Rebecca Solnit found this, and I am passing it on. It's about Gov Newsom being useful -- you don't have to like him or trust him.
--Kim
What he said x 1000. And why I said voting is a chess move, not a valentine, all those years ago.
We need to stop worrying about whether Newsom has his soul in the right place or is trustworthy. They're politicians. None of them are trustworthy. The ones you trust most spend millions on campaign PR to shape your trust in them. Does that mean they're trustworthy, or does it mean those millions in PR convince you to identify with them?
Politicians are either useful, or they are not useful. That's it. That's the measure.
You measure whether you can push them into the policy positions you want, and it sure seems like you can with him. So he's useful. Is he as useful as someone who's embraced those policy positions longer? No, but he can continue to become more and more useful the longer you're able to keep him in the policy space you want.
If he's the nominee, do you vote for him? It's 2025, why are you thinking about 2028, have we learned nothing? But while a candidate you can push into certain policy positions isn't as useful as one who lives in those positions, he's still incredibly, incredibly useful so long as you're willing to keep on pushing.
The mistake with Biden is everyone stopped fucking pushing. Not that he was good or bad, but that so many who were fighting tooth and nail went home and figured finally there was someone to solve shit for them, let him magically take care of it for you.
I don't give a shit if Newsom is likable or trustworthy or anything else. I give a shit that he's useful and can continue being useful. If he can be pushed this far on this many policies, he can be pushed this far on yet more policies. You can extract a useful function from him, and that's better than most options. Doesn't mean you have to trust him. Just means you've got to use him. He'll go where you offer clear electoral rewards for him. He'll adopt whatever policy you convince him is advantageous. He's a snake, but he's your snake. Snake that snake wherever you need a snake to be snaked. That doesn't mean you can trust him. But it makes the exchange for pushing him where you want very clear.
Does he agree with everything you believe? Of course not. Are there better options? For what, 3 years from now? We don't even know what those options are or whether it'll matter. But can you push Newsom's stances where you want? Pretty fucking obviously, so, you know, start conveying where that is. If it's him in whatever future we may or may not have, it's not on him to stop being a snake. It's on you to keep using him as your snake.
Don't make it weird, you know what the fuck I mean. You want Dems to fight dirty without embracing anyone who lives in that dirt, when you could test case the fuck out of Newsom to see what works and then decide his usefulness for a date that's not gonna matter unless you have someone kicking that dirt around right now.
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