Gavin Newsom doesn’t want to remove Trump from California ballot

“There is no doubt that Donald Trump is a threat to our liberties and even to our democracy,” Mr Newsom said on 22 December. “But in California, we defeat candidates at the polls. Everything else is a political distraction.”

I’m so sick of this shit. We had a choice of Trump or Biden in 2020 and we decided. Then Trump attempted to overthrow the government. We don’t need to decide again at the polls.

Translation: I would rather take this opportunity to self-promote.
- Newsom's about face on policies this last year as he ramps up his run for presidency is fucking disgusting. Between him and fetterman we're learning that even 'the good ones' will throw their constituents to the wolves when power and money are involved.

Why the fuck do people let Trump get away with shit that no ordinary person would get away with.

Imagine if we used this same bullshit logic for ordinary people.

"Murderers shouldn't be stopped by police. We should defeat them in polls."

"Car thieves shouldn't be arrested. We should let the American people choose."

Fucking dumb.

And incidentally, we already did that, in 1868 when the 14th amendment was passed. So leaving it up to the polls is ignoring both the law and the will of the people.

Because holding famous, rich important people accountable for their actions would jeopardize the system. It needs that lack of accountability to function.
- Because holding famous, rich important people accountable for their actions would jeopardize the system. It needs that lack of accountability to function in a way that only benefits the wealthy.
  I changed that a little. I think capitalism is pretty shitty, but it could do better for many people if the United States government stopped letting rich people bend and often outright break the law.
Democrats don't actually care if they win elections. Thanks to the duopoly control of elections, they will never go away

Mr Newsom, you are not above the constitution. Let the dust settle and do what the constitution recommends.

...and do what the constitution recommends
part of the problem here is that the constitution doesn't actually recommend removing people from ballots. we're in uncharted waters here. Though I agree, remove trump from the ballot.
- It does say he's not eligible and the feds won't do it, now it's left up to the states.
- I would argue that the constitution not only recommends Trump be removed from the ballot. It almost requires it.
  The constitution explicitly states that people like Trump who participated in an insurrection are ineligible for office. This is similar to other requirements for the office. For example, you must be a natural citizen over 35 years old, etc.
  Constitutionally, each state chooses how to run their own elections. However, that freedom does not give them the power to go against the other parts of the constitution.
  Traditionally, states will not put people on presidential ballots who do not meet the requirements to be president.
  But do they have to do that? I would argue that the case with Trump proves that, going forward, they do have to exclude ineligible candidates for president. Because Trump is the first ineligible candidate who is leading in polls.
  Every state election he might win is a constitutional crisis. Each state has the duty to follow the Constitution and ensure that Trump doesn't win the presidency. The current method for doing this action is removing him from the ballot.
- part of the problem here is that the constitution doesn’t actually recommend removing people from ballots.
  Why would anyone keep an ineligible candidate's name on the ballot?

A twice impeached seditionist-rapist shouldn’t be defeated at the polls. They should be defeated by slipping and falling on a shiv in a prison shower.

After taking a swan dive down several flights of metal grate stairs and creatively perforating their small intestine with a rusty pineapple, but yeah, the shop & fall would be the clincher for sure

I mean... Yeah, if you want to ignore the Constitution.

He’s doing this for the same foolish reason that Hillary did. He’s got one thing going for him that Hillary didn’t. He’s not hated as much or more than Trump.

Hillary won the popular vote by 2 million votes for reference.

There's certainly no need to tussle over it in California. Trump wouldn't win in California anyway and it would just feed into the persecution narrative among his fan base.

There's still red districts that might see a drop in Republicans voting if trump wasn't an option.
- True. Down ballot it would make a difference. Local govts could see substantial improvements.

Whether Trump's actions constitute abetting insurrection is still an open question that will undoubtedly reach SCOTUS.

Regardless, and pragmatically, removing Trump from the ballots of states he would never win in the first place only emboldens the aggrieved right. It might feel nice to people that don't support Trump, but roughly half of all voters DO support Trump. Even in bright blue California, 30% supported Trump for president. That's roughly 1 out of every 3 people. In CALIFORNIA.

Removing candidates from the ballot is a dangerous game for everyone. Things will only change for the better if we do it the hard, annoying way: changing the minds of people that support him. Removing him from the ballot is not the way to do that.

