Lock up your tents, California!

Toss out your old camping gear!

Hide your pillows and blankets where the cops will never find them!

Because the people who run California have finally seen clearly that the greatest scourge in today’s Golden State is not climate change and not crime, not COVID and not corruption, not the rising cost of living nor grinding poverty.

No, what most threatens our way of life is people who camp.

And so, in this the year 2024, the great state of California has gone to war against campers and their encampments.

This war effort is unlike anything seen here in generations. The wheels of 21st-century California government move painfully slowly. It takes state and local agencies days to respond to a police call, a minimum of six months to permit a coffee shop, five years to add a carpool lane on a highway, and three decades (and counting) to construct a promised high-speed rail line.

But the war on encampments is proceeding with a shocking speed, a real blitzkrieg. This summer Gov. Gavin Newsom, known more for issuing plans than following through on them, didn’t merely order state agencies to take down encampments on land they control. He donned gloves and work clothes to throw away the tents and trash of the unhoused himself.

Newsom also issued guidance on removing encampments to cities and counties. Local governments usually do their best to ignore state orders, but not this time. Cities from Arcata to Vista have ripped down encampments with alacrity and vigor. CalMatters counted at least 14 cities, from San Francisco to Long Beach, that have either passed new laws to prohibit camping or updated old ones; at least four cities revived camping bans they previously didn’t enforce.

San Diego, a leader in the anti-encampment war, has made “No Camping” signs as ubiquitous as fish tacos and shut down the massive “island” encampment—surrounded by water—under the I-5 freeway. Meanwhile, once-progressive paradise Santa Monica toughened its anti-camping ordinance, too. Possession of cannabis may be legal, but possession of pillows and blankets can get you locked up. (Don’t let the grown-ups see your blankie, kids!)

One great thing about the anti-encampment war is that it’s unifying, an example of the enduring power of bipartisan consensus. Sure, California’s exclusively Democratic leaders have fought bitterly against the U.S. Supreme Court when it strips away gun laws or the rights of women or immigrants. But in this war, the Golden State’s top progressive leaders are making common cause with the six conservative justices and their recent decision to allow cities to prohibit people from sleeping on the streets.

As Republicans and Democrats join forces in favor of this righteous war, a few apologists for the status quo remain. Some dead-end liberals are prone to quoting the 1894 novel Red Lily, by the Frenchman Anatole France: “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.”

But France is easily dismissed these days. He was a practitioner of irony—which has been outlawed across this formerly self-aware country—and of critical and independent journalism—which is being killed off by the bipartisan consensus that we shouldn’t have to listen to uncomfortable truths that offend our partisan biases.

Now, you might think California’s intellectuals would challenge the encampment bans. Instead, our state’s scholars are leading their own anti-encampment campaign.

The University of California and California State University systems have announced strict new bans against encampments anywhere on their campuses or properties. Their goal is to prevent a recurrence of the protests of the previous academic year that produced antisemitism, Islamophobia, and violence—including when some universities called in the police to bust up the encampments.

In announcing this oh-so-principled policy, the universities are not just saying that opposition to the scourge of encampments is more important than the First Amendment. They are also eliminating a potential on-campus housing solution—tents—when thousands of their students are unhoused.

But ignore the lonely critics out there. The logic of the universities, and the state and its cities, and the nation’s highest court, is inarguable:

Californians shouldn’t have to sleep outside.

The only way to make sure we don’t have to sleep outside is to arrest or relocate those of us who sleep outside.

And such enforcement will solve the problem because someone else, under intolerable pressure, will step in and provide shelter to those displaced by encampment crackdowns.

Who is that someone? The state points to local governments, which have money and authority to build housing. The local governments point back to the state, which could change laws that make it too easy for opponents to block housing for the unhoused.

Don’t worry. I’m sure they’ll sort it out soon. Please don’t lose any sleep over it.

The post California’s Greatest Scourge? Camping appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

If you’re ever inside the Great Mausoleum at Forest Lawn cemetery in Glendale and hear laughter ringing through the hallways, it’s probably me visiting the tomb of Culbert Olson.

Olson is perhaps the most anomalous figure in California political history. During our long era of Republican dominance (1896-1958), he was the only Democrat to serve as governor. And he was an unapologetic atheist in our god-crazy country, refusing to say “So help me God” while taking the oath of office in 1939. After an ineffective four-year term and re-election defeat at the hands of Earl Warren, he went on to run United Secularists of America.

In this century, Olson is an unknown, forgotten by all but the kookiest connoisseurs of Californiana, like your columnist, who cracks up every time he encounters our late, great god-denying governor in that cathedral-like mausoleum, just steps from a stained-glass reproduction of Da Vinci’s The Last Supper. This state is a bottomless lavabo bowl of contradictions.

Culbert Olson is almost never quoted, much less invoked, by powerful Californians today.

Which is what made Gov. Gavin Newsom’s June 25 State of the State speech shocking for those few of us who know Olson’s story.

Newsom started his speech by invoking Olson’s January 2, 1939 inaugural address—a document that not even I had read previously—and its opening call for California to stand up “in the face of ‘the destruction of democracy.’” Back then, with Europe sliding into war, Olson said:

As we witness destruction of democracy elsewhere in the world, accompanied by denial of civil liberties and inhuman persecutions, under the rule of despots and dictators, so extreme as to shock the moral sense of mankind, it seems appropriate that we Californians, on this occasion, should announce to the world that despotism shall not take root in our State; that the preservation of our American civil liberties and democratic institutions shall be the first duty and firm determination of our government.

Confronted by economic and social crisis, are we going to move forward toward the destiny of true democracy, or slide backward toward the abyss of regimented dictatorship?

