It seems clear that Gavin Newsom is executing a strategy to make himself the kind of national figure that would be in a good position to win the Democratic nomination for President in the 2028 presidential election. Some of what he’s doing is doubtless also helping out the national Democratic effort in this year’s campaign. And some of it he can couch — half plausibly — as part of his job as Governor of California. But the real impetus, I would bet, is that he’s already campaigning for the nomination when the re-elected Biden hits the home stretch of his second term.
And the way he’s campaigning I think speaks well of what he has to offer the Democrats. [Text continued below.]
He is a fighter, and he shows good strategic sense in how he picks his fights. He showed that by going onto Fox News to debate Ron de Santis (who was then an important opponent). He’s showed it lately by the ways he’s harnessed the abortion/IVF issue in Arizona and Alabama.
These two characteristic — a fighter’s attitude, a willingness to press the battle; and a good strategic sense of how to fight effectively — have been in dangerously short supply among Democratic leaders in recent times.
So even though I do not think that Newsom has a beautiful soul — he’s no Lincoln — at this moment I am favorably disposed to the idea of his being the person the Democrats put forward as their champion against a Republican Party that almost certainly will still be an ugly thing that must be driven into oblivion.
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