Gavin Newsom dined at the Michelin-starred French Laundry in 2020, and people lost their minds. An elected official, representing California in the highest state office as governor, paid hundreds of dollars for a meal with 11 other people while COVID-19 cases were surging. I heard the outrage from my progressive peers, even years after the event. He may as well have yelled “let them eat cake” on live television.
I realize Gavin Newsom is by no means beloved, and not simply because of his dining faux pas. The majority of people my age engaged in politics don’t like him because they think he’s an out-of-touch elitist, and maybe he is. But today, a Newsom-like elitist is by no means our worst-case scenario.
Our generation has developed a moral purity that is incompatible with the current political reality. With President Donald Trump’s second term nearly halfway complete, democracy has seen frequent domestic threats, with the Republican Party seemingly showing little disregard for the rule of law.
Republicans no longer adhere to any sort of principles when it comes to elections, and they hold a trifecta, meaning they control both chambers of Congress and the presidency. Voters in South Carolina elected Darline Graham, Lindsay Graham’s sister, who has absolutely no political experience, even after she admitted in a debate that she is “not that informed on national security.” In my home state of Colorado, Republican voters elected self-described “high-risk humanitarian” Victor Marx in the gubernatorial primary after one of the most bizarre debate performances in political history. Trump was reelected after being convicted of 34 felony counts and found liable for sexual assault. Republican voters seem more than willing to forgive, or even applaud, the weird faux pas that Trump commits practically every day. Had a Democrat made even one of the gaffes that are just par for the course with Trump, their career would be over.
A Democratic president probably would not have recovered had they made fun of John McCain for being a prisoner of war. Had a Democratic president posted an AI-generated photo of themself as the pope, their career would be jeopardized. A Democratic president would be ridiculed by progressive voters had they referred to Iran as the “Islamic Republic of Japan.”
This doesn’t mean that Democrats should forgive or applaud when our candidates and elected officials err unforgivably, but it does mean that we should be more lenient given unprecedented circumstances.
If Democrats want to take back Congress in November and the White House in 2028, we need to put aside some of the moral outrage at our own party. Let me be clear: I’m not advocating that we stoop to the level of the Republican Party. At that point, there’s no reason to win elections. Graham Platner was pressured to resign after alleged sexual assault, and this was the right call — there are some things that can’t be looked past. But abstaining from voting, or “protest” voting for a third-party candidate with no realistic chance of winning because the Democratic nominee is “not progressive enough” is a privileged position to take.
Voters aged 18-24 turned out in lower numbers for Kamala Harris in 2024 than they did for Joe Biden in 2020. Multiple college-educated people my age told me that Harris was too soft on Israel, so out of principle, that they couldn’t vote for her. My response was always the same: “Do you think Donald Trump is anti-Israel?” Choosing not to vote for the Democratic nominee means you share partial responsibility for electing the alternative. Whichever state you live in and whatever specific beliefs you hold, federal and state policies will inevitably affect you or someone you know, whether you see it or not.
We must all care about that spillover, because abstaining can only contribute to depriving human rights for the most marginalized under uniquely dire circumstances led by the conservative movement. Children are being separated from their families, and immigrants seeking asylum in the United States are being sent to third countries. More than five million Americans lost their Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, leaving them without access to food stamps, and over 12 million Americans have lost healthcare during Trump’s second term. Federal agents have shot and killed American citizens in the streets. People’s lives are at risk and civil liberties are being undermined.
We do not live in a country with a political system where everyone can build their perfect candidate — and it’s a good thing we don’t. American democracy within a two-party system is built around compromise, and that system falls apart when some voters refuse to compromise because they don’t love every part of a candidate’s platform or background.
But how should we, as young progressives, change the status quo if we just keep settling for whoever the Democratic nominee is?
That process can begin in the primaries or caucuses, where voters, often restricted to that party, can vote for a candidate of choice through open or ranked-choice voting. Primaries let you exercise your political will and support candidates you believe in without risking ceding power to MAGA-aligned Republicans, and promising trends have emerged recently. Challenging the establishment is possible: Zohran Mamdani energized young progressives in New York City last summer, and Abdul El-Sayed is leading his Republican opponent for Senate by over 60 points with voters aged 18-29, as of polling published on Oct. 21.
But if your candidate loses the primary, it’s petulant to abstain from voting in the general election (yes, I’m talking about you, Bernie Bros). Candidates themselves discourage this — Francesca Hong, a local DSA-backed candidate for Wisconsin governor, lost on razor-thin margins. Yet she endorsed the nominee who defeated her, David Crowley, the day after her defeat. Crowley’s opponent, Congressman Tom Tiffany, voted to overturn election results in Pennsylvania and Arizona in 2020, and Trump himself said of Tiffany, “he has always been at my side.” Her endorsement exemplifies the importance of party unity in the face of dangerous conservatism, despite Crowley’s more centrist positions.
My argument goes both ways. If the Democratic nominee is a young progressive — someone likely more left-leaning than an older, more centrist Democrat — Democrat voters, establishment or not, should mobilize to vote for them. El-Sayed needs the votes from those who backed Haley Stevens in the Democratic primary. We have to unify as a party. And yes, we can blame Joe Biden for not stepping down earlier or the incompetence of party leaders in scrambling to find a nominee when he did. But Democrats who voted for Biden in 2020 voted for Harris as vice president, presumably believing that she was qualified for the presidency.
I wish we could go back to the time when Mitt Romney’s presidential hopes slipped away after voters found out he put his dog on top of his car and he referred to his “binders full of women.” But only one party still gets morally outraged at its own candidates. The stakes in Trump 2.0 are too high to turn our noses up at candidates over principled stances, and true progressives understand their duty to vote down the ballot for Democrats this November. And if Gavin Newsom is the Democratic nominee in 2028, he has my vote.
Charlotte Renner PZ ’27 is very proud to be from Colorado, where she’s almost never had to hold her nose when voting. Almost.