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The national Democrats may finally have found their champion in the culture wars: California Gov. Gavin Newsom. His recently announced appearances in Southern red states, the Campaign for Democracy mark a significant tactical turn for Democrats, whose hesitancy to engage on cultural issues has frustrated the governor.

Newsoms new tactical offensive most recently an appearance last week in Sarasota, Fla., to highlight conservative efforts to limit education marks the end of the When they go low, we go high brand of politics popularized by former First Lady Michelle Obama during the early days of the Trump era. Democrats believed that the vulgarization of the public square was beneath them, and that mindset was a losing tactic. The political reality is that the high-minded ideal doesnt work if you allow your opposition to choose the battleground.

Newsom has chosen to launch his national strategy by touring the Deep South and highlighting the progressive case for voting access, antidiscrimination laws, LGBTQ rights and academic freedom all currently under assault by the modern Republican Party.

This is a profoundly different approach for Democrats in the modern era of presidential campaigns, which was defined nearly three decades ago by a young southern governor named Bill Clinton. He adopted the informal campaign theme Its the economy, stupid to emphasize the New Democrats goal of focusing like a laser beam on economic issues in the post-Cold War era. Clinton, under the banner of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, pushed his party to focus on economic issues, not social issues, as it fought to win voters in the mainstream and get Democrats back in the habit of winning presidential elections.

Newsom is the right man at the right time to successfully employ this strategy. His famous move in 2004 allowing same-sex marriages when he was mayor of San Francisco, while proclaiming that social change was coming whether you like it or not made a lot of Democrats uncomfortable at the time, but also set his party on course to embracing rapidly changing social norms as a winning national strategy.

Newsoms unapologetic embrace of such broadly popular social issues as same-sex marriage and the legalization of marijuana and the nations most progressive positions on gun control and reproductive rights gives the countrys largest blue state governor the bully pulpit to drive Democrats in a new direction.

While Biden is wisely focused on inflation and the war in Ukraine, Newsom has picked up the issues that animate the necessary coalitions to win elections. Lamenting the lack of a fight just weeks prior to the 2022 midterm election, Newsom quipped Wheres my party? believing that by leaning into cultural issues, congressional Democrats had a better chance at fending off GOP attacks.

Newsom has good reason to believe this. The college-education divide is perhaps the single most significant dividing line in American politics. Those who have college diplomas are moving rapidly toward Democrats, and those without are moving just as rapidly toward Republicans. It is precisely these voters who are rejecting the social, cultural and race-based extremism of the GOP that cost Republicans in the 2018 midterms, got Joe Biden elected president in 2020, and helped Democrats mitigate a massive red wave in the 2022 midterm elections. The tenuous relationship that college-educated Republican voters have had with Trumps Republican Party has cost the GOP dearly in recent elections, and Newsom is betting theres more mileage to be had.

As a motivating issue, the economy is no longer moving key segments of voters as it once did. Republicans have chosen a path forsaking policy ideas about how to help workers in the post-industrial age and are focusing exclusively on opposing a changing America. That leaves both parties defaulting to culture wars.

For decades, Republicans have looked to Democratic cultural excess for success at the ballot box, but considerable demographic, social and technological change has transformed the traditional terms of political engagement. Simply put, American culture today is not what it was 30 years ago.

Unfortunately, Newsoms pushing his party headlong into the culture wars means Democrats will give even shorter shrift to their economic message, a drift that has seen them lose a growing number of Latino and Black voters. The likelihood of this strategy pushing Democrats further away from developing the aspirational working-class message they need to win over blue-collar workers is considerable. But for the moment, the framing of Newsoms effort as the Campaign for Democracy is as accurate as it is urgent.

The reticence of most Democrats to engage in this aggressive style of politicsneeds to be set aside. Newsom is showing a new generation of Democrats they can win the culture wars if they can muster the fortitude to play the hardball offense they are so accustomed to losing to.

Mike Madrid is a Republican political consultant and co-founder of The Lincoln Project.

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Appearing in Florida, Newsom shows Democrats how to campaign in a culture war - Los Angeles Times

I once led a drink boycott.

It was my sophomore year of high school. At least, I think it was. Im hedging my bets because Im getting to the age where my kids or wife sometimes stop me when Im telling a story and suggest the details are different than the first 73 times I told it.

Age does things to our memory. But heres the story as I remember it:

We had two soda machines in our high school lunch room. Back then, a soda cost a quarter. My drink of choice was Mountain Dew. But one day, the machine supplier made a change. The price for my nectar of the Gods was now going to be 35 cents.

