Which Side Are We On?

Two questions and answers about this moment in our country's history, and where we stand.

Washington DC, April, 1968, shortly after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Political violence was worse that year than it has become in 2025. But the strains on democracy are even starker now. (Michael Ochs Archives / Getty.)

Here are two questions I’ve been asking myself, with my answers for now.

Question #1: Is Gavin Newsom doing the right thing?

Answer #1: Yes.

I don’t give the tiniest damn what Gavin Newsom’s “positioning,” or “2028 game plan,” or “opportunism,” or anything similar might be. If you’re revving up a column or news-analysis on this point, please stop. If you’re getting ready to sound savvy about it on a talk show, please don’t.

I think Newsom has been an effective governor of the nation’s most important state. But let’s say you differ, and don’t like him or his past policies. They’re not what matters now.

Rather than handicapping the 2028 candidate-field¹, let’s focus on what it will take to get that far as a functioning democracy. Which is what Newsom and his fellow governors JB Priztker of Illinois and Kathy Hochul of New York have been most prominently doing, to keep Republicans from outright stealing control of Congress. Which is what Trump asked Republicans in Texas to do, and they complied.

Is it “inconsistent” for Democrats to embrace gerrymandering, when their party has long denounced it? Of course. And is it particularly galling coming from California, which has long led the way with non-partisan redistricting commissions? Yes. Will it be especially difficult in the very states that have previously made the strongest anti-gerrymandering moves? Yes again.

But is it necessary? Yes.

Completely. Historically. Urgently.

The laws do not stop Donald Trump. His party members and appointees fear displeasing him in any way. Plummeting public approval does not stop him, as he tries mainly to insulate himself from its effects. Business leaders kowtow to him, and for the moment financial markets have absorbed his one-man reordering of world trade.

The only limit in sight is a shift in control of Congress—and that is exactly what Trump is trying to forestall, with these moves in Texas and elsewhere.

For the Democrats, and for democracy, unilateral disarmament cannot be the response.

All of the ways in which individuals and institutions are standing up now—local news sources, libraries and churches, those universities and foundations and law firms and local governments that have chosen to be brave—are the heart of our recovery. But control of Congress has become the pivotal step.

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Barack Obama is hyper-aware of the non-partisan niceties that go with his office and place in history. He has been unfailingly gracious to Trump at the events that have forced them into contact with each other.

So for Obama to say, as he did yesterday at a fund-raiser, that he stood with California and Newsom, really means something. From the NYT report of his remarks, now confirmed in a tweet from Obama himself:

Mr. Obama said he’d had to “wrestle” with the issue, because he preferred states not to be gerrymandered.

“But what I also know,” he went on, “is that if we don’t respond effectively, then this White House and Republican-controlled state governments all across the country, they will not stop, because they do not appear to believe in this idea of an inclusive, expansive democracy.”

Significantly, that fund-raiser was for a Democratic-led group working to un-do gerrymandering around the country. But Obama told them, according to the tweet he has sent out:

“Since Texas is taking direction from a partisan White House and gerrymandering in the middle of a decade to try and maintain the House despite their unpopular policies, I have tremendous respect for [Gov. Newsom’s]… smart, measured approach… designed to address a very particular problem at a very particular moment in time.”

Also significantly, Newsom’s California plan is transparent and small-d democratic in its procedures. He is explicit about the rationale and the temporary nature of this retaliatory gerrymander. He is asking the California legislature to approve his “Election Rigging Response Act” (the California Assembly, its lower house, has now done so) and then submit the gerrymander plan for approval by California voters this fall.²

From Gavin Newsom’s Instagram account, after the Texas legislature approved the House-seat grab.

Think what you will of Gavin Newsom. But if you’re in California, please vote for this measure. And use its example as encouragement everywhere.

Question #2: Has 2025 become ‘worse’ than 1968?

Answer #2: An impossible question. But, Yes.

Two summers stick in my mind, as I think about America’s fate.