Though he only directly quoted one Olson line, Newsom noted that in 2024 we face the same choice. Newsom continued:

The California way of life is under attack. For conservatives and delusional California bashers, their success depends on our failure. They want to impeach the very things that have made us successful, as a tactic to turn America toward a darker future.

Then Newsom pivoted to a more familiar speech, including blasts at Republicans, and long lists of progressive policies.

What Newsom didn’t mention—or, more likely, didn’t know—is that Culbert Olson is a very good model of how not to behave when democracy is under attack. Newsom isn’t an Olson clone. He is Catholic, for starters. But he has enough in common with Olson—each was the most progressive governor of his respective era—that he might reflect on this particular predecessor’s failures.

Olson won the governorship because he had the good fortune to run against the corrupt incumbent Frank Merriam. But his luck ran out there.

In retrospect, Olson appears cursed, almost as if a higher power were punishing him. Four days after Olson gave that inaugural speech, he collapsed, from a heart ailment. Three months later, his wife Kate Olson died at 56. She remains the only California First Lady to die in office.

Olson not only had a massive agenda (including public pensions, universal healthcare, and government takeover of the utilities), he was unusually strident in pursuing it. Like Newsom, he had a taste for public feuds. Where Newsom targets Fox News, Olson battled William Randolph Hearst’s newspaper empire. Newsom has usually been wise enough to make enemies of non-Californian politicians (like red state governors). But Olson got into local fights that frustrated his agenda, battling Republican and conservative Democratic legislators, and the Catholic archbishops in San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Olson, like Newsom, was criticized for pursuing too much. That 1939 inaugural speech resembles a Newsom speech in stating way too many progressive ambitions to accomplish. Olson’s many legislative enemies in both parties blocked almost all of his broad agenda. Newsom, instead, often finds his grand ambitions foiled by mismanagement and a complicated and restrictive state governing system.

Newsom, like Olson, has made warnings about democratic decline a major talking point. What should be sobering for him is Olson’s utter failure to protect liberties and democratic practice.

Notably, when World War II came, the governor failed to defend civil liberties—most obviously, with the incarceration of Californians of Japanese heritage.

Olson knew this was wrong and warned against it publicly. He wrote his confidant President Roosevelt, asking him to defend Japanese Americans as loyal citizens, and lobbied General John DeWitt against forced relocation and incarceration. But when DeWitt imposed the policy, Olson, as governor, stopped fighting and embraced it.

Similarly, Newsom, after years of pursuing pro-immigrant policies, has recently bowed to the political winds and President Biden’s rights-violating restrictions on immigration and asylum seekers, which mirror Trump’s policies.

Olson’s rhetoric about democracy did very little—and ultimately may have caused harm when he didn’t back it up with action. We are learning this lesson again now. When elected officials claim they are defending democracy—as Newsom and Democrats do most loudly—they make democracy look like just another talking point or political issue. When elected officials issue warnings, they spread not hope but fear, and fear is an ally of authoritarians and dictators.

Purity, progressivism, and strong faith (or Olson’s strong lack of faith) are not nearly as convincing as affection and hope. Political rhetoric that taps our fears doesn’t encourage democracy nearly as much as the hard work of building solidarity and compromise with our political opponents.

And nothing is healthier for democracy than ensuring that everyday people have the power to make decisions for themselves. In other words, keeping our democracy is not up to our governors, but to the people.

Heaven help us.

The post Why Is Gavin Newsom Invoking a Failed World War Two-Era Governor? appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

In our era of one-party rule by complacent Democrats, California might benefit from a coherent and compelling political opposition.

Instead, we keep getting John Cox.

You probably don’t recognize Cox’s name. This goes to the heart of the problem.

Cox, a businessman and former congressional and Republican presidential candidate from Illinois who moved to the San Diego area more than a decade ago, has been the most prominent opponent of ruling Democrats during their 14 years and counting of total political control in the Capitol.

Cox spent millions of dollars running twice against Gov. Gavin Newsom—losing to the governor in 2018’s regularly scheduled election and again in the 2021 recall. Over the past dozen years, Cox has also proposed provocative and attention-grabbing ballot measures, including initiatives to increase the size of the legislature, limit gas taxes, and force elected officials to wear the names of their top donors on their clothing.

None of Cox’s initiatives passed. And he made no lasting impact on political debate, much less the actual governance of this state.

He recently wrote a book that, mostly unintentionally, demonstrates why.

The Newsom Nightmare: The California Catastrophe and How to Reform Our Broken System, published late last year, pulls back the curtain to offer some insider takes on California politics. Cox details, for example, how talk show host Larry Elder’s entry into the 2021 recall race, with the support of the politically toxic Donald Trump, hurt any chance of a Newsom recall passing by allowing the governor “to make Elder, along with the former president, the face of the recall and shift the debate from Newsom’s failures.”

Cox recounts scandals over regulating the utility PG&E, which the state bailed out even after it killed people in fires and a gas explosion. And he offers vignettes of California small businesspeople and mid-level officials frustrated by the overregulation and official secrecy of a state that is great at many things—but not governance.

But like so much of the political conversation in our state, Cox’s book doesn’t add up to very much. Cox offers no future-focused opposition narrative that would pressure Democrats to improve their performance or create public demand to cast them out of office.

Maddeningly, Cox clearly understands the perils of an absent opposition. “Having a single-party supermajority govern every branch of government throws the checks and balances crucial to representative democracy off kilter. It renders democracy impotent,” he writes.

And he correctly points out structural problems in the governing system that give power to rich and powerful people and interest groups. He shows how California legislative districts are so big—by far the most populous of any in the U.S.—that every lawmaker must raise millions to run for office. He details a “pay to play” campaign finance system that allows businesses, unions, and rich people with state contracts to give money to the very same lawmakers who make financial decisions. And he recounts how the outsized power of donors prevents Californians from turning their grand ambitions and good intentions for better education, health care, and housing into reality.

