That’s fine, I guess, but maybe just engage with the argument in front of you. He is right now the face of the redistricting campaign. What’s the downside of holding, or reducing, fire for two months?

Because it gives cover for other potential candidates to pick up his anti-trans or rabidly anti-homeless stuff and add it to their campaigns. He and Buttigieg are pushing *really hard* to shove the acceptable positions window to include transphobia right now and getting in the way of that is good.

Waiting a few months, especially since Newsom himself really doesn't seem to be having any discernible impact on the popularity of the ballot initiative, runs a serious risk of giving a signal that, oh, transphobia and throwing minorities under the bus is not only okay, it's *preferred*.

We saw what happened in the UK when they started giving ground on transphobia and now the party is pretty overtly extreme far right for, effectively, no reason, because the "sports question" was a trojan horse for a ton of other really odious stuff. Is it worth risking that in the US?

(sorry, the Labour party, there's stuff where they're pretty overtly to the extreme right now because if you accept one kind of bigotry as standard, you start rapidly assimilating other types because the filters stop working)

Combine that with stuff like the memecoin where like...don't buy the memecoin should be plastered everywhere. It doesn't help the anti-Trump stuff *at all*, it literally just enriches Newsom personally. If he didn't want people saying he's running a scam, he shouldn't be running a scam.

I'm also just going to note (late) that him being "the face of the redistricting campaign" is completely meaningless. The idea that criticizing Newsom will tank the ballot initiative is completely ridiculous, because that *doesn't happen*. Newsom is not popular in California, but (con't)

initiatives he pushed for still pass even if people fucking hate him as a person because they liked *the initiative*, especially since he has very little say or control over them. There's no evidence that criticism of him will cause any problems for anyone *but him*.

And who gives a shit if he personally gets burned? He is a ridiculously awful candidate for a lot of really concrete reasons, the redistricting is broadly popular entirely independently of him and he thinks that personally destroying the belongings of homeless people, an action which (con't)

basically guarantees they lose all possible ways to *not* leave homelessness (because *he* pioneered the "steal their money and destroy their identifying documents" tactic) is a smart move that makes him look good. Combine that with the transphobia and you do not want his ideas getting traction.