I believe the fact that Newsom is the lead 2028 presidential contender of the Democratic Party pretty much says where that party is right now in understanding what the US population wants.
He is behind Harris according the the Echelon poll in the fourth paragraph.
Harris couldn't answer a softball question tossed out by a kindergarten teacher. Any question at all brought forth panic and a vacuous look. Questions like how much she loves apple pie and what not. I've never seen a worse candidate, ever.
The fact that she polls in front of Newsome is an indicator of what portion of the Democratic party is completely out of touch.
Ok I should have said “a lead candidate” instead of the lead candidate. I think I dismiss Harris because I simply cannot believe that even the democratic base would be that stupid.
Newsome photographs well. His wife looks young and they have four or five good looking blond kids. Newsome also gives quick glib answers to interview questions. Is that good enough? Good enough to be the best current Dem in my opinion.
Newsome also has a history to make AOC blush, and zero policy offerings. Newsome will be running against Vance not Trump, and Vance is a heck of a lot sharper than many realize.
I'd be happier if the Democratic Party offered up some better ideas, like if they competed for my vote on substance. Like tariffs without the corruption, humanitarian repatriation of the millions they brought here, but without the huge tax breaks to fat cats, without firing most of government oversight, keeping our regulators, and modernizing entitlements so they actually support those truly in need. Unfortunately we have no candidates.
Are seniors "fat cat"? All told, Trump has given many seniors, especially those on SS an extra $14 to $15 thousand in deductions for next year. It will pretty much wipe out any tax I may owe.
If organizations, like AARP who I haven't belonged to for a long time, get beyond themselves, such figures should force them to support Trump. If nothing else, they will next recognize next tax season how good Trump has been to them. As for they are only for a couple of years, who will vote foolishly to stop them and history would indicate they will be permanently extended. Of course, only if the republicans are in charge:)
The deduction is $6,000, and another 1600 for being old, getting $15K is by being two seniors. My effective tax rate last year was 6.4%, and yet there are women much older than me giving away free samples at Costco. I don't think they are working for the socializing. I already get to write off one out of every five dollars profit no matter how much profit I make. Plus no taxes on equities except dividends and interest, no taxes on real estate appreciation.
I hope you realize the senior deduction is a deduction not a credit. To get the credit you need to buy a Tesla or maybe another luxury car.
Despite all that, my tax reductions are miniscule compared to someone like Bezos the owner of Amazon who averaged a little over 1% tax for many years.
We kick poor people off Medicaid for those breaks, and even worse, we borrow the money instead. Our debt is trillions and we give tax breaks to those who need them the least. Fiscal idiocy.
I'm married it is $12,000. I assume, maybe wrongly, most seniors don't have a lot deductions so like me, they go with the standard.
The last couple of years I've owed the Feds a few hundred more than I get back from the state. basically even. all things be even, bigger deduction the less I owe the better it will be. Especially since my state has phased out taxes on SS. Taxes that go to community schools, and credit for taxes paid to school districts.
One needs to look at, or explain in more detail, what the whole picture is.
I haven't seen anything that states we are kicking poor people off Medicaid. Poor who can work but don't yes. In the end, some may lose but that leaves more for those who need it. Even the ACA left about 20 million uninsured. Had the Dems just rolled the uninsured into the FEHB, the start up cost would have been negligible and the enrollees would have about 200+ plans to pick from. Point is, there is a better way. Maybe the Dems will have some motivation to help figure out what that is instead of just ACA.
It's statistically predictable to figure how many lose benefits as you make signing up more difficult. The sorts of people who are signed up for every and any entitlement are the easiest for social workers to process, the working poor take more effort and the process of eligibility is complicated enough that most people are signed up via a full time trained social worker. Most of our entitlement programs are a total mess left over from a time when we communicated via US Mail and eligibility was confirmed via paper forms.