This cant stand, I thought. So I stood on the lunch room table and channeled the Mel Gibson portrayal of William Wallace in the movie Braveheart, thumping my chest and demanding freedom from price betrayal.

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OK, check that. Braveheart didnt come out until a decade after I graduated from high school. And I probably didnt stand on the table. But I did ask my friends to stop buying Pepsi products from the machine with the higher prices.

It worked. We drank Mello Yello for a couple of weeks. The price returned to 25 cents. For a while.

These days, kids dont even need loose change for soda and snack machines. They can use credit and debit cards. And I cant remember the last time I paid even 50 cents for a can of soda.

I mention this story because our fair citys most famous corporate citizen is involved in a drink boycott of its own. During the NCAA championship basketball tournament, Anheuser-Busch ran a promotion for Bud Light that included transgender activist Dylan Mulvaney, who is a Tik Tok influencer. Back in my day, we had celebrity spokespeople. Now we have influencers. Get off my lawn.

Because literally everything these days must devolve into a culture war, so-called conservatives, politicians and celebrities are pushing a boycott of Bud Light. Apparently, they dont believe transgender people should be allowed to exist, let alone drink the same beer they do.

Country musician Travis Tritt tweeted vulgarities about Bud Light and said he would get rid of the product on his tour bus. Congressman Dan Crenshaw of Texas made a video of his refrigerator no longer having any Bud Light in it. The video did, however, show a fair amount of Karbach, a Texas craft brewery that was bought by Anheuser-Busch in 2016.

This cancel culture business is tough, especially in the ever-shrinking beer world, where big labels like Anheuser-Busch buy up Goose Island and Karbach and Breckenridge Brewery. A few years back, Anheuser-Busch hooked up with hip-hop musician Jay-Z. Then it moved away from that partnership and dove into country music. Outrage in. Outrage out.

This is one of those things that happens on the left and the right, when a brands owner does something to offend those with a different political view or tries to appeal to a new demographic. More often than not, those who decide to boycott end up looking silly, as they rush to take videos of themselves tossing the products in the trash or burning their formerly beloved possessions.

The boycotts come and go; they backfire or fade out of memory. Most of us who follow politics closely deal with enough outrage real and ginned up that we dont need it to carry over to personal consumer choices.

Representation is sort of at the heart of evolution, Bud Lights vice president of marketing, Alissa Heinerscheid, said in an interview with an industry publication.

She was explaining the new branding, which sought to update the beers fratty appeal.

Youve got to see people who reflect you in the work, she said.

I saw the video on Twitter. An influencer linked to it.

With all due respect to the generations of St. Louisans who made Anheuser-Busch what it is, I dont particularly care if there is a picture of Bob Dylan, Matt Dillon or Dylan Carlson on a can of Bud Light. My loyalty is to taste and, to a certain extent, region.

For instance, during Denver Broncos games, I drink craft beer from Colorado. During St. Louis City SC games, I drink craft beer from St. Louis, preferably a Brewligans from 2nd Shift Brewery.

I like beer. Straight beer. Gay beer. Country beer. City beer. Football beer. Most of it, anyway.

A few years back, Bud Light appealed to each NFL fan base by putting team logos on the beer. Even if I were a Bud Light beer fan, I would never as in Travis Tritt and Dan Crenshaw never drink a Bud Light with a Raiders logo on it. But I didnt blame Anheuser-Busch for trying to increase its market share by making a deal with the devil.

If youre offended by your favorite beer trying to appeal to different consumer groups, then you have 99 problems, and Bud Light aint one.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch metro columnist Tony Messenger thanks his readers and explains how to get in contact with him.

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Messenger: The culture wars come to Bud Light. Cry me a river (of beer). - St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Betsy McCaughey

Opinion

By Betsy McCaughey

April 11, 2023 | 9:43pm

Stuyvesant High School is canceling single-sex swim lessons, even though swim instruction is required to graduate.Helayne Seidman

In a slap toMuslim girls, Stuyvesant HS is canceling single-sex swim lessons, even though swim instruction is required to graduate.

That forces the girls to choose between preserving their modesty and getting a diploma.

Count on Muslim families to fight back and likely prevail.

Nationwide, Muslims are taking up the battle in schools to protect traditional religious values, including modesty.

Move over, Roman Catholics, evangelical Christians and conservative Jews.

Reinforcements have arrived, and theyre turning the tide.

Even in the Ivy League.