While I do agree with you, nearly completely, one nit that I would pick is the implication that "the aggrieved right", and the emboldening of same are a point of concern to be avoided.
At this point, I feel that the right, and the actions and positions they've taken, have removed them markedly from the realm of a worthy and respectable political bloc, even if one I rarely agree with, and moved them squarely into the realm of radical and destabilizing faction that pushes for goals which can and will permanently destroy the foundations of the democracy I stand for as an essential underpinning of personal liberty.
At that point, they deserve to be aggrieved, and I see pissing them off as a necessary by-product of preserving democracy.
They've chosen to place themselves at odds with democratic rule, not the other way around.
That being said, however, I feel it would be a bigger win for everyone if Trump loses the election while appearing on ballots than if he's absent from ballots in battleground states.
changing the minds of people that support him
nope. fuck them.
- I absolutely will not fuck any of them. I hope they all acquire a disease of the genitals that can only be cured with lye and sandpaper.
You are factually correct about "30% of the vote in CA". But I think you are misinterpreting the data. PEW says that in 2020 96% of people voted strictly along party lines. PEW shows 30% of registered voters in CA are GOP or GOP leaning. Which means whoever the GOP candidate is would have received 29% of the voter REGARDLESS of who the candidate was. And before you point out the 1% "gain", Biden "gained" 6% over registered DEM voters using the same metrics in CA.
(I sourced PEW because they were the first Google results that had the stats at the detail level I needed)
- That's a fairly long post that completely missed the point of what I said while needlessly parsing data that is mostly immaterial to the thesis.
  The amount of time people like you spend trying to interpret polling data to support an unrealistic belief that things aren't as bad as they seem then having the audacity to strike a pikachu-face as the extreme right continues to expand and the country regresses is embarrassing.
  You should go into politics.
I wish more people could see this, and understand it. It's a bit shocking to me how little empathy people have. Empathy isn't just about knowing when to give someone a hug- it's also about understanding what makes some people angry (among other things). Removing Trump from the ballot in California would do FAR more harm than anything else.
I agree with (you) and Newsome on this one
- One thing which keeps sticking with me that was mentioned on another thread that I agree with, is precedence. If blue/liberal states start trying to remove him from their ballots, what's going to stop the red/conservative states from trying to do the same for Biden?
  It may just keep escalating to a larger bickering match between the states akin to children fighting over what channel to watch.

Gavin Newsom needs to sit down and shut the fuck up. He's got a future in politics. Now is not his time but he keeps trying to put himself into the news cycle for recognition. Chill bro.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

California Governor Gavin Newson isn’t backing his own lieutenant’s call to remove Donald Trump from the state’s 2024 ballot after the Colorado Supreme Court determined that he was ineligible for the presidency.

California Lt Gov Eleni Kounalakis responded to the move by suggesting that her state should do the same ahead of its 5 March primary.

Ms Kounalakis had expressed her intent to remove Mr Trump from the ballot in a letter to California’s Secretary of State on 20 December.

“Prompted” by the Colorado ruling, Ms Kounalakis wrote, “I urge you to explore every legal option to remove former President Donald Trump from California’s 2024 presidential primary ballot.”

On the same day, Democratic state Sen Dave Min announced he planned to introduce a bill in 2024 that would allow California “residents to sue to remove ineligible candidates from the ballot.”

In response to the Colorado ruling, Mr Trump took to Truth Social to air out his grievances: “A SAD DAY IN AMERICA!!

The original article contains 381 words, the summary contains 162 words. Saved 57%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

Dis shits gonna streissand effect in Trump's favor.

If it does then that means political accountability is impossible.
I think he's avoiding more Streisand this way, but it's prolly arguable.

I can halfway agree with this. It's not like Trump was going to win in California, so it might make sense to focus efforts on other states.

Still, I'd like to see CA at least try.

I don't see the Supreme Court upholding even Colorado's ruling. Trump has gained more political steam with this. He has his angle that the "Dems are actively not being democratic". Not that I agree with any of that message.

There's no way he'd win in California regardless. Makes no sense to attempt it there.

No way this supreme court upholds that ruling. Which pisses me off even more that Biden refused to stack the court when he had the chance
- Yes I fear it is just misleading hope. Another thread is hoping Dean Phillips can upset a repeat of 2020 Biden v Trump. Who knows, we'll see.
  At least Breyer was replaced by Jackson. The Senate is as much to blame as well.
- It would take an act of Congress to alter the Judicial Act of 1969, which sets the current size of the Supreme Court.
  Democrats consider the preservation of the filibuster to be more important.
I mean that's the message he'll spin for sure, but the Colorado suit was brought to the courts by Republicans trying to remove Trump from the ballot.
- He'll just say theyre RINOs that are agents of the democrats.
Why would supreme Court weigh in on states rights to run their elections?
- Because the Colorado ruling was based on an analysis and interpretation of the US Constitution. SCOTUS is the court of last resort in such matters.