“The key to solving these problems,” he writes, “is to fashion solutions that reflect good practice and policy, forged by intelligent and well-thought-out tradeoffs, that have the effect of helping the vast majority of our people rather than favoring a narrow interest or group.”

But you’ll read in vain for a detailed Cox proposal full of well-thought-out tradeoffs or compromises on major issues. And that’s not the only contradiction in the book. Cox rightly bemoans the politics of personal attacks—personality and cultural wars distract us from deeper problems. Yet he still chose The Newsom Nightmare as his title.

The bigger problem is that Cox can’t elucidate what a California opposition could stand for. His book is all over the place—there’s Ronald Reagan nostalgia, blasts at local bureaucracy, contradictory calls both for tougher regulation and lighter regulation of business, and a bunch of word salad about immigration that might only make sense to frequent Fox News viewers.

There’s also a confusing ending about the national peril of what Cox calls “Californication,” which seems to be about many things but does not have anything to do with an old David Duchovny series about sex in our state.

Cox does draw some blood when he writes about the abusive tactics of trial lawyers and the distorting power of the state’s public employee unions, which saddle government budgets with unsustainable pensions. But he never offers a clear solution to the tricky question of how to take away benefits that are legally guaranteed.

He also takes a few swipes at his own party but doesn’t explain how someone might bring Republicans back to relevance in California.

Cox’s failures of coherence wouldn’t be worth mentioning, except that there is another gubernatorial election scheduled for 2026. And already, a half-dozen Democratic politicians—all with long experience in politics and little record of governing success—appear to be running for the office.

There is, as of yet, no clear opponent to these insider Democrats. And there is no one offering a clear prescription for how to change California’s structure so that people in our progressive state finally get the progressive solutions they’ve been promised—higher wages, high-quality healthcare, stronger schools, and affordable housing.

Perhaps someone will step forward to provide real opposition and offer a compelling vision for how to fix the state’s broken governing system and deliver more and better services.

Or perhaps Californians who want a change will be stuck with someone like John Cox, again.

The post California Democrats Need Real Opposition appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

You can tune out Gov. Newsom when he talks about the state’s big budget deficit. Ignore the pleas of Democrats who control the legislature, too. And turn the volume down when Sacramento lobbies complain about the proposed cuts.

California’s ballooning budget deficits, and the cuts to services they cause, are not a crisis. They are not really news. They are, sadly, normal and predictable.

And they are grounded not in budgeting mistakes—lapses of discipline in collecting revenue or controlling spending—but in our state constitution and in a reality so paradoxical it would make Kafka blush:

Our constitution requires the state to balance its budget. But balancing the state budget requires violating the state constitution.

How’s that? Because on fiscal matters, our constitution is effectively a ratchet. The document is full of guarantees and formulas, approved by voters, that ratchet up spending on favored programs, even when revenues drop and the state budget is out of balance.

Meanwhile, the constitution also has plenty of voter-approved limits on taxes and fees. These limits ratchet down revenues in slower economic times and make it harder for the state and local governments to raise revenues to cover budget increases.

Californians may have forgotten about the ratchet. The past decade was an unusual one for the state budget, as stock market growth and federal pandemic relief sent government revenues soaring and created surpluses.

But with those revenue sources gone or declining, California’s Kafkaesque constitution is reasserting itself and producing deficits projected recently to range anywhere from $27 billion to $70 billion.

That leaves Gov. Newsom stuck and left to do with the budget what all California governors must:

Violate the constitution.

First, he’s not offering a balanced budget. The spending delays, draw-downs on reserves, and cuts he’s proposing to state operations eliminate only about half of the deficit.

Second, to close the gap, he’s violating the state’s education funding guarantee, a voter-approved formula called Prop 98.

Prop 98 is, famously, so complicated that no one really understands it. (It involves three complex formulas to determine state funding, and it’s never clear really clear which formula will apply in which year.) The main effect of Prop 98 is to keep pushing education spending up; it’s one of the biggest spending ratchets in our constitutional budget ratchet.

Newsom’s maneuver is a sneaky ploy to reduce Prop 98’s ratchet effect by changing the inputs to the formula. Newsom’s budget proposes to travel back in time and reclassify certain moneys spent on education in previous years as non-education spending.

This maneuver is intended to lower the funding base underneath the formulas—helping him “balance the budget” while allowing the ratchet to do its work.

The problem (besides the inherent ridiculousness of having to bend the law in this manner) is that the lower funding base would mean tens of billions less in school funding in future years.

Yes, my fellow Californians, “screw the kids” remains the real, if unofficial, state motto.

The powerful education lobby is crying foul, as are some Democrats and local governments. Newsom defends himself by saying he’s required to balance the budget.

The problem with this blame game—and demands that Newsom reverse the cuts—is that it defines the discussion as being about the budget. The real problem is California’s broken constitution.

Finding tens of billions of dollars in cuts for anything is hard. Health programs have all kinds of court-ordered, statutory, and, in some cases, constitutional protections. Cuts to prisons and state agencies require concessions from politically powerful labor unions. Tax increases run up against Prop 13 and other state revenue limits.

That doesn’t mean I’m trying to let Newsom, the Democratic supermajority in the legislature, and other powerful Sacramento interests off the hook for the state’s budget problems. It’s the exact opposite. The governor, Democrats, and interest groups are responsible for the budget mess—because they’ve had plenty of time to fix the constitution, and haven’t even tried.

