Newsom vs. DeSantis—You’ve Got to Be Kidding Me!

Tomorrow or Friday I’ll have a formal announcement here about an extended hiatus I am about to take on account of some lengthy foreign travel (3WHH listeners heard about it last Saturday), and one of the guest writers I’ve lined up to fill in for me has produced an exquisite rant about the preposterous idea that Gavin Newsom could run for president. This particular writer will, because of his high public profile in Washington DC, write under the pseudonym “Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov, Order of Lenin.” Our new correspondent only wishes it to be known that “you and I have been friends for, what, thirty-five years, during which time I have endured more Hayward Thought, Hayward Speak, and Hayward Bacon-Is-Kosher propaganda than any mere mortal can be expected to survive.”

I thought this post timely enough to move it up before I depart these fair shores on Friday:

I just cannot see what Newsom could run on. California is a cesspool, a condition not wholly Newsom’s fault, but when you’re explaining, you’re losing. Consider this passage:

“I urge all of you living in Florida to join the fight — or join us in California, where we still believe in freedom: Freedom of speech, freedom to choose, freedom from hate, and the freedom to love,” Newsom says as the images proceed from an aerial shot of the Santa Monica Pier to a rainbow flag waving in the hands of two women with arms around each other. “Don’t let them take your freedom.”

Uh, seriously?  Apart from the fact that this is horse manure — no Republican is going to attack gays, etc. — that is what he is going to use to attract support from Hispanics, black males, Asians, suburbanies, blue-collar types, etc?  In the industrial midwest?  Seriously?  Is he actually going to defend drag queens prancing in front of kindergartners?  OK, you say, he’s trying to lock up the Dem party left-wing base before moving to the center.  Again: Precisely how will he do that?  He has to run on some kind of record that enables him to claim to be a “moderate.”  I just don’t see how he would do that.  Furthermore, I don’t think it’s going to be as easy as some believe to make DeSantis’ middle name “Trump,” in that DeSantis doesn’t have to say a negative word about Trump even as his surrogates tell the journalists on background how DeSantis and Trump don’t like each other, DeSantis has a very different style, DeSantis’ supporters believe that he would be stronger with almost every voting bloc than Trump etc etc etc.

Unlike the case in 2016, when Trump could criticize the other GOP candidates on various grounds, whether justifed or not, what’s Trump going to criticize DeSantis about?  That Florida is doing very well?  That DeSantis is a political threat to Trump?  That DeSantis hasn’t climbed aboard the 2020 They Stole It bandwagon?  Unlike 2016, when Trump ran on an actual agenda, whether good or bad, backward-looking bitterness, especially when not supported by the data, is not going to fly.

I don’t think Newsom is nearly as stupid as Kamala (or Biden) — not a very exacting standard — but he is no rocket scientist.  He’s basically dumb, he’s never had to confront GOP/conservative arguments, and the only things he knows are leftist nostrums like the rainbow horse manure an example of which is the quote above.  Newsom v. DeSantis: DeSantis is smart and quick on his feet and unlike Trump understands when lying is counterproductive.  In a debate DeSantis would crush Newsom.  Just absolutely crush him.  I just have to believe that Newsom would carry the deep blue states and not much else.  Against Trump I think he’d do a lot better — let’s be honest with ourselves, Trump is just poison in suburbia because he is a childish narcissist and sociopath — and Trump does not have very good rhetorical skills.  (The careful use of language is not one of his political habits.)  But this is a different topic.  I just cannot see why Newsom is running ads in Florida.

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