Unpopular opinion time: Newsom is right. Kicking Trump off the ballot, just like expanding the Supreme Court or having a state’s electors vote differently from the popular vote in that state, is perfectly legal. But, just like those things, it’s an escalation outside democratic norms which invites retaliation in kind which is a dangerous thing to do when fascism is already on the rise.

Trump shouldn’t be off the ballot. He should be in prison along with the other architects of the coup. There are mechanisms within existing democratic norms which are well equal to the task of responding to what he did. Eroding the guard rails a little further because what we’re having trouble getting it done inside the guard rails is dangerous as hell.

Fascists don’t care about and won’t respect governmental norms. The only way to stop them is preventing them from getting onto power in the first place and we’ve been failing miserably at that since Reagan.
- (Edit: "Fascists don't care" part is 100% accurate. That's more than anything what defines fascists, the in-group and the winning being more important than any particular set of laws or norms. "The only way to stop them" is what I think is inaccurate.)
  I don't think this is accurate. Trump's a fascist, and he came to power already in the first place, and we survived (so far).
  How Democracies Die goes into this in quite a bit of detail with historical examples. Basically my takeaway from it is that the key factors are:
  Active resistance from within the conservative establishment that got hijacked by the fascists (Mitt Romney and Liz Cheney and etc)
  The non-fascists taking extraordinary care to preserve democratic norms with their own conduct, not just escalating in kind which leads to a no-holds-barred shit show which the fascists are usually equipped to win.
  Point #2 is why I say this is a bad idea.
The problem is, your position doesn't make logical sense.
If Trump is innocent with regards to Jan. 6, he should not be in prison and should be allowed to be an electoral candidate.
But if he is guilty (and even if not proven in a court of law - just guilty as a matter of fact) then he is ineligible to run per the constitution.
Otherwise we might as well put Arnold Schwarzenegger or Billy Eilish on the ballot. If popularity is all that matters and the constitution isn't important.
Now, perhaps the Supreme Court comes up with some really good legal arguments to the contrary, but until now, the legal arguments are quite powerful and can't just be handwaved away.
And this is the exact type of situation that the SCOTUS has jurisdiction to resolve.
- I'm not saying there's any ambiguity about their legal right to kick him off the ballot. I'm saying it's a very bad idea for them to do so.
  Pop quiz by way of example: Does Biden have the legal right to expand the Supreme Court to 100 justices?
  Well then, why doesn't he? It'd sure make issues like abortion rights way easier.
I think that’s why Newsom doesn’t want to do it.
In addition, California GOP primaries, while it has a massive elector count, have almost no bearing on the GOP’s strategies in the presidential race. They haven’t won there in so long that the GOP stopped worrying about what “those lefties” think and focused their strategy entirely on the swing states.
If Pennsylvania and Michigan were to disqualify him from the general election for any reason, and it was upheld in court, his candidacy would be effectively over.
Does that mean the threat of fascism from Trump would be over? I don’t think so. The petty and “I’m rubber, you’re glue” thinking of the MAGATs could bring about a second uprising and increase in domestic terrorism. Or a wild power grab by the Supreme Court which further undermines trust in the institution.
- Yeah. You can't run a democratic country with 40% of the country thinking the system is rigged against them and wanting to just burn the whole thing down. Kicking Trump off the ballot (in any state, battleground or not) just turns that burner up by that much more.
  That's not to say it's as simple as "keep him on the ballot, let him win, end of democracy, o well we tried." I think a much more concerted government effort to combat the propaganda systems (Fox News, all its new runty media children, AM talk radio, and all the new totally-fact-free internet political propaganda) that got us to this place in the first place would be good. I think a more modernized approach to communicating with the electorate by the government would be good. I think younger people in politics instead of just the same old geriatric crew would be great. I think fixing some of the very real neglect that both parties have given to the working class since about 1980 would be good. Basically, fixing the underlying issues that led to people loving Trump in the first place. For as much of a big bag of human shit as he is, there's a reason he was able to come in and scoop up so many votes. Leaving the conditions in place but removing him from the ballot to inflame the fascism is like the worst of all possible worlds.
I agree, Trump is antifragile and benefits from being kicked off the ballot: he now gets to play the victim even more and helps further radicalize his base.
- Yeah. They won't at all understand that it's legit to keep him off the ballot. They already think the election was stolen in plain sight; they'll just assume this is the next undemocratic authoritarian trick.
  Of course putting him in prison will also radicalize his base and give him something to play victim about, but oh well. It's more effective by a lot, and more clearly within democratic norms we're trying to preserve by a lot.