Gavin Newsom

Fighting Stupidity With Stupidity

The cliché is “fighting fire with fire”. Sometimes it makes sense to fight fire with fire. Sometimes it doesn’t.

This time the cliché should read “fighting a danger to our democracy with another danger to our democracy”, which explains the title of this post.

I’ve been giving President Trump a hard time and I plan to continue to do so, but he isn’t the only politician endangering our system of government, and they aren’t all MAGA. My home state of California has come up with a plan to counter the Trump agenda which is as dangerous as anything Trump is doing.

It’s called Prop 50. It’s all in the news here, but if you live in Paducah or Peoria, it may be new to you. When Texas, following Trump’s call, unfairly redistricted its congressional map, Democratic leadership in California, following Governor Gavin Newsom, followed suit. Before I can tell you exactly what they did, a little background will be needed.

Since 2010, California had done its redistricting through the Citizens Redistricting Commission, a balanced panel of five Democrats, five Republicans, and four members unaffiliated with either party. This board was brought about the people through Proposition 11, and later modified by Proposition 20. Its redistricting map is probably as fair as anyone could expect.

Now the Democratic leadership has produced Proposition 50 which throws out the CRC redistricting map in favor of one which completely and openly favors Democrats. They make no apologies, but call it a necessary reaction to the unfair actions of the State of Texas. The Citizens Redistricting Commission is not disbanded by Prop 50; it will draw the 2030-2040 map after the 2030 census, but the 2026, 2028, and 2030 elections will be skewed Democratic. Deliberately. Openly. Nakedly. And without apology.

Since this is a proposition, it will be up to the people of California to vote this in — or not.

I suppose the California Democrats who wrote Prop 50 will call this fighting fire with fire. I agree, if they mean, “You Republicans set fire to one end of the Constitution, so we Democrats are going to set fire to the other end.”

Welcome to 2025. If this had happened any other year, I would have suspected I was reading a script from Saturday Night Live, but apparently this is the way we do things now.

We shouldn’t.

Our country is in serious trouble and it needs serious leaders. It needs people in office who trust the Constitution. It needs Democrats who do not simply copy what the MAGA Republicans are doing and call it justified.

You shoved me, so I’m going to shove you is not a reasonable political philosophy.

He did it first, is not an excuse for violating responsible political behavior.

The only good thing that could come out of this would be a sound defeat for Prop. 50. I expect it to go down, because I trust the people of California.

As always, folks, its all up to you.