Remember the first stimulus checks? Went out within a month based on the previous year's 1040. Very little cost to process, very little lost due to cheating. We don't need social worker gatekeepers. The ACA was and probably still is a mess. Everyone should be eligible for a basic level of care accessible via your Social. Our government didn't want to cut out the insurance companies, so we didn't get health care, we got health insurance.
Meanwhile our life expectancy moves in the wrong direction.
The stimulus checks were a joke from both parties. A girlfriend in LaJolla, has lunch a few times a year with one of her Mother's 80 year old friends, who has outlived most of her contemporaries.
For a decade they have split the check. During Covid, they met for a long delayed lunch. The elderly lady insisted on the check. When her first Covid check came, she instructed her accountant to return it. The accountant explained his time was expensive, far better to simply donate it to the food bank, with so many in need.
She did the same with the 2nd check, but the 3rd she was using the for lunch, before donating the remainder. My friend was flabbergasted. The elderly widow had lived in a massive beachfront La Jolla "cottage" as long as she could remember. It had to be worth 8 figures. She asked why the wealthy widow received checks.
The elderly woman explained , like most in her circle, she kept her income extremely low, on purpose, to avoid CA state income taxes. Most of her social circle, did the same. All well off, they all received government checks, because there was no wealth testing, just income. At age 80, she wasn't missing a paycheck due to Covid, neither was anyone else she knew. Yet they all received Covid checks. Now extrapolate that situation across the country. It's sickening.
It's the same for all of what they call "unrealized" income. Same for all the money individuals have in the stock market. People have suggested a "wealth tax" to tap into it. Houses worth lots of money do you no good unless you sell, yet they gain value most years.
Wealth, and income, are two different things.
If you do sell your house, there are rules for that too. I think you can roll whatever gains you've made into a new house, or you can write off a couple hundred thousand and pay gains only on the appreciation beyond that. I'm not that familiar, haven't sold the house yet lol.
For single filers to get the full amount in 2020 you needed income under 75K or something, over 100 you get nothing. Basically it was chickenfeed for the poor and middle class.
Businesses did much better. Self employed accountants, lawyers etc took a few thousand, restaurants and bars often got six figures with no oversight and no need to pay it back. I saw people building swimming pools with water slides. Metal barns of thousands and thousands of feet to hold car collections. The government didn't have auditors to look at a fraction of a percent of "borrowers" that turned into grants.
No one is guaranteed any certain time to live. The ways to die are innumerable. Nothing guarantees how we will die. There is no such thing as a premature death or unnatural death. Because we have no way of determining length of life or way to die, it is what it is and must be taken as fate or whatever you wish to call it. If you don’t die one way you will die another. The time may be fixed only the method is variable. Those are the facts life. People live they die. The rest is up to fate.
Most Americans have no idea how "neo fuedal " CA has become to quote Joel Kotkin.
40% of Californians only have healthcare because they are enrolled in Medicaid.
The Public Policy CA Institute , a non partisan think tank established by HP founders in the 90s to study all things Californian, calculates when the actual cost of living is considered, 1/3 of Golden Staters live in poverty or just slightly better. In economic downturns, that number can approach 40%.
CA is home to roughly 13% of the US population, but 1/3 of all US homeless people.
CA is the birthplace of "energy poverty". A term coined for the 10% of Golden Staters that must choose between eating and paying energy bills at the end of each month. Newsom is responsible for many expensive Green regulations, that produce some of the highest US energy costs, despite the mild climate.
For years CA had the highest percentage of school children enrolled in free and reduced lunch, until last year when Newsom decided to pay for all kids, to make the stat vanish. CA schools, once the envy of the US, are now rated in the bottom 2 quintiles for test scores. CA Black children suffer such lousy educations, they would enjoy higher test scores dropped into most schools in the Deep South.
