Few politicians in America have ridden the progressive side of the culture wars more successfully than California’s Gavin Newsom, starting with his early support for legalising gay marriage and marijuana, and more recently taking on GOP extremism on abortion. Both of these stances are widely popular across the country, and may have benefitted both Newsom’s presidential prospects and the party.
Yet increasingly Newsom, as with other Democrats, could be taking his cultural crusade too far. Moves such as pushing for sexual and gender identity issues to be taught at grade school are exceptionally unpopular — as are proposals, now cooking in Sacramento, to allow the state to override parental authority regarding access to puberty blockers.
Similarly, opposition to allowing biological men to participate in women’s sports has actually grown over the last two years, with even more Democrats now opposed to the practice than in favour. Newsom has also been aggressive in backing race quotas despite all major ethnic groups, including African-Americans, rejecting them.
This does not imply minority support of the entire conservative agenda. But Hispanics, the largest immigrant group, may not be the reliable social conservatives imagined by some Republicans; instead, they favour restrictions on abortion by a 10-point margin over other ethnic groups.
Overall the cultural PC agenda, which is built around identity politics and is increasingly central to the current party belief system, is rejected by Americans by over 20% — and even more so among Latinos. This is partly because immigrants, the determinants of the country’s demographic future, tend to be both more religious than white Americans. Minorities and immigrants have been prominent in parent protests across the country, including in highly diverse places like Jackson Heights, Queens and the Maryland suburbs, as well as in immigrant-rich communities like Glendale, California.
The Left-wing agenda is also alienating California’s Jewish population. Although not a powerful voting bloc except in parts of Los Angeles, Jews have been a critical part of the California Democratic Party for at least a century. The Jewish-black political alliance, for example, marked the beginnings of LA’s transformation into a liberal, but now increasingly ultra-progressive, stronghold.
Newsom, to his credit, has pushed to ratchet down the antisemitism implicit in the curricula, but the ethnic studies programme being adopted in some large urban districts like Los Angeles remains openly anti-Israel, claiming that Jews and other ethnic groups enjoy “white privilege”. These curricula, according to one recent lawsuit, conflate Zionism with “white supremacy” and portray Israel as an apartheid state bent on genocide.
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