You mean in the primary? If he became the candidate despite your objections and preferences, you'd vote for him in the general over Trump III, Vance, or whoever Project 2025 anoints? Right? Like if the choices were between more Trump and an imperfect democrat, you'd pick the democrat?
I'd rather light myself on fire than vote for Newsom. It would be finally admitting that our democratic system is only dedicated to keeping people you hate out of office. And since I despise the dude, why vote for him?
And to be fair, wouldn't vote for Slotkin or Shapiro or a number of Democrats that I don't agree with and don't respect if they were running.
Because he's the lesser evil? There may be a lot of things you don't like about him, but he wouldn't be doing any of the insane things that Trump and his cronies are doing. We wouldn't be defunding Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP, the CDC, NPR and PBS, etc. It would be a normal government.
I feel like wheeling out this old speech from Star Trek is appropriate: www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfNe...
In short, we have been led to a place where we vote for people that we know are awful for "the good of the country". Newsom is a really shitty guy and I don't respect him. What kind of democracy do we have where I'm forced to vote for him because I don't want another guy to get in?
And as that character said in the video, I think our society and government are dying, and I think we need to accept that it's happening and plan accordingly.
So much of the discourse lately has been about defending public goods and social support, which totally makes sense, but Democrats are content with eschewing an inspirational vision in exchange for defending sclerotic institutions as ends unto themselves.
Democrats aren't perfect. But they're not fascists authoritarians in bed with oligarchs and the likes of Putin. There are degrees of bad, and if you can't discern between them - even just to buy time to promote and vote for more progressive candidates like Sanders and AOC - then you own the result.
I hope I'm wrong, but this really feels like the beginning of the end for America, freedom and democracy. A bad business-as-usual democrat is far better than a fascist. They're not remotely the same or equal in terms of choices.
But I'm saying that I no longer buy into the validity of a system where a vote against fascism needs to be a vote for corruption and mediocrity. We need systemic change and Democrats do not want that as long as they can send out fundraising emails about how they "oppose" Republicans.