For more than a decade, more than 80% of CA jobs created, have paid below the CA median wage. A large chunk, pay wages in the bottom 2 quintiles. In LA 62% of all jobs created are low skilled. CA Blue Collar wages fall into the bottom quintile of state Blue Collar wages for the entire US, despite the high cost of CA living. Economically speaking, Texas Hispanic families, live 1/3 better than their CA counterparts.
Corporations cannot flee CA fast enough. More than a few hundred just since Covid. Chevron was the latest, they will not be the last. Oil refineries too. CA currently has 1/2 the refining capacity it had, when the population was 1/2 as large. The cost of energy in CA has gone from bad to worse, with no end in sight.
Ditto for people. CA is set to lose 4 seats in the 2030 Census, due to population decline, despite the best weather in the US. Should SCOTUS determine those dwelling illegally in the US, will not be counted for apportionment, CA would lose another 5 seats, in addition to the 4.
Most people assume what CA produces most, are tech innovations or Hollywood Stars. What CA really produces, on a mass scale, is poverty. And Newsom has been there, in some capacity, for nearly every step back. 1/2 of 1% of CA families, some 150K, pay 1/2 of all state income taxes, for a state of 39 million. Gavin has been, in many ways, a one man wrecking ball for CA living standards. Give him the opportunity, and Newsom will take his economic destruction national, to a town or city near you.
I’m a native Californian. Ronda’s comments are facts - Newsom has wreaked havoc on the state. She could have gone on to add his policies that have fomented a rise in retail theft and prostitution, deteriorating quality of life in struggling communities, poor Fire and Water planning and cronyism. From a practical policy standpoint, he ranks dead last of any Democratic candidate.
While he has politically thrived in the Bay Area Democratic bubble that has always dominated the state’s politics (funded by the Getty fortune), his debate with Florida governor Ron DeSantis was very telling. He came across as vapid, petty and shockingly uninformed.
Regardless of party, Newsom would be a complete disaster for our country.
Democrats cannot nominate another Republican lite person. The nominee has to believe in something other than anti Trumpism. Mamdani in NYC has convinced people that he is about reducing the costs of living. Whether that is inflation, gas or egg prices or whatever he has proposed solutions to do that. You may not agree with his solutions but you have the chance to change what has been done by proposing your own solution. That’s all anyone wants is a genuine effort to make life worth living.
It appears to me, from the Midwest, Mamdani is no longer about frees as much as he will fight Trump. What that has to do with governing NYC and helping the resident's live a better life is yet to be explained.
A lot can happen between now and the Democratic primary for the 2028 presidential election. Much of this will depend on what happens with the balance of the trump administration. But I think that even more will depend on the Democrat response. So far the Democrat response is very weak. I will venture to say that Newsome has absolutely no chance of getting the Democratic nomination. Pritzker has no chance of getting the nomination. The only Democrat on the scene that I can see getting the nomination at this point is Sherrod Brown. The Democratic Party is destroying itself in many ways. But there is one way I believe that it doesn’t even understand what it is doing, and that is that the Democrat party is embracing all forms of antisemitism. All forms and now many of top leaders! now there might not be enough Jews in this country to turn around a presidential election but they will be a factor. We shall look to the 2026 midterms for an indicator.
Sherrod Brown is a 72 year old white male and I don't think he's ever had a job in the private sector. Do you really think he has a chance in the Dem primary? Or winning a presidential election?
I don’t think any Democrat has a chance. I just mentioned him as it does seem to me that he is putting up a trial balloon in saying that he may seek his Senate seat back. He is well known as a liberal. I kind of just threw it out there. I believe that the next president will be JD Vance, a might also be Marco Rubio.
My model has J.D. Vance beating Newsome with 320 EVs, possibly as high as 340. But we have 16 months of further deportations, voter registration shifts, and CA voter roll purges, not to mention a possible census redo. That Vance total could be higher. Currently I do not have Newsome or any Democrat candidate addressing the "five civil wars" in the party I have elaborated on, and indeed probably would exacerbate them.