After weeks of protests by female Muslim students, Yale University is switching its campus-housing policyfor the coming academic year to offer single-gender dorms and bathrooms.

From Michigan to Virginia, Muslim parents are showing up at local school-board meetings to oppose graphic sex education and gender-fluidity indoctrination.

Their engagement is influencing politics.

More Muslims are voting Republican, concluding the Democratic Party is trampling Islamic values.

In Dearborn, Mich., left-wing Democrat Rep. Rashida Tlaib opposed the Muslim parents in her district protesting sexually explicit materials in school.

The Biden administration, meanwhile, continues its lurch to the extreme left.

President Joe Bidens Department of Education announced double-barreled rule changes recently,one favoring trans athletesin elementary and middle school and the other revoking a Trump-era commitment by the department to protect religious clubs and associations on college campuses.

Flipping the bird to people of faith twice.

The Democratic Party is blowing off traditional values.

Sexual modesty is a core value in Islam.

Muslims observe a dress code and guard against physical contact between sexes once students reach adolescence.

Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act protects an employees right to practice religion in the workplace, but there is no comparable statutory protection for students.

Muslims are waging the battle one campus demonstration and school-board meeting at a time, often winning.

Muslims are powerful at Yale.

In 2021,undergrads elected a Muslim woman to be student body president.

And on March 9,Yale acceded to demands from the Muslim Student Association, Orthodox Jews at Yale and other religious groups to provide single-sex campus housing.

Muslim women students had protested that with men in the bathroom, they couldnt even remove their hijabs.

Modesty is the issue at Stuyvesant too.

Brian Moran, assistant principal of physical education, told the student newspaper the girls single-sex swim classes clashed with other scheduling priorities.

He made it sound like a mere scheduling inconvenience was justificationenough for the change and told the girls to wear full-body birkinis.

Sorry, but those still cling to the body when wet.

New York Citys Department of Education website promises trans students alternative arrangements for anyone with a need or desire for increased privacy.

Why should Muslim students get less? One in every 10 students in the citys school system is Muslim.

Muslim women at Syracuse University waged a battle last September for swim time without men in the college poolandwon a concessionthat starts next fall.

In Utah, the Muslim Civic League worked with the Sikh and Jewish communities to pass a state law in February allowing school athletes to wear turbans, hijabs and modest pants and tops in competition instead of the regulation form-fitting uniforms.

Luna Banuri, the leagues executive director, said, All faiths have modesty standards.

We believe this affects multiple communities.

Maryland and Illinois recently passed similar laws.

In Bethel, Ohio, a coalition of Muslim and Christian parents are suing to preserve single-sex bathrooms and locker rooms and halt a rule change that would allow biological boys to use the girls facilities.

Most Muslims still vote Democratic, but the shift is beginning.

A Wall Street Journal exit poll found 28% voted Republican in the 2022 midterms, a double-digit increase over 2018s midterms.

Republicans are gaining ground as more Muslims conclude the Democratic Party doesnt show regard for Islamic values.

Tell educators to respect families with faith-based values instead of shunning them.

Betsy McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York.

Twitter: @Betsy_McCaughey

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In state capitals across the country, Republicans seem to be overplaying their hand. The most obvious example is abortion, which poll after poll shows most Americans support in many, if not most, circumstances. In Iowa, a state policy to cover the costs of abortion and morning-after pills for rape victims is on hold as the Republican Attorney General reviews it. In Idaho, where abortion is already illegal in all cases, it is now a crime punishable by up to five years in prison for adults who help pregnant minors to cross state lines to obtain the procedure. In South Carolina, a bill categorizing abortion the same as homicidepunishable by the death penaltyhas seemed to lose steam, but nonetheless remains in play.

And those are just some of the dozens and dozens of efforts undertaken with Republican guidance to further erode abortion rights in a post-Roe world. Look around at other culture-war-flavored topics running on parallel tracks inside the GOP, and its clear that their leaders are chasing broadly unpopular goals: banning books and targeting drag queens; making some of the most dangerous firearms even more accessible; blocking health care for transgender individuals; fighting corporations over wokeness; and engaging in the most brazen political retaliation.

All of these are polling clunkerswith the important exception of gender-affirming care for trans minorsand stand to leave the 44% of Americans who identify with neither party wondering just what is animating Republican lawmakers this session, be it in statehouses or here in Washington. Heres the most basic answer: its what they need to do to survive.