Gavin Newsom has been in statewide office since 2011. California Democrats have had full control of Sacramento since that same year. And powerful unions and other lobbies have held sway for far longer than that.

All of these politicians and lobbies know very well that the California constitution is broken. They have long had the power to come together and give the state the new constitution it needs—without all the fiscal ratchets that drive up spending and limit revenues.

But they haven’t been willing to lead and change the system. They have focused instead on building their own power within this broken system. Jerry Brown and other California leaders have spent the past decades dismissing calls for a constitutional rewrite (including my own, via the book California Crackup) as unrealistic.

But state leaders are the ones who have lost touch with reality. They claim they can fix the budget, but they can’t because the constitution won’t let them.  And they won’t fix the constitution because they say it’s politically impossible. How long can they keep saying this—and keep pretending they are doing their jobs?

When the governor and legislators say they are trying to solve the problem, they aren’t telling the truth. This miserable budget, full of cuts to education, is a product of the budget system, and the constitution, that they themselves have chosen.

The post California’s Budget Deficit Is Not the Problem appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Come back, Kamala. Come back.

Back to California, where you might have a future.

Away from Washington, D.C., where they will never give you a fair shake.

You’re politically trapped. You’re the unpopular vice president of an unpopular president. As a team, the two of you are headed to a catastrophic election defeat, even though your likely opponent is an insurrectionist ex-president held legally liable for rape and facing multiple criminal indictments.

Two-thirds of Democrats, and anyone who can read swing state polls, want your boss, Joe Biden, not to run for re-election, and instead open the door for a campaign that could produce a more electable nominee. But everyone knows Biden, 81, will run anyway.

What’s more appalling is that you are getting much of the blame for much of this. Biden’s many allies in politics and media suggest he can’t drop out because the nomination would go to you.

They note that you do worse in presidential polls than him. But they leave unmentioned the truth that you’re unpopular because your job as vice president is to represent him, and he’s given you peanuts to work with. He and his administration have never articulated a clear vision or direction for the country, or a second term. Biden’s team has bungled crises, like the Afghanistan withdrawal, and broken promises to reverse toxic Trump policies like rights-violating immigration restrictions and inflation-inducing trade protections.

You’ve loyally represented Biden on those issues, and gotten nothing but criticism for it. Your critics claim that you’ve failed to articulate convincing defenses for Biden’s misbegotten policies, especially on immigration. The real problem is that his policies—which include mass deportation and denial of asylum requests—are indefensible.

It’s time for you to face reality: If you remain on the ticket as Biden’s vice president, there’s no way out. If Biden loses, you’ll take the blame.

If Biden somehow wins, you won’t get a lick of credit: The credit will all go to Trump’s awfulness. You’d still be confined to a second term of representing an elderly, visionless president, leaving you too weak to make a plausible presidential bid yourself in 2028.

Sometimes the best way forward is to step back. You should announce, as soon as possible, that you will not be the Democratic nominee for vice president next year.

You do this by being blunt. Try this: “This country will sustain irreparable damage if Donald Trump becomes president again. And I don’t want to do anything that will help him. While I’ve done a much better job as vice president than what the media say, the polls show I’m unpopular with the public, and the president already has an uphill fight to win re-election. So, I have informed him I will not run for vice president. Now, he can pick a new running mate and reset this campaign.”

This will make you look selfless—you’re giving up a high office because you want to protect the country. You’ll win extensive praise, especially from Democrats desperate for a stronger ticket. Who knows? You might create pressure on Biden to reconsider his own decision to run.

And while you’d be closing a door in D.C., you’d be opening a bigger one here in California.

That’s because you’d be returning to a state that will soon need a new governor. Gavin Newsom is termed out in 2026, so his seat will be open.

If you ran for the job, you’d be the overwhelming favorite.

Some people will suggest it’s too early to think about the 2026 governor’s race. But the campaign is already well underway. Three state elected officials have already declared their candidacies. None of them should worry you. Two, Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis and Controller Betty Yee, have little name recognition. The third, State Superintendent of Schools Tony Thurmond, seems to be running to demonstrate his complete lack of self-awareness. He is known mostly for administrative incompetence and pandemic-era failures in education.

Two other politicians—Attorney General Rob Bonta and State Senate leader Toni Atkins—may jump in, but they can’t match you in star power or fundraising. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass could be a formidable governor, but she seems unlikely to run.

I suspect Californians would welcome you as governor—you’re more decisive and focused than Newsom. As governor, you’d set the agenda and decide the budget. With a legislature dominated by your fellow Democrats, you could get far more done than you’d ever manage as president in a polarized Washington.

And the job is much bigger and better than your current one. California governors enjoy great executive authority, so much so that their office has effectively become a second American presidency. You’d still be an international figure, but without having to abide an octogenarian president.

And, you could build a record that would make you a far stronger candidate for president later on, if that’s something you wish for your future.

Plus, you’d enjoy California weather.

Doesn’t that all sound much better than another thankless vice-presidential campaign, and perhaps another four years in the rain and misery of Washington?

Come back, Kamala. Before Christmas if you can.

The post Come Home, Kamala appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Gavin Newsom’s new campaign for a 28th Amendment is the most important political idea in the country today.

But you wouldn’t know that from reading media reports following the California governor’s proposal to enshrine four popular gun control measures in a new federal constitutional amendment.

Instead, political opponents dismissed Newsom’s proposal as at best a waste of time, and at worst a dereliction of gubernatorial duty. Reporters called it a mere tactic in his rhetorical and legal war with the red states. Republicans labeled it a distraction from his job running California. Editorialists wrote that it was crazy, because, as the San Jose Mercury News argued, it’s virtually impossible to change the Constitution.

