I dont think anybody actually likes Newsom, hes a rich bastard who basically everyone dislikes. He aint got the respect Brown has due to just being a decent bureaucrat he doesnt have the goodwill of Schwarzenegger due to atleast trying his best. Hes just a dime a dozen slimeball politician nobody actively likes.

Exactly, anything will be better than trump/gop

If Harris. Comes the pick, that’s the only wild card I see. She will alienate a lot of folks because she isn’t as progressive as media is making her out to be.

I don't think I can comfortably vote for someone who made their career as a prosecutor, she may as well have been a cop. I didn't like her as VP either for the same reasons.

Didn't she make a name for herself as a DA aggressively procecuting for MJ? People who statistically looked a lot more like her than me? So we get slow roll fascism instead of a sprint?

(heads to wikipedia)

She prosecuted more than her predecessor, and her replacement issued blanket pardons back to 1975. So that was an option she had but chose not to take, as I see it.

Under Harris, the D.A.'s office obtained more than 1,900 convictions for marijuana offenses, including persons simultaneously convicted of marijuana offenses and more serious crimes.[76] The rate at which Harris's office prosecuted marijuana crimes was higher than the rate under Hallinan, but the number of defendants sentenced to state prison for such offenses was substantially lower.[76] Prosecutions for low-level marijuana offenses were rare under Harris, and her office had a policy of not pursuing jail time for marijuana possession offenses.[76] Harris's successor as D.A., George Gascón, expunged all San Francisco marijuana offenses going back to 1975.[76]

I'm not a single-issue voter on MJ, but I think it's a decent indicator of where her head was at.

Sure, if they put Harris up will I vote for her? Yeah. Then in 2028 they'll tell me I have to vote for facist-lite again because Democracy is stil under threat even though Trump's heart explodes from all those cheeseburgers in 2027, so she'll get a second term. No real chance of real progressive policies or whitehouse-driven police reform until 2032.

I've never seen Biden look as bad as he did in the first debate, so I'd like to see how he is in the second debate before I kick him to the curb. Then maybe we get someone who isn't so cozy with police in for 2028 instead of Kamala's second term.

This is true, but the president (or presidental candidate) is also the face of their backing party, and that matters a lot. We've seen other people try it, but Trump is the only one who can really whip up the MAGA frenzy, which is why conservatives have painted themselves into a corner with him. Likewise, Biden represents what democrats find frustrating about the party: out of touch geriatrics who promise nothing but more of the same.

So yeah, while the president isn't doing most of the work directly, they set the tone, and they have a lot of influence over (or direct power to appoint) people who run major things.

You are exactly correct. A lot of Americans think of the President as the sole arbiter of government authority, despite the fact that they are just the head of one of three branches of government. As head of the Executive, they have a ton of agencies and advisors who report to them.

Kamala Harris, the Vice President becomes President for the remainder of the term. If the President and Vice president die at the same time, the speaker of the house becomes president. There's a very long list of successors beyond that as well.