As I wrote in my basic comment, it depends on the economy in the spring of '28, just as it has in all but a couple elections in what by then will be 80 years. If the economy is doing well in the second quarter on '28, I think your model will be too conservative.
Interesting. It's highly possible. Right now, the AI economy that is coming is lacking WATER. I don't hear one person, not even Trump, talking about desalinization.
If Democrats have not learned from the failed and humiliating Biden presidency that simply being "not Trump" is not going to be enough to hold the White House, then their continuing succession of failures will be as deserved as they are inevitable.
The very future of the nation's oldest political party is on the line, so get serious folks. Or at least more serious than the handsome political hack Gavin Newsom.
Honestly, do not think GN is handsome. He is photogenic in a kind of GQ way, but if we were going to score D. men on looks I suggest Colin Allred, Jared Golden, or Ruben Gallego.
Good point. He may actually benefit from the any deflection to his looks from his inane words and deeds. It's nothing new. I recall when living in Indiana how Dan Quayle rode clips from Robert Redford's role in the movie "The Candidate" to win acSenate seat and later become an even more embarrassing vice president!
Another problem not mentioned here is Newsom's stance on the batshit-insane ideology of "transgender."
Sure, he made a weak-tea comment about how boys shouldn't be on girls' sports teams -- which they shouldn't -- but then at the first sign of foaming at the mouth by other Democrats, he backtracked. And of course did nothing about it.
Men are being housed with women in women's prisons. All they have to do is say the magic words, "I'm transgender," and voilà! In they go. Men-faux-women have attacked and raped women in these prisons. And what do Newsom and the Dems do? Double-down on the insanity.
And don't forget that Newsom signed a bill that prohibits schools from notifying parents if their children want to change their "gender identity."
Women are over half the population in this country. We are sick of being told to shut up and take a back seat to men who are so deluded they think they can magically morph into the opposite sex. And we're sick of the "trans allies", male and female alike, who are going along with it.
DIAG -- Democrats for An Informed Approach to Gender -- is fighting back. We know that many women out there are not going to put up with a candidate like Newsom, because they tell us. https://www.di-ag.org/
Those Tweets are unreal. I couldn’t believe they actually came from a governor’s office, and had to dig around the web to see if they were authentic or from some random parody account. I was saddened to find a Newsweek article where he discussed them.
Is this what we’ve become?
Is this how we describe the qualities we want in a president — a guy who makes the kinds of public statements that sound like they were written by an eighth grader?
Don’t tell me Trump does it, too. I know. My point is this: is crassness our role model now?
This is why the Dems lose. They love to talk in lofty terms about how awesome they are, and never quite get down to the hard work that has to be done in order to actually create something of value. I suppose that’s too boring, and not glamorous enough, especially when you can be a cool-kid influencer on social media and LARP as a noble resistance fighter circa 1942 instead.
In other words: there’s no there there. All people like Newsom do is tear stuff down. We need leaders who can unite us around a set of common goals, and move forward to meet them.
Newsom has done nothing good for California, only made bad situations worse, including small quality of life issues that seem trivial, like banning plastic bags that actually can hold your groceries, but they annoy every one constantly for no purpose at all. I want to note that his so-called actions to increase the housing supply are not what he says they are. There is no reduction in permit restrictions on construction, it's just a different kind of permit mess now. Note how many (not!) permits have been granted for rebuilding after the LA fires in January. He has been trying to override local zoning regulations to increase, he says, housing by allowing multifamily units to be built in single-family neighborhoods. Combined with other mandates to build low-income housing, this has the effect of forcing significant changes in the character of communities, which will of course reduce property values because even liberals don't want to live next door to welfare families and all the social problems they bring with them. Newsom has also done nothing to increase the supply of water although there are practical things the state could do to capture storm surges, add height to dams, and other things to reduce the wasted water that runs out to sea every year, but instead he is imposing major and impossible restrictions on water use in cities. He has already cut back so far on water for farmers that a lot of agricultural land is being taken out of production for lack of water. His war on the oil and gas industry has been savage and unrelenting. His narcissism has no bounds to think he has the slightest chance of being President.
