Obama applauds Newsom's CA redistricting plan as 'responsible'

For the first time, former President Barack Obama has weighed in on the redistricting war that's going national. At a Democratic fundraising event yesterday, Obama gave his nod of approval to Governor Newsom's plan to redraw our congressional maps as a response to Texas doing so first. He said although political gerrymandering is not his preference, he called Newsom's approach quote responsible given what Texas is doing at President Trump's request. Newsom thanked Obama on X Today for quote standing strong with California. Joining us live now to talk about all things political including Democrats bigger problem that of a voter stampede away from the party, San Jose State University political science professor Dr. Melinda Jackson. Dr. Jackson, great to have you on. Yes, thanks. Good to be here. I want to start with getting Obama's blessing, arguably the most popular figure in the Democratic Party. How big of a deal is that and what's the impact? I do think that it will have impact. This is a complicated strategy here in California that was really prompted in response to what Texas is doing with their openly partisan gerrymandering at the request of the president to try to influence the results of the upcoming midterms next year. So it's in principle, I think Californians really like our current system, which is the Independent Citizens Commission that draws the lines usually every 10 years. But this is a political calculation to try to neutralize the gain that the Republicans may get because of the redistricting in Texas. So having the blessing of a very popular Democratic Party figure like Barack Obama, I think will go a long way to reassure California voters, particularly Democrats, who may have doubts or mixed feelings about this idea. Yeah, and some do, right? And I think it also is a statement of, because he likes to stay out of the fray these days, right? For him to enter and say this, and he's kind of a norms and rules guy, says something about how much things have changed. All right, speaking of change, Governor Newsom's tone, everybody has noticed, has changed recently. Check out this tweet from his press office, pretty typical of his recent tweets, if you will. I won't read the whole thing, but basically, you know, it's kind of a warning to Trump in a mocking way, all caps, full of bravado, right? Belittling, fighting fire with fire, so to speak. Is this working for Newsom? And is this a new approach for Democrats? And does it carry risk? Yes, yes to all of the above. I think it is a deliberate approach to really, you know, meet Donald Trump's tone. And, you know, Gavin Newsom is really kind of the primary figure on the Democratic side who is fighting back and really, you know, confronting Trump and not backing down. And I think there are a lot of Democrats in California and across the country who are really craving that, who are wanting more of that aggressive approach from Democrats. Now, whether it will, you know, serve him in the long run is yet to be seen, but it certainly is putting him out there as kind of the face of, you know, the anti-Trump or the Trump resistance on the Democratic side. And that's what he wants, because everybody thinks he's positioning himself for 2028 to run for president. But whether it's him or another Democrat, it's going to be tough, because The New York Times is today reporting on a real existential crisis for Democrats, if you will. This is their article, The Democratic Party Faces a Voter Registration Crisis, Bleeding Support Plunging in Voter Registration. Let me ask you, how big is the drop for Democrats? I mean, how big of a swing have we seen in the past four years? I mean, are they exaggerating or is this for real? Well, it is certainly a trend, you know, toward the Republican side. And we saw that with the vote results last November, that, you know, going into that election, we expected it to be very close and, you know, down to just a few of those battleground states. And instead, we saw this real shift to the right. And the Republicans, well, the Republican Party and, you know, Donald Trump performed better than we had expected based on the polls ahead of time. And now we're seeing that same trend with party registration. Now, party registration is a little bit different because, you know, people don't always vote for the party that they're registered with. And actually, a lot of Americans are not registered with any party. In fact, here in California, we have over 20 percent of voters are registered as no party preference. But particularly when we're looking at the new voters registering for the first time, the Republican Party is outperforming the Democratic Party now, which hasn't been the case for a long time. So we are seeing that particularly with younger men, as well as traditionally more Democratic groups like Latino voters and black voters, we're seeing, you know, a shift toward the Republican side, particularly with those younger generations, the male voters, whereas female voters are tending to stay more Democratic. So it's concerning for the Democrats. And I think that they haven't quite found a way to effectively address this yet. Again, they don't have a clear party leader right now. You know, Kamala Harris did not perform as well as expected last year. Gavin Newsom is out there, you know, trying to be the face of the party. But there are also younger, you know, newer generations such as Zoran Mamdani in New York City, you know, who is leading in the mayor's race there and, you know, AOC in Congress. So I it's really up in the air for Democrats. And I think they need to figure out how to get their message out there, maybe rebrand, you know, really connect with voters who are clearly liking what they're hearing from the Republicans, Republicans more than the Democrats right now. Yeah, I mean, I was going to ask you, how do they rebrand? Because if they don't, if they don't find a message that gets through, or perhaps a candidate who gets through, then their problems won't end with Trump, right, which is what a lot of them were hoping that this was a Trump anomaly. And with him gone organically, people will go back. But when you look at these voter registration trends, if Republicans are succeeding in picking up new voters and getting some old voters to switch, that's something the Democrats have got to work with. We're almost out of time. But what do you think they need to do? Well, I think they do need to get smarter about targeting the voters who are persuadable. Young voters in general still favor the Democrats more than the Republicans. But again, we're seeing some of those shifts that are not looking good for the Democrats. They need to find a way to connect, because especially in those early years, when new voters are becoming socialized into the political system, you know, they're still malleable, right? They could still be persuaded, you know, by the other side. But once they get a few elections in, then that party identification tends to be more firm and tends to stay that way for the rest of their, for the rest of their life.