California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office said the governor was denied entry into a venue at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan. 21, after being invited to speak at the event due to “pressure” from the Trump administration.
Newsom had been scheduled to speak with Fortune at the USA House, Davos, a privately organized event, at the World Economic Forum, which has been recognized by the U.S. government as the nation’s headquarters in Davos.
ITT, idealists once again letting perfect be the enemy of good.
It’s worked so well the past few elections.
Oh look someone else pushing and autocrat with a blue paint job instead of red, telling us to pre submit to an obviously terrible choice. Being better than the worst option doesn’t make him by any means, good.
would only apply if Gavin Newsom was “good”.
He is not good, he even denied genocide in Gaza and protected billionaires
Don’t forget all the transphobia too!
And had photo-ops while clearing homeless camps.
He’s not Trump, but most of Trump’s donors would neither mind nor care.
The Democrats have had nothing but people like Newsom since the 1980s but you think that’s the best course of action? He was invited there because he would only talk about cultural grievances and not the economic ones that the wealthy are currently causing.
Nobody wants perfect. A neoliberal Democrat winning will just continue the kleptocracy while lying to us about it. Bill Clinton, Obama, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are controlled opposition.
Also, Ben Shapiro, the lying little shit ran circles around him on Newsom’s podcast. Made him seem like a weak bitch.
Plus Newsom had his chance in 2024, when we needed a winnable candidate and he decided it was better to let the country fall than be accused of stepping over a minority woman, nevermind the fact she was massively unpopular and running as the status quo while republicans ran as reform. That biden’s presidency was a shit show, people wanted a change, and they didn’t know better than to not vote for the republicans.
Seriously, it’s not just he doesn’t deserve it, that he would not be popular enough to end the fascist threat and restore the republic, it’s that he won’t be popular enough to win, not the least with republicans cheating every way they can. At most he will ask the courts to let him have the election and they will say no.
That’s on the voters for not participating in primaries…
Before then tbh
Well, they won every popular vote except two, so don’t be so quick to throw out the baby with the bathwater
Yes, Obama ran on hope, change and anti-war… A litera promised leftist revolution. What did we get? More centrists. Democrats lost over 1000 seats in state and federal offices. Bankers in charge of policing banks. George W Bush and his cronies walking free after years on criminal activity by his administration.
Biden was just the result of the DNC and all of the centrists grouping together to defeat Bernie Sanders for the second time.
That’s when they lost Congress for the first time in half a century. And Republicans have held that advantage for most of the time since then. It’s not just the presidency that is affected by their rich-first policies
Because at the time of the general election all other options left of center right are effectively removed with no support from the democratic party. They basically haven’t even pretended to have a democratic primary since Obama in 2008, instead choosing to coronate whoever the super delegates choose, which has worked true wonders for the party /s. They’re already starting the motions to do this again with their next center right candidate in Newsom.
Why not run a charismatic candidate with popular policy and win the electoral college too?
We’re not trying to tie one hand behind our backs to impress our dads, we should do what has the best chance of actually winning…
That must be why the country has been so awesome during all that time!
Stop saying that bullshit nonsense. He is not “good”. We don’t demand perfection, we demand that these people don’t be genocidal right wing fascist light.
I hate whatever pundit told you all to say “dont let perfect be the enemy of good.” It makes me feel like I’m talking to a bunch of programmed robots.
It’s a saying that isn’t new.
I welcome critique if Newsom before the primaries. I love AOC and sanders and walz as much as anyone here, but until one of them is electable, we’re kinda stuck in this chicken or the egg problem here. Like it or not, and to be clear i do not, someone with true leftist bona fides isn’t yet electable in the US. The best we can hope for is someone who can listen and change their mind.
youre giving up before there are even primaries. You dont want a leftist in the primaries?
As a voter in the primaries I go leftist. But if I’ve got money on the outcome, it’s someone like Newsom.
Newsom is unelectable and will not beat Trump or a Trump surrogate in the next federal election, and will not do anything to fix what Trump has done if he does get elected. It doesn’t matter how much voter shaming you do. Understand this, please, for the love of God. I do not want my country to have to go to war against yours.
How many times do you guys have to lose against Trump before you realize that the candidates you’re backing aren’t electable? You haven’t even tried a candidate that is true bonafide leftist.
Except mamdani. Who won his election.
You can hardly hold a New York mayoral election as a proxy for how the country votes.
But I can hold the behavior of the Democratic establishment during his campaign as a proxy for how they behave at a nation-wide level.
Okay but I absolutely can point to the democrats losing elections against objectively unpopular republican candidates in federal elections.
How many offices are elected by the country at large?
Exactly one.
Fascists hate socialists because they attract the same people.
…So, then, running a socialist would take votes away from Trump, no?
It’s not a saying, it’s a thought-terminating cliche used to shut down discussions by making your opponent seem “unreasonable” under any circumstance. For example, one could say “We should appreciate having Donald Trump as president because Hitler caused a lot more harm. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good” and be just as accurate as what you’re saying now.
What’s the scenario where they “become electable” in your mind, and what exactly is the path between here and there that involves electing more Bidens and Newsoms while being continuously told that anyone better is unelectable?
