We are engaged in trying to decide who we are as a people and nation, and I see DeSantis as aligned with reactionary, and anti-democratic forces.
Nothing DeSantis has done worries me that much, but that bar has been set rather low recently.
The Democrat I see as the equivalent to Florida governor DeSantis is California governor Newsom. I don’t see DeSantis or Newsom as able to beat their current party heads, both Trump and Biden will have to decide not to run in 2024. I tend to judge DeSantis by contrasting him against Newsom, and between the two I know which one worries me more.
Gavin Newsom is an authoritarian, straight up. If you want real fascism, Gavin is your guy. Governor Newsom has used something called the California Emergency Services Act to effectively dissolve the entire Legislative Branch of California. It isn’t as if they were even in the way. Gavin’s party has filibuster-proof supermajorities in both the California House and Senate.
Gavin Newsom is unilaterally striking down laws he doesn’t think should exist, and creating new ones all by himself. Even the state budget is unilaterally created by Gavin Newsom. I don’t think the California House and Senate are even rubber stamping it. Newsome just says what the budget is, cites DREOA (Disaster Response-Emergency Operations Act) and then it is. Now that the pandemic is winding down, Newsom has made it crystal clear that he is not relinquishing his emergency powers.
Gov. Gavin Newsom has had almost total authority during the pandemic. But is it time to hand back some control?
www.kqed.org
Given the way California has set up the election process, the political leaders are determined by funding rather than popularity. California has legalized a practice called ballot harvesting. Ballots do not need to be collected at polling locations. Parties can pay ballot harvesters to go out to groups at their homes over wherever they gather, watch individuals fill out the ballots, offer helpful voting tips, collect those ballots, and then the ballot harvesters can turn those ballots in on the behalf of the voter. If the ballots voting the wrong way accidently fall into the trash on the way to being dropped off, then oops.
The practice of ballot harvesting is so effective, they turned Orange County blue. That would be like holding a vote at the Sundance Film Festival and reporting the majority of everyone there supported Trump. The people who can afford the most ballot harvesters are whomever the Silicon Valley tech companies want to win.
I’m not going to try to convince you to vote for DeSantis. I know you’d take Newsom every day of the week because he will be running as a democrat. I’m just saying that if you like democracy, real democracy, and you think the US should have 3 branches of government with checks and balances on power rather than concentrating all power in the hands of a single person, then you could do a lot worse than Ron DeSantis.
