The recent Democratic polling for Election 2028 has been posted. There’s a field, although not a very compelling one. Some governors in blue states that people can’t flee from fast enough, progressive twits who can’t speak English all that well, and some would-be moderates hoping to recoup the working classes that broke for Trump and the Republicans in 2016 and 2024.
And then there’s California Gavin Newsom.
Is he the new thing that Democrats are looking for to lead them into 2028?
Current polling places Kamala Harris as the first pick for the presidential nomination.
What a turnaround this turned out to be!
During the 2020 Election cycle, Harris didn’t budge out of single digits—or digit, rather. She practically lived in Iowa, marched with the bands, and word-saladed her way into every town hall. The DEI hire of the year, per progressive prognosticators, dropped out of the primaries before the Iowa caucuses!
But four years as VP, including 107 Days as the failed 2024 nominee, and she’s earned first place among Democratic voters.
Oh, the significance of the passage of time!
Retiring California Governor Gavin Newsom nudges in a distant second, at 13 percent.
For all the foreign junkets, podcasts, and social media trolling, Gavin is still the bridesmaid and not the bride.
The Democratic Party and its activist agencies and identity groups, who are still propping up the party, are not sold on the Getty trust-fund baby.
Check out LGBTQ Nation's commentary: Let’s not count on Gavin Newsom as the Democrats’ political savior.
LGBT activist groups are the backbone of the party, almost as much, if not more so, than the black vote.
And they are not shouting “Yaaas, King!” for Gavin.
What’s their problem with the two-term (and two-timing) governor of the largest state?
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Ambition is hardly a deal-killer for a presidential wannabe. The real question is, what does Newsom have to offer that can change Democratic fortunes? The answer is much more of a mix than the current glowing coverage of Newsom would allow.
He gets good press, but liberals are slowly realizing that good media isn’t much good anymore. Most Americans don’t trust the press, and they spend more time listening to podcasts or watching cat videos.
More importantly, though, Democrats across the country are waking up to what Californians have known for years: Newsom has no principles; he just plays along with the polls.
And he’s got problems, according to the LGBTQ Nation's commentary that described him as having lots of baggage.
The truth and trust factor matters to voters, no matter how liberal, or rather illiberal, they may be.
US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent called it: Newsom is a noxious mix of Patrick Bateman and Sparkle Beach Ken. He’s plastic, elastic, and has taken drastic steps to make himself appear moderate, at least in rhetoric, to a general election audience.
The plastic element is of particular importance.
Not just LGBTQ Nation, but Salon, very left-wing in its outlook, has taken a dim view of Newsom, too: Gavin Newsom is much worse than you think.
This left-wing rag hammers the point that Newsom isn’t progressive enough. He opposes a proposed billionaire’s tax, and the article reported on his outreach to hundreds of California companies, offering to help them in any way he can.
Salon also noted his key vetoes that harmed labor union goals (the farm workers and the filmmakers), his slow retreat from environmentalist policies, and his wayward endorsements of the oil industry. It’s hard to believe, but Newsom actually signed legislation to allow for more oil fields, even while closing oil refineries! He doesn’t care about the consumer, but he loves Big Oil!
In a word, Newsom is proving too “corporate” for the Democratic base.
Big Business loves Newsom, according to Salon, and that lack of progressive credentials will hurt his chances in the primary. Therein lies the difficulty for the governor. He can’t compete against a JD Vance or Marco Rubio (or Ron DeSantis!) if he embraces the Bernie Sanders core of the Democratic Party, but he needs that core to get through the primaries.
He needs Bernie voters, but he can’t become Bernie Sanders.
His best course of action? If he can corral a broad array of superdelegates to his cause, just as Hillary Clinton had done in 2016. Then again, we all know how that ended! The hardest of hard-core Democrats will sit out the election (again), and a moderate-populist platform from the Republican nominee will keep the Rust Belt states in the GOP column.
Yikes! What a dilemma for a wannabe frontrunner.
LGBT doesn’t like Gavin. Salon has turned on him.
What about The Atlantic? Wouldn’t they give him a break? Nope. It wrote: Gavin Newsom’s Record Is a Problem.
The Atlantic has never held back its contempt for Trump, even when the 47th President permitted them an interview last year.
They had no problem calling out the j*****s in the middle of the room, either. The Atlantic criticized Newsom because he's been a career politician in California during a time when it's gotten less affordable to live in the state.
Despite Newsom’s growing presence on social media, his wannabe bravado, and the electorate’s ongoing fondness for style over substance, his record is fair game. All the trolling and trash-talking cannot cover up the corrupt and collapsed state of California today. He won’t have Florida Governor Ron DeSantis to play off of, as he had done in 2023 during his abortive Fox News debate (which his First Partner called off to spare him what little dignity remained after the Florida Man Drubbing).
He has to answer to his fellow Democrats in the primary, and he will have to debate more moderate, in fact, and competent competitors like Josh Shapiro, Stephen A. Smith (bank on it, the ESPN newscaster is running.)
Even major Democratic donors are turning on California's governor. John Morgan, a Florida trial attorney and major promoter of medical marijuana, knows that Newsom’s record against parents, for trans insanity, and all the other left-wing nonsense will be a deal-breaker come 2028.
California is a state in a terrible state. Newsom cannot spin that, and it’s all his fault, or at least he will have to answer for it. The large migration of residents, the high costs, the higher taxes,the ongoing crime rates, the forest fires that have devoured entire communities, the gender insanity in the schools, the low law enforcement morale, the reparations madness: all of it is just too much. The Left knows that Newsom’s California model is a disaster (of his making), and he will turn off voters vouching for a sense of normalcy in their country.
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