Gavin Newsom's Overton Window push

At this point, Gavin Newsom has lost my vote going forward. It appears that he's been a shadow member of the left edge of the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party for quite some time. My face is feeling the leopard's teeth because I didn't recognize his spots.

Gavin Newsom made his political moves originally by pushing the Overton Window in the correct direction back when he supported equal marriage rights when he was mayor of San Francisco. He rode it all the way to the California governorship.

Now that he can't run for governor again (two terms, max), there's only one office he can try for to move up the chain: President of the U.S. And for that, it appears that he thinks he has to move right. With his new podcast, it appears that he's making a play for centrists and near-right voters by pandering to some farther-right ideas. I have no idea whether he actually believes what he said on the podcast but it's more than concerning.

Is this what passes for Democratic election strategy going forward?

1. Agree with the the bad guys
2. Toss trans people under the bus
3. And hope that trans people and allies will vote for you anyway because the alternative is somehow worse?

These opportunistic politicians are stretching that Overton Window way out in the wrong direction.

This is appeasement. This is using marginalized groups as stepping stones then abandoning them when it's convenient.

U.S. Democratic politicians are centrist at best and would be steady right-wingers most anywhere else in the rapidly-shrinking list of democratic nations. You can't "rescue democracy" by destroying democracy.

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Written and posted and copyrighted on 2025-03-06 by me. Quote me if you want (linking to this post would be nice, too) but no one and no thing have permission to slurp this into any LLM vomit factory as training data.