In truth, such objections are far crazier than Newsom’s amendment. The governor isn’t just taking on the American addiction to violence.  He’s taking on flaws in the U.S. Constitution that impact his ability to govern, and keep Californians safe.

It’s hard to think of a policy this country needs more than constitutional controls on firearms. The United States is awash in guns—Americans own nearly half of the 857 million civilian-held guns on Earth. And gun ownership and permissible gun laws have created an endless epidemic of gun violence. The U.S. has a gun homicide rate more than 25 times that of other high-income countries, and a gun suicide rate more than 10 times higher.

And the epidemic is getting worse, especially among young people. In 2020, gun violence overtook car accidents to become the No. 1 cause of death for U.S. children and adolescents.

Instead of trying to reverse this epidemic, the national government and many state governments are making it worse, by reducing regulations. The U.S. Supreme Court, along with conservative judges at lower levels, have reinterpreted the Constitution to throw out gun control laws in cities and states.

One of those states is California, which has had lower rates of gun violence than more pro-gun states thanks to laws under attack, like a 10-day wait on most firearm purchases.

In this context, Newsom’s decision to pursue the 28th Amendment is not some political choice—it’s a job requirement. The governor is supposed to prevent Californians from being killed. And he’s supposed to protect laws that protect public safety. Both are under threat.

As Assemblymember Reggie Jones-Sawyer, who is working with the governor to draft the amendment, has said, “We cannot stand idly while courts roll back our work and diminish the ability of our Legislature to keep Californians safe. This bold but fair resolution calls on other states to join us in protecting some of the most effective ways of reducing gun violence.”

If anything, the Newsom amendment is too modest. Rather than the repeal of the Second Amendment our country needs, the governor’s measure is limited to four politically popular measures that should reduce gun violence:

-universal background checks (which would reduce violent crime)

-raising the firearm purchase age from 18 to 21 (which would reduce suicides),

-firearm purchase waiting period (which would reduce all sorts of gun deaths)

-assault weapons ban (which might make mass shootings less common and deadly).

What is boldest about the amendment is the method Newsom is advocating for its passage: using a provision in Article V of the Constitution that allows states to call a Constitutional Convention. Thirty-four states must support such a convention in order for it to be convened. This avoids the longstanding approach of presenting the new amendment to Congress, which can then send it to the states for ratification.

The U.S. has never had an Article V Convention before, and that poses uncertainty. Newsom will seek to limit the convention to the question of guns, but once a convention is in session, delegates might be able to propose to alter the Constitution in other ways. Indeed, some conservatives want to use an Article V Convention to pursue policies like term limits and a balanced budget amendment.

This possibility may frighten Americans, who are deeply attached to their Constitution. This is why UC Berkeley law dean Erwin Chemerinsky, channeling the democratic cowardice of America’s progressive elites, recently called Newsom’s proposal a “well-intentioned, terrible idea.”

But the political dysfunction of the country suggests we should be afraid of the status quo, rather than attached to it. How much violence must we suffer, how many rights can the Supreme Court take away, before we fight back constitutionally?

Indeed, it’s hard to think of a republican constitution on Earth more in need of updating than that of the United States. Newer, more democratic constitutions govern other rich countries in this world—counties that tend to be healthier, happier, and considerably less violent than America.

Constitutional change would also be good for California, whose power is diminished by a document conceived 60 years before our statehood. Newsom, in pursuing a 28th Amendment that could lead to sweeping change, appears to recognize this reality. The second most powerful elected official in the country is opening the door to a new federal constitution. (California, as I’ve argued before in this space, should demonstrate the benefits to America of a new, 21st-century constitution by convening its own state-level convention to draft a model to emulate.)

The big question now is how hard Newsom will push for an idea that is far more consequential than anything else he is doing. One test of the governor’s intent is whether he will refuse to endorse Democrats who don’t join the movement for the 28th Amendment, including President Joe Biden who is likely to resist the divisive proposal.

If the president won’t get on board, there is another way for Newsom to demonstrate he is serious about reducing gun violence and making our constitution. The governor could—indeed he should—run against Biden for the presidency next year.

The post Newsom’s Gun Control Amendment Is the Most Important Idea in U.S. Politics appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Gov. Gavin Newsom is doing a good thing by launching “Campaign for Democracy” against authoritarian governors who are limiting freedom in Republican states like Alabama and Florida.

But what he’s campaigning for is not democracy.

Indeed, if democracy were his mission, he’d be campaigning in California—because our state has a deficit of it.

Newsom’s “Campaign for Democracy”—the name he’s given to a series of events in Republican states and to the political action committee paying for them—isn’t just a misnomer. It’s part of an American epidemic of leaders who portray whatever they are doing as “democracy,” and their political opponents as a threat to it. In the process, Newsom and other self-styled democracy defenders miss opportunities for progress while adding to the risks facing democratic systems.

To understand the problem, let’s start with a definition. Democracy is best defined as four words: everyday people governing themselves.

But Newsom’s campaign has little to do with the vital business of getting together with your neighbors to practice self-government. The governor instead is leading a large national media campaign to confront sins of politicians with whom he disagrees. (President Biden’s “Summit for Democracy” has a similar defect—lots of geopolitical blasts at authoritarians, too little democracy—but that’s another story).

Don’t take my word for it. Just check out the Campaign for Democracy website. The stated mission is all about ramping up fights and conflict with Republicans.

“We believe that all patriotic Americans must go on offense in red states as well as blue states, bringing the fight to statehouses, local communities, electoral battlegrounds, and our nation’s capitol to save the great American experiment in democracy,” the site says. It further promises an “aggressive” campaign “to confront and defeat unAmerican authoritarianism.”

Who are these authoritarians? They are “extremist Republicans.” Only Republicans.

