Originally Posted by Demise

That's unfortunately a smooth brained take. While Newsom is a complete whore who will say whatever he needs to truth to the matter is that democrats needs to focus on driving the turnout of their core supporters. Both Harris and Clinton tried to court the mythical swing voters, never-Trump republicans, and they both got wrecked. Harris paraded Liz Cheney around like she's the running mate (late in the campaign only thing missing was a nice cuck chair for Walz to sit in the corner) and her wishy washy stance on Gaza that then got spun into two different sets of attack adds.

Look at the NYC mayoral primary where Mamdani, a self-described socialist came out of nowhere and whooped Cuomo's ass. Israel somehow got forced into the issues for a local seat and his take on Israel didn't lose him any supporters because turns out that the average democrat feels a lot more for Gazans.

Now Newsom leap-frogged everyone else in the run for the democratic nomination in 2028 by calling for CA and other democratic states to pay in kind to Texas trying to gerrymander its districts further. Especially that he's got a concrete plan to achieve that - throw the amendment into a special election and if that fails just do it regardless in 2026 so the state supreme court will have the way out of shaking a stick at the new map but let it stand because it's too late to redo the ballots now. At least the dude is a scrapper and a scrapper is what the party needs.

Remember - aside in races involving some statistically anomalous popular politicians (e.g. Beshear (KY), Hogan (MD), Scott (VT)) most just vote straight ticket and that generally doesn't carry up, KY wouldn't vote for Beshear for president or senator, MD wouldn't vote for Hogan for senate either.
Elections are decided who has a bigger showing and demotivated voters will put the campaign sign in and then feel tired on election day and sit it out, or neglect to fill in and send in their ballot. With how thin the margins in some states have been, if that extra 1% turned up it'd flip.
Swing voters are basically a myth at this point. Everyone is polarized.
The never Trumpers are in the end of the day republicans, they just wish to return to the traditional Tea Party days, they'll either not vote, vote for a libertarian if one is running, or write in the late John McCain.