Is Newsom too blah blah to be president?

We all know the campaign is coming, writes Eric Ting on SFGATE.

“When you were governor of California, you backed off of single-payer health care after you and the state Democratic Party received ungodly amounts of money from big insurance donors,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez might say.

“Gavin Newsom simply cannot be trusted to enact progressive policies like Medicare for All,” Rep. Ro Khanna may add.

These are the same criticisms Warren and Booker faced in the 2020 primaries: Booker was called “a neoliberal who’s cozy with the monied elites of Wall Street and Silicon Valley” by The New Republic, and the progressive souring on Warren began in earnest after she equivocated on her support for Medicare for All.

Newsom has a history of being squishy on policy when it comes to the desires of moneyed interest groups, whether it be prison guards opposing a vaccine mandate or Hollywood lobbyists seeking exemptions from stay-at-home orders. He has also drawn progressive ire over his handling of fracking permits and the currently proposed gas rebate. Other presidential candidates running as progressives will have a remarkably easy time painting Newsom as a neoliberal establishment sellout; if you thought the Elizabeth Warren snake memes were harsh, wait until you see what the Bernie Sanders wing of the party might have in store for Newsom.

Would Newsom be better off running as a more centrist candidate in the mold of Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Amy Klobuchar? The moderate wing of the Democratic Party heavily prioritizes electability, with Biden (Pennsylvania) Klobuchar (Minnesota) and Buttigieg (Indiana) all arguing to voters that their midwestern roots would help in critical swing states in the region, and that their policy moderation would not turn off independent or conservative voters. Newsom is the embodiment of a coastal elite, and is already a prominent Fox News boogeyman. 

In 2020, Buttigieg specifically went after Warren and Sanders for being vulnerable to Republican attacks that they are too far to the left, and similar attacks will likely be lobbed against Newsom when he runs.

Even if Newsom tries to make a heel-turn towards stylizing as a moderate, he’ll have a difficult time convincing centrist voters he’s for real after years of branding himself a trail-blazing progressive — a label that, again, progressives don’t agree with in the first place. Meanwhile, his high-profile inability to follow state and local COVID-19 rules cannot be written out of the public record, and it’s not hard to see moderate candidates such as Buttigieg, or perhaps Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, stating, “Our party is already accused of being out of touch with ordinary people, why in god’s name would we want to nominate the poster child of such criticism?”

When presidential candidates in the modern Democratic Party find themselves caught in no man’s land between the progressive lane and the establishment lane, bad things tend to happen. Booker never made it to the primaries. Warren never finished better than third place in any of the contests she ran in. Other candidates who straddled the line such as Kamala Harris and Kirsten Gillibrand also saw their campaigns quickly fizzle. Going back further in time to 2016, Hillary Clinton had a stranglehold on the establishment wing while Bernie Sanders had a stranglehold on the progressive wing, leaving no room for any other serious contenders.

Newsom, who is not progressive enough for the left wing of the party and not electable enough for the centrist wing, is likely to suffer a similar fate whenever he launches the presidential bid everyone knows is coming.

https://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/Gavin-Newsom-needs-a-reality-check-17078264.php

“He’s also a bona fide environmentalist. In 2004 he rose to prominence by co-authoring an essay criticizing the green movement as arrogant and politically insular. “Environmentalism is just another special interest,” he wrote. “Environmentalists ask not what we can do for non-environmental constituencies but what non-environmental constituencies can do for environmentalists.”

“He became an outspoken advocate for nuclear energy and shale gas fracking to reduce CO2 emissions. After writing a book criticizing climate alarmism, he turned his focus to the social policies that are ruining big cities on the West Coast, especially in California’s Bay Area where he has lived for three decades.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/michael-shellenberger-beat-gavin-newsom-california-governor-gubernatorial-election-housing-energy-homelessness-school-choice-11652107572?mod=hp_opin_pos_2

“The live-stream of Donald Trump’s Arizona rally from Right Side Broadcasting, a right-wing website known for streaming Trump’s events, took a conspiratorial turn when one attendee insisted that California Gov. Gavin Newsom had been executed and replaced with a clone.”

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/jan/19/blog-posting/bogus-claims-about-gavin-newsom-being-executed-clo/

“According to the FPPC, companies and foundations donated more than $226 million at Newsom’s request in 2020, the majority of which went toward the state’s COVID-19 response. The donations came in the form of behest payments, which are payments made on behalf of an elected official that are for charitable, legislative or government purposes.”

00:00/01:23

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/report-newsom-solicited-millions-in-donations-to-fund-californias-pandemic-response

This is a very interesting story!

“While Meister said he can’t discuss the details of the case, he said ABC is stipulating that Oliver close the restaurant for at least a month, a move that Oliver said would be catastrophic for his business. He embraces the reputation he built when he poked the Newsom administration, and today sells merchandise referring to his business as a “rebel restaurant.” “This is not communist China, we are allowed to question this stuff,” Oliver said.

Read more at: https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article260685737.html#storylink=cpy

Writing in The Sacramento Bee, Sophia Bollag wrtes that Melissa Michelson, a political science professor at Menlo College maintains:

“I think we all anticipate that he plans to run for president,” Michelson said. “He’s got that whole second term as governor to build up those credentials, and it’s going to be those things that are recent that are top of voters’ minds… Unless a more progressive candidate is going to challenge him and make hay of this, it’s going to go through the 24-hour news cycle, and we’re all going to forget about it.”

Since taking office, Newsom has done noting about single payer. That has everything to do with the fact that his social class does not have to worry about school closings (they can afford private tutors), health care (they have plenty of money for insurance and treatments) or abortions — rich people have always been able to have them.

Their concern is to maintain their class privilege. To do this, they will avow socially liberal policies while dragging their heel and making lame excuses.

Writer Rebecca Bodenheimer maintains that:

Newsom’s latest decision to put the health of California’s incarcerated population at risk by appealing the prison guard vaccine mandate is yet another example of his tendency to put the agendas of powerful unions ahead of some of the most vulnerable members of society who don’t have paid lobbyists (i.e., kids and incarcerated people).  

Newsom, a poster boy for elite interests if there ever was one, has vetoed a bill which would have made it easier for workers to organize.

The Sacramento Bee has the story.

California farm workers are heading to a winery owned by the company Gov. Gavin Newsom founded as they continue to protest his veto of a bill that would have made it easier to vote in union elections.

The planned stop at PlumpJack Winery vineyard on Saturday follows a United Farm Workers march on Thursday to the pricey French Laundry restaurant in Napa County, where Newsom celebrated a lobbyist’s birthday in November as he was asking other Californians to avoid indoor gatherings because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Elizabeth Strater, director of strategic campaigns for The United Farm Workers, said about two dozen marchers participated in the French Laundry demonstration. The union expects more people to join its planned march from the French Laundry to the PlumpJack vineyard.

Strater said organizers felt “a lot of anger and a huge sense of betrayal” after learning the governor vetoed the bill. During a contentious recall election that threatened to oust Newsom from office, the labor union backed the first-term governor.