Like the majority of Californians, I agree with the campaign’s criticisms of the Republican party for bullying vulnerable people, promoting transphobia, criminalizing free speech and the free press, denying rights to women, and dehumanizing immigrants. I think it’s good that Newsom and his administration are trying to speak up and offer some protection to people under right-wing attack.

But Newsom’s narrow cherry-picking of targets undermines his good intentions. Democratic decline is a global problem that touches all parties, and anti-democratic authoritarians also can emerge from the political left—like Joko Widodo in Indonesia, Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, or Andrés Manuel López Obrador in Mexico.

That, however, is not the greatest omission in the “Campaign for Democracy.” The website and other published materials offer hardly any ideas for extending democracy and the practice of government. One part of the site, called “California Leadership,” focuses on progressive social and environmental policies, with only a brief mention of democracy.

Why so little about California democracy? Perhaps because there isn’t much democracy here to defend.

For the past century, California has been centralizing power in state government in Sacramento, and reducing the power of people to govern themselves locally. Decisions about taxation and spending are especially centralized, with communities reduced to beggars lobbying Sacramento to get their money back.

Playing off concerns about legislative gridlock, governors have added to the powers of their office for 40 years. Newsom has extended that executive power to historic heights, employing emergency powers for years during the pandemic. Accountability is hard because his administration is a highly secretive entity. California agencies routinely hide data, ignore public and press questions, and refuse to provide basic information that we the people need for self-government.

Californians remain proud of their power to use ballot initiatives and referenda to check government. But that system of direct democracy is so costly that only the richest and most powerful people and organizations can afford to use it.

The state’s Brown Act, an open meetings law, is now an anti-democratic gag rule; it limits the ability of local officials and citizens to meet and have broad discussions. And it stands in the way of efforts to bring global innovations in participation and deliberation—like citizens assemblies—to California.

State officials love to talk about efforts to make it easier for Californians to vote. They don’t talk much about the fact that our elections are rarely competitive or determinative. Power in California rests in public employee unions and corporations and commissions that can’t be voted out by the people.

In California, we also ignore the fact that huge shares of Californians aren’t eligible to vote—because they are too young, or because they are not U.S. citizens. As a result, many cities and regions are disenfranchised.

Just consider the non-citizen part of the problem.

Data on “democracy deserts” provided by C.C. Marin of the Independent California Institute show that more than 22.1% of voting-age adults in Los Angeles can’t vote. A quarter of voters in cities as different as Cupertino, Anaheim, and my mom’s hometown of Hawthorne are disenfranchised. This percentage exceeds one-third in the Salinas Valley, skews close to 40% in poorer L.A. County cities like Bell Gardens and Huntington Park, and 50% in Central Valley towns including San Joaquin (54.6%), Mendota (58.4%) and Huron (60.5%).

If Newsom wanted to launch a national effort worthy of the name “Campaign for Democracy,” he’d head around the country demanding that the federal government create ways for California’s non-citizen residents to vote. And in this state, he’d pursue major constitutional changes that started by restoring the power of local communities to determine their own fates.

The governor has expressed sympathies for systemic changes in California governance; he’s deeply familiar with democratic innovation, as he demonstrated in his 2013 book Citizenville. But will he actually take on democratic reform?

The politics argue against it. It’s easy to point out red-state fascism. It’d be almost impossibly hard for this ambitious politician to give up power, and lead a campaign to let Californians govern themselves.

The post Gavin Newsom’s ‘Campaign for Democracy’ Has a Democracy Problem appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

That’s the question that should be posed to California media and politicos who have responded with knee-jerk cynicism to Newsom’s many interventions on behalf of Trump’s targets.  These pundits describe the governor’s forays into national disputes over abortion, immigration, and LGBTQ rights as political ploys—performed in service of presidential ambitions.

The truth is the exact opposite. Whether he’s trumpeting a maximalist pro-choice stance on abortion on out-of-state billboards or banning state-funded travel to places that are unfriendly to LGTBQ people, Newsom is in fact throwing away whatever slight chance he might have had of being president.

Getting elected president, if you’re a Democrat, is about making friends with powerful Democratic players, soft-pedaling divisive issues, and building broad, diverse coalitions. That’s how Barack Obama and Joe Biden won the White House. But Newsom’s constant blasts into cultural politics divide the country and make him enemies.

Sure, picking fights with Trump and like-minded governors may be good politics. But Newsom is also calling out national Democrats, including Biden, for not being combative enough. (The president, in a bit of payback, recently put Newsom in a jam with labor interests.)

Newsom and his political advisors must know that these battles over social issues would hurt his chances, particularly in battleground states like Arizona and North Carolina (to which California banned state-funded travel). The real story is why Gavin Newsom, of all people, is engaging in acts of political self-sacrifice now.

I think there are three possible explanations—two that are peculiar to our very peculiar and poorly understood governor, and one that stems from California’s growing estrangement from the United States.

The first explanation is that Newsom simply can’t help himself.

The governor has always lacked discipline, ignoring basic rules of political communication. While he may look like the politician from central casting—tall, handsome, the styled hair—he is a campaign consultant’s nightmare.

He uses three big words when one short one will do. He’s often the best witness against himself, volunteering arguments against his own policies. He uses too much detail—going on like an overeager waiter at one of his restaurants, insisting on telling you about all the specials, when you wish you could just order. Newsom’s self-indulgence sometimes has verged into personal recklessness—this is a man who had an affair with a top aide’s wife, and dined maskless at the French Laundry during the pandemic.