I don’t understand your Hitler example, it does not seem to be an example that fits the saying. How is Trump good to Hitler’s perfect? Or is it the reverse? Either way doesn’t make sense to me. Normally that saying is used in a context where someone is potentially getting some of what they actually want, because getting all of what they want is not feasible, and continuing to pursue all of what they want risks them not getting anything they want. In your example you seem to be using it like it means you get a choice of either a negative outcome or a worse negative outcome, which is not correct.
Trump is “good” because he’s not as bad as Hitler was. Therefore, we should be glad to have him despite him not being “perfect.” I’m not sure what’s unclear about that.
These two statements mean the exact same thing.
Trump hasn’t sent millions of Americans to the gas chamber (the “good”), and that’s better than the alternative right? If you put any value in this expression then how could you possibly disagree with this?
As long as a worse possibility exists or can be imagined, this saying can be used to justify quite literally anything, which is why it’s completely worthless outside of trying to make your opponent seem unreasonable in an argument regardless of the topic.
Those two statements do not mean the exact same thing. Trump being less shitty than Hitler doesn’t make Trump good, you are definitely misunderstanding the saying. It’s about trying to achieve goals, and the importance of knowing when you’ve maximized the achievement possible without ruining your chances of achieving the goal by pressing further. It doesn’t mean “I can imagine something worse, therefore this terrible choice I do not want is now alright with me”.
And in a scenario where the two outcomes are Trump or Hitler, Trump is the good achievement as that means millions of people don’t get murdered and the country is better off thereby maximizing progress toward our goal.
It sounds like you’re starting to understand the point. Newsom being less shitty than Trump doesn’t make Newsom good either, yet here we are being told that he is despite their shared ideologies simply because he has a (D) next to his name instead of an ®. “Vote blue no matter who.”
Yet that’s precisely how it’s being used.
It’s bizarre. People don’t learn to negotiate or accept half a load of bread when offered.
He is a corpocrate. A shill for the wealthy. He represents the white moderates.
MLK advocated for some pretty radical changes to our society. Not just racial equality. We need the white moderates to lose their investments, or they won’t really help. They have too much to lose, they think maybe tomorrow would be more opportune.
Same then, same now.
This is exactly the time to be going after libs like Newsom. Move the party left before primaries.
I actually agree with you. But experience tells me we’re too principled and undisciplined to support any candidate after the primaries.
I agree with that. Both voters and politicians share the blame for Trump being in office. Democrats fail to run good candidates, but voters refuse to have their voices heard in primaries as well as thinking that doing a “protest vote” in generals is useful.
The options have been rather poor, let’s all be honest here. This would work if we were talking about say, AOC. Newsom, however, is bad. Very bad.
Pritzker is fairly good.
Very bad is a sliding scale. And he ain’t that. I’m in California and see it first hand, it’s 55% good.
That’s a failing grade. Bring barley better than coin flip on bad decisions is not worth pre settling for.
Ask some trans people about this if you know any. If you don’t, ask 196, there’s plenty there.
https://archive.org/details/michael-parenti-inventing-reality-recorded-1993
The fucker is a democrat trump.
Jesus fucking Christ how deluded are you?
Fetterman/Gabbard 2028! Yes we can!!1!
why would you post such an ugly thing
I will support him as far as it supports positive movement. I will criticize him otherwise. Same with every neo-liberal before him, and will continue with every neo-liberal after him.
Idealists are letting perfect be the enemy of the good but I don’t think that’s why Democrats underperformed. Neither Clinton nor Biden/Harris were idealists of this sort (despite some stuff Harris said but didn’t mean back in the 2020 primaries) and they didn’t lose elections because of a lack of support from the idealists. So IMO while the idealists aren’t helping, the very much non-idealistic institutions of the Democratic party which prioritize seniority within the party over electability are to blame.
Considering how close both 2016 and 2024 were, don’t be so sure.
Clinton I don’t know. Harris did for sure (her less that “perfect” stance on Palestine). And Biden, the most centrist of the three, won. so, your point?
Biden didn’t win because he ran a great campaign, though he did at least give some lip service in an attempt to bring the progressives in after the primary, he won because Trump was currently in office and his chaos and damage was undeniable and at the top of people’s minds.
Instead of trying to parse out which of three centrist candidates was more centrist (not as obvious as you claim), there’s actually a simple pattern. Every one of those elections was won by the “change” candidate. As people get more and more ground down by the impacts of decades of neoliberalism draining wealth from the middle class, the non ideological segment of the electorate just keeps asking for “different from now”.
The last few elections had historically unpopular, zero charisma candidates who all had policy positions so far right, they weren’t just to the right of the dem voter base, they were to the right of the average American…
Acting like anyone more liberal than Ronald Reagan was the problem is actively harmful, be cause yelling out voters to shut up and vote blue no matter who won’t actually solve anything.
And as we saw with Biden, at a certain point the absence of more harm isnt enough.
We need someone “progressive” enough to actually try and implement a solution.
Even the voting members of the DNC realized that a year ago…
Just hold on, any day now Lemmy will find a candidate so pure they can rally behind them.
Any day now.
They don’t need to rally, just grow enough as people to hold their noses and vote.