After Dorothy Parker’s second, or perhaps third, suicide attempt, a friend said, “Dottie, if you don’t stop this sort of thing, you’ll make yourself sick.” Someone should speak similarly to the Democratic Party.
Its 2024 presidential defeat was a consequence of its selection of its 2020 candidate, who was the party’s idea of a wise response to its 2016 defeat. Today, Democrats who evidently don’t want to stop this sort of thing look longingly at Gavin Newsom.
There is this to be said for the Californian as presidential timber: He has had eight years of executive experience governing a complex state with a population larger than Poland’s, and an economy larger than Japan’s. He has coped with crises made by nature (e.g., wildfires) and even worse ones made by policies (read on). To be said against him are: those eight years.
Immigration is the sincerest form of disparagement of the place fled from. California, which has gained congressional seats after every decennial census since attaining statehood in 1850, probably will lose four after 2030. Texas probably will gain four, thanks partly to disgust with the continuity of Newsom’s governance with California’s “blue state model” of subservience to public-employee unions.
Tesla and Chevron are among the California companies that have moved their headquarters to Texas. California’s finest cultural institution — not Stanford; In-N-Out Burger — has chosen Tennessee.
California has the nation’s highest unemployment rate and, not coincidentally, a $16.90 per hour minimum wage, 2.3 times the federal minimum. California is tied with Louisiana for the highest poverty rate, taking account of the cost of living in both places. California’s highest-in-the-nation gas tax is more than double the median state tax. In 2024, California’s average retail price for electricity was more than double the national average. Because of zoning and other scarcity-producing regulations, the median sale price of a California home is approaching $900,000. This is a small sample of California’s policy-made problems.
Nevertheless, Newsom is perceived as the front-runner for his party’s nomination. As was Maine’s Democratic Sen. Edmund Muskie in January 1972. As was Republican Rudy Guiliani as 2008 dawned. Both limped out of the New Hampshire primary and into the sunset.
Vogue has just published an adoring profile of Newsom. Its 5,317 words begin with these: “He is embarrassingly handsome, his hair seasoned with silver, at ease with his own eminence.” Then Vogue shifts into high-gear gush: “lithe, ardent, energetic, a glimmer of optimism in his eye; Kennedy-esque.”
This is the most beyond-satire puff piece since Vanity Fair’s April 2019 cover story on a Texas congressman who was the flavor of the month for about a month among the tiny sliver of voters who think Vanity Fair is a profound guide to U.S. politics. Remember Beto O’Rourke? Few do.
Emulating Donald Trump’s ALL CAPS effusions on social media, Newsom has posted depictions of the president as Marie Antoinette in drag, and as grotesquely obese, gorging himself on Big Macs delivered by swarms of drones. This is exactly what the nation does not need: a Democratic presidential candidate bent on subtracting from whatever national decorum has survived the current president.
Campaigning for president six decades ago, Alabama’s Democratic Gov. George Wallace said, “Hell, we got too much dignity in government now.” We have solved that problem. And if 2028 voters want a juvenile president, JD Vance will more than suffice.
Newsom’s nonstop flaying of Trump is neither brave, nor interesting, nor pertinent: Elections are about the future, which does not include Trump. Newsom’s Trump fixation panders to obsessed progressives, but identification with them is Newsom’s problem. He should try saying something — anything — surprising or witty.
In 2004, when he was San Francisco’s 36-year-old mayor, he could be droll and indiscreet. There was a city ordinance — really — that pet owners were to be called “guardians.” Asked whether one could be arrested for saying “owners,” Newsom deadpanned, “You don’t get arrested for much else out here.” And in a city soggy with progressivism, he dared to invoke reality: “You can’t redistribute wealth you don’t have.”
For any Democrat with national aspirations, coping with the party’s progressive wing is like holding a wolf by the ears: Can you let go without being mauled? Newsom is either going to find out, or be mauled by the national electorate for not letting go. Having made it in California, he faces this possibility: If you can make it there, you can’t make it anywhere else.
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