That is the ugly side of Newsom’s undiscipline. But there is an admirable side to it, too—which leads me to the second explanation. While wise politicians try to avoid fights and fierce criticism, Newsom has a tendency to jump into disputes, and draw fire to himself. Why? I can’t read his mind or put this child of divorce on a psychiatrist’s couch. But, reviewing his record and his speeches, I’ve concluded that Newsom often jumps in to take fire when he feels someone needs protection.

Just go back and look at his endless budget press conferences—I dare you—where he explains almost every expenditure in the language of defense. He is constantly protecting—the climate, the environment, the homeless, children, this community, that interest group.

This protective instinct is why he’s jumped into national politics. If media and Democrats are going to give the Trumpists space to spew hate and nonsense, attack democracy, and pull stunts that spread fear among women and immigrants and gay people, how can he sit on the sidelines?

His recent decision to place billboards—paid for with his own campaign money, in seven states that have eliminated abortion rights—is a perfect example of the Newsomian mindset. The boards tell women that California will protect their right to bodily autonomy and to abortion (and provide a state website, abortion.ca.gov, where they can find out more). If such boards turn off voters in Ohio and Florida—people that a Democratic presidential contender will need someday—so what?

Let me be clear: these interventions don’t make Newsom a hero. Here at home, his national blasts are good politics, feeding his base. And contrary to The Atlantic, which suggests that Newsom’s national forays are designed to avoid his duties to Californians, the governor’s national fights actually help him do his job here. How? By keeping him in the spotlight, which has allowed him to make a public case for his wildly ambitious agenda of new policies and programs in healthcare, child care, housing, and homelessness.

But Newsom’s progressive California supremacy is poison in the other 49 states, where Americans sadly can’t accept the truth that we Californians really do know better.

That’s one reason why Newsom is not sacrificing that much when he throws away any White House prospects he might have had.  A Californian doesn’t have much chance at the presidency anyway, much less a Californian with Newsom’s baggage. And Newsom is demographically wrong for a Democratic party that desperately needs to nominate more women and people of color.

But Newsom is perfectly cast to call out while male political bullies and call in his fellow Democrats.

And who knows? While he’ll never be president of the United States, he still could lead a nation someday. If our state and the rest of the country continue to grow apart, it’s not hard to imagine Newsom as the first president or prime minister of an independent California Republic.

The post Newsom Isn’t Pursuing His Presidential Ambitions. He’s Trashing Them appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

These questions might seem strange, but they’re not. Gov. Gavin Newsom broadcast his first re-election TV ad not in California but in Florida, appealing to Floridians to either join California’s fight against the policies of Florida Republicans, or move to California. In response, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis blasted California policies and accused Newsom of treating Californians “like peasants.”

The tussle has been dismissed as partisan trolling, and evidence of both governors’ presidential ambitions. But its import is broader than that. Unwittingly, Newson and DeSantis are opening the door to a novel democratic idea with global implications.

The idea has been called “reciprocal” or “consociated” representation.

The dictionary definition of “consociated” is “brought into association.”  In democracy, “consociated representation” would give people the power to vote for representatives in places with which they might feel association, but are not their own cities, states, or nations.

The idea should have appeal because, especially in a hyper-connected world, the decisions of governments other than our own can have profound effects on our lives. Consider how trade and manufacturing policies in Mexico or southeast Asia have changed the economies of American communities. Or think of your home region, and how the decisions of a big city government can have profound effects on the economic prospects, transportation options, or safety of those who live in surrounding suburbs.

Or—in the context of the Newsom ad, which says that Florida’s educational and health policies threaten basic freedoms—consider how the politics and policies of big states like California and Florida can affect each other, and other states’ and national policies as well.

Florida under DeSantis has led a nationwide attack on teachers’ freedom to say what they want in classrooms. The state has also limited the rights of women and transgendered people—so much so that California is changing laws and starting programs to make itself a sanctuary for people who must leave Florida—and other states—to exercise their rights. Meanwhile, California routinely uses its size and leverage to try to shape laws elsewhere, on matters from climate change to immigration.

In such a context, Californians deserve to have more of a say in what Florida does—and, yes, vice versa.

But how? A smart and coherent proposal for consociated representation comes from Joachim Blatter and Johannes Schulz, political scientists at the University of Lucerne, Switzerland, writing in the European Journal of International Relations.

Blatter and Schulz argue that globalism has allowed international corporate elites, powerful national leaders, and unaccountable international organizations like International Monetary Fund to have undemocratic influence over people in other countries. This, in turn, has inspired populist backlashes that polarize politics, threaten the unity of federal systems like the European Union or the United States, and undermine democracy.

Their answer to this major threat is to expand democracy, and link voters in different nations and states. Specifically, Blatter and Schulz argue that governments whose policies overlap should “mutually grant their citizens the right to elect representatives not only in their domestic parliament, but also in the parliaments of ‘consociated democracies’.”

Under their proposal, these “foreign” voters could not elect many representatives in other places—only a handful, a tiny fraction, of your parliament or Congress or legislature would represent people from other places. And they say legislatures should expand to accommodate these new “consociated” representatives—no one would lose representation in the process.

It’s a modest step, but one that could “channel popular dissatisfaction into productive lines” including actual conversation and collaboration between states, Blatter and Schulz write. Systems of what these two scholars call “horizontally expanded and consociated democracies” could offer at least a little defense both against internal authoritarianism and against external enemies (like Russia and China) that seek to exploit divisions within democracies.

Consociated democracy would be a natural for California, which sees itself as a future-shaping nation-state. To start, it would be easier for California to negotiate with other Western states that are already political allies—Oregon or Washington—to form a consociation of democracies. A harder step would be to form another consociation with other large states with which it sometimes quarrels—imagine California, Texas, Florida, and New York agreeing to allow their citizens to elect representatives to each other’s legislatures.

