to come to.
So long as the middle is sidelined, then there will always be the evenly divided political support available, to allow either side to misbehave as they want. You’re leaving Trump open to maintain his position, and giving him the reality of an enemy to attack because he can point to them taking deliberate, underhanded efforts to oppose him.
He can win against half the country. He can’t win against 2/3rds. It really is as simple as being willing to become an American party, instead of a Democratic. You can just choose to take the easy win.
Continued…
At any moment, Newsom or any Democrat could reveal an Amendment to ban Gerrymandering; he could reveal an Amendment that requires supermajorities in the Senate, like it used to be; he could propose Condorcet voting systems, that empower moderates to achieve Congress, so that supermajorities would actually exist in power.
The choice to bring no solutions - even though they would be popular, would directly address the wrongs that we’re seeing, and could drive the political movement to actually drive a positive change - and instead to accept an invitation to mutual bad behavior is not the answer. That’s the path to violence, not to a fixed nation.
There are no leaders among the Democrats.
If you don’t solve that, then there’s no path forward. Prop 50 is just one layer of blockade that prevents your party from being able to find one, or feeling the urgency to actually accept one.
I will vote YES!
I’m voting yes as well, and kicked a benjamin over to Newsom’s campaign for this proposition. I also don’t want to fight dirty, but it’s becoming the only way.
The other question to consider is - are Democrats really sure that Proposition-50 is going to result in 5 automatic Democratic House pick-ups? Maybe it will, this November, but there is the axiom of “Live by the gerrymander, die by the gerrymander.” Sometimes, today’s gerrymandering can mean losing more seats in a reverse-wave election down the road, because it makes you more vulnerable in down years to same extent that it gives you benefit in up years.
Thank you for more clarity. For whatever reason, I just couldn’t parse what you were saying.
It’s not cheating. It’s just changing the rules to favor a more street brawler style of play rather than a gentlemanly style of play. I’m not in California, but if I was I would vote in favor without hesitation.
Exactly.
That applies to gerrymandering along racial lines. I don’t know the plan California is proposing, but the Texas plan specifically avoided this. They aren’t diluting Latino voting power. They are just rearranging the districts so that those Latinos who are now voting Republican will be more likely to be the swing voters.
Exactly. This new gerrymandering isn’t doing that. We (here in Texas) aren’t ending up with districts that are 60% white / 40% Latino all ending up with white representatives. Instead we’re ending up with representatives who do in fact look like and are representative of their constituents, but now happen to be Republican rather than Democrat. The gerrymandered districts aren’t going to be electing a bunch of cis white hetero males to congress. They are going to be electing Republican Latinos and Latinas. At least that is what is going to happen in those gerrymandered districts in South Texas barring a well known and well liked non-politician running for office, such as Tejano singer Bobby Pulido, who is going to be running as a Democrat in one of the gerrymandered districts, against a Republican Latina.
So here then is my question. IF the idea that it is a Constitutional right that a protected class have their vote effectively nullified by marginalization through districting then why does it not apply to sex or religion or political affiliation? Yes we can talk about TX => +R & CA => +D but why am I in a state where 1/3 of us are not Democrat or Republican yet all of our reps are one or the other? If women are more than 50% of the population then why is less than 30% of the House made up of women.
FTR: I know the realities of why districting can address representation of minorities whereas it cannot for other protected classes … but then it should call into question if districting is unconstitutional if it “disenfrachises” other protected classes.
It’s the only reason I can talk myself into being a massive hypocrite and vote for it. I despise gerrymandering and I hate wrestling with pigs. If the Texas (and related) bullshit wasn’t happening…but it is. So any port in a storm and we’re in a Category 5 hurricane.
I guess the theory at work for Prop 50 supporters is two wrongs make it right?
IMO, Prop 50’s outcome is going to be an indicator of how powerful anti-MAGA sentiment will be in the 2026 nationwide races, not just in CA or TX. I think Newsom has two agendas here:
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He truly does want to counteract the attempts to rig the elections in Red states. They are not “playing by the rules” and we who oppose them should therefore not feel any shame at supporting this temporary measure to thwart MAGA. If Newsom can’t get CA to rebel against MAGA tyranny, I don’t think prospects look good for Dems retaking either the house or senate in the midterms.
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He wants to test his support as an eventual candidate for president in 2028, and success with Prop 50 will give him the green light. I don’t much like Gavin, but I recognize that he is one of the few people, and perhaps the only person, in the US right now with both the chutzpah and the muscle to challenge Trump and his enablers. If Prop 50 succeeds it will totally infuriate Trump. He cannot allow Newsom’s perceived hubris to go unpunished. I expect Trump to challenge the results in court and probably unilaterally declare CA actively rebellious which justifies putting the whole state under martial law. Luckily, Gavin can afford good bodyguards.
Either way, life is likely to get a lot more interesting, both in CA and in the entire USA. Prop 50 is the foreshadowing of whether things will get a little bit better or a lot worse.
TL; DR: Vote FOR Prop 50
More like dire times call for dire measures and in this particular case two wrongs make one very slightly less wrong.
But I have a hard time calling myself a full-on supporter. I was literally considering abstaining until just a day or two ago.
Are we assuming that both wrongs are somehow equal?
No, the theory is that if the ref allows kicking the opposing players in the balls and they do and you don’t you are going to lose, and what’s being decided is far more important than the outcome of a game.
Is that supposed to be a burn that sounded really clever in your head? Counteracting literal fascists isn’t a wrong.
I’d put it that you should check with the ref, first.
As noted in my posts above, so far no one has floated the right path.
In a real game, you’d take the matter to the ref, as first step. You only go to physical assault once he’s turned the offer down and told you that this really is the official new game.
And in a nation that wants to empower the people, not the parties, you’d advance a a country wide “anti-cheating” option for the public to vote on.
So where is that option?
So far as I see, this is one team offering to engage in a race to the bottom, and the other team glancing over to see if the ref is watching. If he isn’t, then the race is on. It’s a mutual agreement to be bad and pretend that there never was any third option.
I beg to differ. Counteracting fascists is not a wrong, no, but moving from impartial to partisan jurisdictions is a wrong. I’ll vote for it, but pretending it’s not wrong is a lie, and lying to oneself is what the other guys do.
Our options are this wrong, or the greater wrong of failing to block a fascist move when we had the power to do so. The lesser evil once again.
It’s still wrong, though. So it’s more or less a one wrong + one reactionary wrong in kind makes, if not right, as least some sort of neutralized status quo.
We’re in agreement. This is all just semantics
For Dopers who are living in California right now, what does the opposition “No” movement look like? How are they opposing Prop-50? Are they saying, basically, “Two wrongs don’t make a right?” Or “take the high road,” etc.