I live in California, so I have a full appreciation of the level of incompetence in Sacramento (not by any means limited to Newsom). But Newsom is uniquely distasteful because he is such a nauseating opportunist, avoiding every opportunity to lead in an actually productive direction if he detects any chance of blowback from the nutcase wing of his party, or elsewhere.
The current conditions in the once-great State of California are such that the Republicans will have an unparalleled field day with political ads. And I cannot believe voters in the rest of the country are going to have the slightest interest in any candidate from California, the slippery Mr. Newsom or otherwise.
I believe the fact that Newsom is the lead 2028 presidential contender of the Democratic Party pretty much says where that party is right now in understanding what the US population wants.
He is behind Harris according the the Echelon poll in the fourth paragraph.
Harris couldn't answer a softball question tossed out by a kindergarten teacher. Any question at all brought forth panic and a vacuous look. Questions like how much she loves apple pie and what not. I've never seen a worse candidate, ever.
The fact that she polls in front of Newsome is an indicator of what portion of the Democratic party is completely out of touch.
Ok I should have said “a lead candidate” instead of the lead candidate. I think I dismiss Harris because I simply cannot believe that even the democratic base would be that stupid.
Newsome photographs well. His wife looks young and they have four or five good looking blond kids. Newsome also gives quick glib answers to interview questions. Is that good enough? Good enough to be the best current Dem in my opinion.
Newsome also has a history to make AOC blush, and zero policy offerings. Newsome will be running against Vance not Trump, and Vance is a heck of a lot sharper than many realize.
I'd be happier if the Democratic Party offered up some better ideas, like if they competed for my vote on substance. Like tariffs without the corruption, humanitarian repatriation of the millions they brought here, but without the huge tax breaks to fat cats, without firing most of government oversight, keeping our regulators, and modernizing entitlements so they actually support those truly in need. Unfortunately we have no candidates.
Once the media looks into Newsom's marriages and drug use, there will be big dents in his Prius.
Are seniors "fat cat"? All told, Trump has given many seniors, especially those on SS an extra $14 to $15 thousand in deductions for next year. It will pretty much wipe out any tax I may owe.
If organizations, like AARP who I haven't belonged to for a long time, get beyond themselves, such figures should force them to support Trump. If nothing else, they will next recognize next tax season how good Trump has been to them. As for they are only for a couple of years, who will vote foolishly to stop them and history would indicate they will be permanently extended. Of course, only if the republicans are in charge:)
The deduction is $6,000, and another 1600 for being old, getting $15K is by being two seniors. My effective tax rate last year was 6.4%, and yet there are women much older than me giving away free samples at Costco. I don't think they are working for the socializing. I already get to write off one out of every five dollars profit no matter how much profit I make. Plus no taxes on equities except dividends and interest, no taxes on real estate appreciation.
I hope you realize the senior deduction is a deduction not a credit. To get the credit you need to buy a Tesla or maybe another luxury car.
Despite all that, my tax reductions are miniscule compared to someone like Bezos the owner of Amazon who averaged a little over 1% tax for many years.
We kick poor people off Medicaid for those breaks, and even worse, we borrow the money instead. Our debt is trillions and we give tax breaks to those who need them the least. Fiscal idiocy.
I'm married it is $12,000. I assume, maybe wrongly, most seniors don't have a lot deductions so like me, they go with the standard.
The last couple of years I've owed the Feds a few hundred more than I get back from the state. basically even. all things be even, bigger deduction the less I owe the better it will be. Especially since my state has phased out taxes on SS. Taxes that go to community schools, and credit for taxes paid to school districts.
One needs to look at, or explain in more detail, what the whole picture is.