But such arrangements, while novel, are not entirely new. Blatter and Schulz note that as more people have multiple national citizenships, it’s become more common to vote in multiple countries.

Elements of consociated democracy are already present here in California. The city of Los Angeles allows people to vote in local neighborhood councils even if they don’t reside in that neighborhood—having even a tiny interest in a place (even if it’s only stabling a horse there) gives you democratic rights. And the state of California allows people and groups from other states to sponsor and qualify ballot initiatives that enact laws and amend our state’s constitution. California’s legislative term limits and animal rights protections were brought to us in this way by non-Californians.

For California, it might be easiest to introduce consociated representation at the local level.

Your columnist, for example, feels strongly that he should be able to vote in Los Angeles city elections even though he lives in a small city that borders L.A.

Here’s my logic: The media non-profit where I work is based in Los Angeles. I spend most of my leisure time in L.A. (shopping, eating, enjoying sports and other entertainment), and pay local sales taxes. And for transportation, I depend on roads and trains overseen by L.A. officials.

So why shouldn’t Los Angeles empower me—and residents of other surrounding cities—to vote for a couple of additional members to represent us on the L.A. city council?

The post Is It Time for Californians to Vote in Florida and Texas? appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Gavin Newsom combines those roles so routinely that the picking up of trash has become a defining image of California’s chief executive. He’s lifted away litter in the Bay Area. He’s helped Caltrans crews grab garbage along the highway in Fresno. He’s gone to the same Southern California stretch of the 110 freeway twice, first to paint over graffiti and pick up abandoned mattresses, and later to dedicate a new mini-park. And most recently, he was back in L.A. to gather up the cardboard remains of packages stolen from trains.

The governor’s devotion to detritus is so determined that it’s caused head-scratching among political insiders and even his own aides, one of whom recently wondered in my presence why the boss spends so much time with trash.

Back when these public displays of cleanliness began during last year’s recall campaign, the pick-ups seemed to be a practical response to short-term policy and political needs. On policy, the governor was securing more than $1 billion from the legislature to clean up a California that had grown dirty and trashy during the pandemic. As a political matter, community cleanups seemed to bring down to earth a governor who, in dining at the French Laundry and depending on a preponderance of polysyllabic words in his public pronouncements, seemed to float above the rest of us.

But even with the recall vanquished, and re-election all but assured (despite the latest masking controversy), the governor keeps picking up trash. And that raises questions about the deeper emotional, cultural, and even spiritual meaning of a California governor who can’t stop pursuing cleanliness.

Is this some New Age political metaphysics? Has some strange compulsion afflicted the second most powerful elected official in the world’s most powerful country? Or is Gavin Newsom, a man of so many words that we’ve all lost count, saying something profound by constantly getting his hands dirty?

On these queries, your columnist sees the trash can as half full. In fact, I would go so far to say that, at the level of metaphor, Newsom has now surpassed all 39 of his gubernatorial predecessors in locating his job’s essence: picking up other people’s trash.

In too many ways, California’s governor is nothing so much as a garbage man, albeit one with the power to call up the National Guard. Californians have a lot of ideas, many of them bad, and for a century and a half, they’ve been transforming bad ideas into laws and ballot measures. All this legislative litter has turned the state’s governing system into a dump, with piles of unsorted garbage making the treasure—the new policies and practices worth pursuing—nearly impossible to find.

Governors, thus, don’t really govern the state freely. Instead, they spend their terms trying to pick up trash—rejecting budget proposals, vetoing bills, or saying no to proposals to add to the junk pile. And when governors make progress on their own agenda, they must start by tidying up all the legislative and constitutional messes made by previous voters, lawmakers, and courts, which stand in their way.

So, when our janitor-in-chief picks up trash on the side of the 99, he’s acting out in the real world what he must do back at the Capitol.

In this year’s budget, Newsom is trying to find his way around a 43-year-old piece of voter-approved trash known as the Gann spending limit, an outdated formula standing in the way of necessary spending. Tackling the emergency of homelessness involves the literal cleanup of encampments and a thorough scrubbing of the state’s junkyard of old and overlapping homeless programs.

And that’s not to mention the state’s own trash and recycling policies, which constitute a veritable landfill of highly contested fights over composting requirements and a ballot initiative to reduce single-use plastics coming up in November.

In this context, removing trash carries a symbolic power, as Newsom himself has noted during his public cleanup appearances. “It’s about restoring a sense of pride and sense of spirit, a sense of place, a sense…of community,” he said at one cleanup. “Because once people feel connected to something, once they feel ownership to something, they’re more apt to protect it, to preserve it, to cultivate, support and invest in it, and we just need more of that.”

Among Californians who feel more connected by cleaning up is the governor himself.

I recently asked Newsom, who is Catholic, whether there was a spiritual dimension to his garbage devotion. In watching his constant cleanups, I was reminded of Jesus’s criticism of the Pharisees, high religious officials who demand cleanliness and obedience from others, while remaining so distant from real people that they are blind to lived realities. “Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first that which is within the cup and the platter, that the outside of them may be clean also,” Jesus advises in Matthew 23:26.

Replying by text, Newsom referred to his previous job as San Francisco mayor. Part of his devotion to cleaning up trash, the governor said, “has to do with living in a ‘moment’ where so much seems outside our control… the ‘cause/effect’ of getting out and cleaning up is deeply satisfying—particularly having served as Mayor where I could see results/failure in real time—unfiltered. So much of state government is disconnected from that feedback loop (or is filtered).”

He added: “The physical not just the mental is what I miss most—faith and works!”

Even in California, cleanliness is next to godliness.

The post Dear God, Why Does Gavin Newsom Keep Picking Up California’s Trash? appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.