Now, hear me out. A lot of my liberal friends predictably will retort that this is all part of some scary, hate-filled agenda meant to oppress non-white, female, and marginalized communities. My conservative pals will say these are simply efforts to roll back governments reach. Both can be true, but if you get down to the realpolitik of the situation, this polarized agenda is merely the logical conclusion of what happens when the party in power looks around and sees theres no one there to stop them from drawing legislative districts however they please. The extreme gerrymandering that results means red states get redder legislaturesand, to be fair, blue states turn deeper blue; there are just fewer of themand the resulting policies move to the extremes with few consequences.

Few consequences, that is, until someone falls out of line. Its really, really rare to lose re-nomination as an incumbent; just 14 of the 435 House seats saw that happen last year, and roughly half were victims of ex-President Donald Trumps petty endorsement of a challenger. Moving to last years November ballot, a study of most of the races on most ballots found 94% of all incumbents won another term, with congressional incumbents posting a staggering 98% win rate and state-level incumbents notching a 96% record in the general election.

This job-for-life patina is not by accident. Incumbents know its statistically improbable that any newcomer can credibly boot them from power. Incumbency has huge advantages, including taxpayer-funded (official) travel, the power of the bully pulpit, and donors looking to stay in good graces. But you look at the few case studies about incumbents who didnt win re-nomination, and there are warning signs. The folks who lose spectacularly often run afoul of orthodoxy inside the partys most fervent crowds. Rep. Liz Cheneywho dared call Jan. 6, 2021, for what it wasis a prime example. (To be fair, Rep. Caroline Maloney, who had the misfortune of being matched with another longtime institution of New York Democratic politics, is not.)

Then there are the very carefully drawn and high-cost maps themselves. Chris Cillizza smartly noted in his newsletter last week that the Cook Political Report analysis of the current map shows a scant 82 House seats in play, and only 45 would be considered truly competitive. When Cook did this analysis back in 1999, the number of potentially competitive districts totalled 164double what it is today. Which means this: the head-to-head, D-vs.-R voting isnt the real race. The true competition is the one that transforms a candidate into a nominee in increasingly homogeneous communities where voters are picking real estate based not only on crime and tax rates, but also their prospective neighbors ideologies. Being seen as an oddball for a districtAKA collaborating across the aisle on legislationis a death sentence in a lot of districts, which explains the steady polarization in Congress itself. The name of the game for incumbents is survival, and veering to an extreme can be a gilded path for another term, while trying for comity can mean a skid toward K Street.

So as you look at the seemingly out-of-touch agenda snaking its way through state legislatures and the Republican-led parts of Washington and think the plans are incompatible with the electorate, thats only partially true. Broadly, yes, Americans are aghast at parts of this all-culture-wars-all-the-time agenda. Some 76% of Americans tell pollsters that theyre fine with schools teaching ideas that might make students uncomfortable. And a clear majority of all Americans64%think abortion should be legal in most or all cases. The same number of Americans say there should be laws protecting transgender individuals from discrimination.

Read more: Exclusive: New Data Shows the Anti-Critical Race Theory Movement Is Far From Over

Dig into the numbers a little, though, and its quickly apparent that the lawmakers chasing these divisive notions are not completely irrational, especially when you consider their district borders are drawn to foment hardcore policies. The dirty secret among political professionals is that all voters are not created equal. Take the question of whether schools can teach ideas that make students uncomfortable. Among voters who backed Biden in 2020, just 7% of Americans said they were fine with such a block; look at Trump 2020 voters, and that number gets to 36%, meaning a full third of the GOP universe for 2024 is OK with at least some measure of book bans, and that group is probably more likely to vote in the next primary. On abortion, among Republicans, polls find 58% support for the overturning of Roe, including 35% who said they strongly support it. And while 64% of all Americans favor non-discrimination policies toward trans individuals, 58% of them also say trans student athletes should play on the team that matches their gender at birth, regardless of how they identify. Among Republicans, that number spikes to 85%, an astronomical figure that almost demands action.

Put simply: the culture wars might be less about the fight and more about how the battlefields were drawn well before any of the officeholders even showed up.

Thats a small consolation for liberals in competitive states watching as increasingly conservative lawmakers rush ahead on an agenda mismatched to what constituents actually want. Democrats may be able to claw back some of that imbalance if they ever convince their base of the reality that securing the right handful of state legislature seats would have far more power in shaping national politics than throwing millions at longshot, feel-good candidates who become darlings on social media but are chasing votes that arent there. Nonetheless, most of these maps are locked in place until at least 2031. Republicans know it, too, which explains why so many of them are leaning into broadly unpopularbut parochially homerunpolicies.