I haven't seen anything that states we are kicking poor people off Medicaid. Poor who can work but don't yes. In the end, some may lose but that leaves more for those who need it. Even the ACA left about 20 million uninsured. Had the Dems just rolled the uninsured into the FEHB, the start up cost would have been negligible and the enrollees would have about 200+ plans to pick from. Point is, there is a better way. Maybe the Dems will have some motivation to help figure out what that is instead of just ACA.
It's statistically predictable to figure how many lose benefits as you make signing up more difficult. The sorts of people who are signed up for every and any entitlement are the easiest for social workers to process, the working poor take more effort and the process of eligibility is complicated enough that most people are signed up via a full time trained social worker. Most of our entitlement programs are a total mess left over from a time when we communicated via US Mail and eligibility was confirmed via paper forms.
Remember the first stimulus checks? Went out within a month based on the previous year's 1040. Very little cost to process, very little lost due to cheating. We don't need social worker gatekeepers. The ACA was and probably still is a mess. Everyone should be eligible for a basic level of care accessible via your Social. Our government didn't want to cut out the insurance companies, so we didn't get health care, we got health insurance.
Meanwhile our life expectancy moves in the wrong direction.
The stimulus checks were a joke from both parties. A girlfriend in LaJolla, has lunch a few times a year with one of her Mother's 80 year old friends, who has outlived most of her contemporaries.
For a decade they have split the check. During Covid, they met for a long delayed lunch. The elderly lady insisted on the check. When her first Covid check came, she instructed her accountant to return it. The accountant explained his time was expensive, far better to simply donate it to the food bank, with so many in need.
She did the same with the 2nd check, but the 3rd she was using the for lunch, before donating the remainder. My friend was flabbergasted. The elderly widow had lived in a massive beachfront La Jolla "cottage" as long as she could remember. It had to be worth 8 figures. She asked why the wealthy widow received checks.
The elderly woman explained , like most in her circle, she kept her income extremely low, on purpose, to avoid CA state income taxes. Most of her social circle, did the same. All well off, they all received government checks, because there was no wealth testing, just income. At age 80, she wasn't missing a paycheck due to Covid, neither was anyone else she knew. Yet they all received Covid checks. Now extrapolate that situation across the country. It's sickening.
It's the same for all of what they call "unrealized" income. Same for all the money individuals have in the stock market. People have suggested a "wealth tax" to tap into it. Houses worth lots of money do you no good unless you sell, yet they gain value most years.
Wealth, and income, are two different things.
If you do sell your house, there are rules for that too. I think you can roll whatever gains you've made into a new house, or you can write off a couple hundred thousand and pay gains only on the appreciation beyond that. I'm not that familiar, haven't sold the house yet lol.
For single filers to get the full amount in 2020 you needed income under 75K or something, over 100 you get nothing. Basically it was chickenfeed for the poor and middle class.
Businesses did much better. Self employed accountants, lawyers etc took a few thousand, restaurants and bars often got six figures with no oversight and no need to pay it back. I saw people building swimming pools with water slides. Metal barns of thousands and thousands of feet to hold car collections. The government didn't have auditors to look at a fraction of a percent of "borrowers" that turned into grants.
No one is guaranteed any certain time to live. The ways to die are innumerable. Nothing guarantees how we will die. There is no such thing as a premature death or unnatural death. Because we have no way of determining length of life or way to die, it is what it is and must be taken as fate or whatever you wish to call it. If you don’t die one way you will die another. The time may be fixed only the method is variable. Those are the facts life. People live they die. The rest is up to fate.
Most Americans have no idea how "neo fuedal " CA has become to quote Joel Kotkin.
40% of Californians only have healthcare because they are enrolled in Medicaid.
The Public Policy CA Institute , a non partisan think tank established by HP founders in the 90s to study all things Californian, calculates when the actual cost of living is considered, 1/3 of Golden Staters live in poverty or just slightly better. In economic downturns, that number can approach 40%.