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Write to Philip Elliott at philip.elliott@time.com.

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Why Republicans Are Overreaching So Hard in So Many States - TIME

Gov. Gavin Newsom, with first partner Jennifer Newsom in Florida last week, is making a series of appearances to set himself up as the antithesis of Florida's Republican governor, Ron DeSantis. (Mike Lang / Associated Press)

The national Democrats may finally have found their champion in the culture wars: California Gov. Gavin Newsom. His recently announced appearances in Southern red states, the Campaign for Democracy" mark a significant tactical turn for Democrats, whose hesitancy to engage on cultural issues has frustrated the governor.

Newsoms new tactical offensive most recently an appearance last week in Sarasota, Fla., to highlight conservative efforts to limit education marks the end of the When they go low, we go high brand of politics popularized by former First Lady Michelle Obama during the early days of the Trump era. Democrats believed that the vulgarization of the public square was beneath them, and that mindset was a losing tactic. The political reality is that the high-minded ideal doesn't work if you allow your opposition to choose the battleground.

Newsom has chosen to launch his national strategy by touring the Deep South and highlighting the progressive case for voting access, antidiscrimination laws, LGBTQ rights and academic freedom all currently under assault by the modern Republican Party.

This is a profoundly different approach for Democrats in the modern era of presidential campaigns, which was defined nearly three decades ago by a young southern governor named Bill Clinton. He adopted the informal campaign theme Its the economy, stupid to emphasize the New Democrats goal of focusing like a laser beam on economic issues in the post-Cold War era. Clinton, under the banner of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, pushed his party to focus on economic issues, not social issues, as it fought to win voters in the mainstream and get Democrats back in the habit of winning presidential elections.

Newsom is the right man at the right time to successfully employ this strategy. His famous move in 2004 allowing same-sex marriages when he was mayor of San Francisco, while proclaiming that social change was coming whether you like it or not made a lot of Democrats uncomfortable at the time, but also set his party on course to embracing rapidly changing social norms as a winning national strategy.

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Newsoms unapologetic embrace of such broadly popular social issues as same-sex marriage and the legalization of marijuana and the nations most progressive positions on gun control and reproductive rights gives the countrys largest blue state governor the bully pulpit to drive Democrats in a new direction.

While Biden is wisely focused on inflation and the war in Ukraine, Newsom has picked up the issues that animate the necessary coalitions to win elections. Lamenting the lack of a fight just weeks prior to the 2022 midterm election, Newsom quipped Where's my party? believing that by leaning into cultural issues, congressional Democrats had a better chance at fending off GOP attacks.

Newsom has good reason to believe this. The college-education divide is perhaps the single most significant dividing line in American politics. Those who have college diplomas are moving rapidly toward Democrats, and those without are moving just as rapidly toward Republicans. It is precisely these voters who are rejecting the social, cultural and race-based extremism of the GOP that cost Republicans in the 2018 midterms, got Joe Biden elected president in 2020, and helped Democrats mitigate a massive red wave in the 2022 midterm elections. The tenuous relationship that college-educated Republican voters have had with Trump's Republican Party has cost the GOP dearly in recent elections, and Newsom is betting there's more mileage to be had.

As a motivating issue, the economy is no longer moving key segments of voters as it once did. Republicans have chosen a path forsaking policy ideas about how to help workers in the post-industrial age and are focusing exclusively on opposing a changing America. That leaves both parties defaulting to culture wars.

For decades, Republicans have looked to Democratic cultural excess for success at the ballot box, but considerable demographic, social and technological change has transformed the traditional terms of political engagement. Simply put, American culture today is not what it was 30 years ago.

Unfortunately, Newsoms pushing his party headlong into the culture wars means Democrats will give even shorter shrift to their economic message, a drift that has seen them lose a growing number of Latino and Black voters. The likelihood of this strategy pushing Democrats further away from developing the aspirational working-class message they need to win over blue-collar workers is considerable. But for the moment, the framing of Newsom's effort as the Campaign for Democracy is as accurate as it is urgent.

The reticence of most Democrats to engage in this aggressive style of politicsneeds to be set aside. Newsom is showing a new generation of Democrats they can win the culture wars if they can muster the fortitude to play the hardball offense they are so accustomed to losing to.

Mike Madrid is a Republican political consultant and co-founder of The Lincoln Project.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

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Opinion: How can Democrats win the culture wars? Look to Newsom's red-state tour - Yahoo News