CA is home to roughly 13% of the US population, but 1/3 of all US homeless people.
CA is the birthplace of "energy poverty". A term coined for the 10% of Golden Staters that must choose between eating and paying energy bills at the end of each month. Newsom is responsible for many expensive Green regulations, that produce some of the highest US energy costs, despite the mild climate.
For years CA had the highest percentage of school children enrolled in free and reduced lunch, until last year when Newsom decided to pay for all kids, to make the stat vanish. CA schools, once the envy of the US, are now rated in the bottom 2 quintiles for test scores. CA Black children suffer such lousy educations, they would enjoy higher test scores dropped into most schools in the Deep South.
For more than a decade, more than 80% of CA jobs created, have paid below the CA median wage. A large chunk, pay wages in the bottom 2 quintiles. In LA 62% of all jobs created are low skilled. CA Blue Collar wages fall into the bottom quintile of state Blue Collar wages for the entire US, despite the high cost of CA living. Economically speaking, Texas Hispanic families, live 1/3 better than their CA counterparts.
Corporations cannot flee CA fast enough. More than a few hundred just since Covid. Chevron was the latest, they will not be the last. Oil refineries too. CA currently has 1/2 the refining capacity it had, when the population was 1/2 as large. The cost of energy in CA has gone from bad to worse, with no end in sight.
Ditto for people. CA is set to lose 4 seats in the 2030 Census, due to population decline, despite the best weather in the US. Should SCOTUS determine those dwelling illegally in the US, will not be counted for apportionment, CA would lose another 5 seats, in addition to the 4.
Most people assume what CA produces most, are tech innovations or Hollywood Stars. What CA really produces, on a mass scale, is poverty. And Newsom has been there, in some capacity, for nearly every step back. 1/2 of 1% of CA families, some 150K, pay 1/2 of all state income taxes, for a state of 39 million. Gavin has been, in many ways, a one man wrecking ball for CA living standards. Give him the opportunity, and Newsom will take his economic destruction national, to a town or city near you.
I’m a native Californian. Ronda’s comments are facts - Newsom has wreaked havoc on the state. She could have gone on to add his policies that have fomented a rise in retail theft and prostitution, deteriorating quality of life in struggling communities, poor Fire and Water planning and cronyism. From a practical policy standpoint, he ranks dead last of any Democratic candidate.
While he has politically thrived in the Bay Area Democratic bubble that has always dominated the state’s politics (funded by the Getty fortune), his debate with Florida governor Ron DeSantis was very telling. He came across as vapid, petty and shockingly uninformed.
Regardless of party, Newsom would be a complete disaster for our country.
Please god NO. The only thing worse than Gavin Newsom is Gavin Newsom aping Trump.
Democrats cannot nominate another Republican lite person. The nominee has to believe in something other than anti Trumpism. Mamdani in NYC has convinced people that he is about reducing the costs of living. Whether that is inflation, gas or egg prices or whatever he has proposed solutions to do that. You may not agree with his solutions but you have the chance to change what has been done by proposing your own solution. That’s all anyone wants is a genuine effort to make life worth living.
It appears to me, from the Midwest, Mamdani is no longer about frees as much as he will fight Trump. What that has to do with governing NYC and helping the resident's live a better life is yet to be explained.
A lot can happen between now and the Democratic primary for the 2028 presidential election. Much of this will depend on what happens with the balance of the trump administration. But I think that even more will depend on the Democrat response. So far the Democrat response is very weak. I will venture to say that Newsome has absolutely no chance of getting the Democratic nomination. Pritzker has no chance of getting the nomination. The only Democrat on the scene that I can see getting the nomination at this point is Sherrod Brown. The Democratic Party is destroying itself in many ways. But there is one way I believe that it doesn’t even understand what it is doing, and that is that the Democrat party is embracing all forms of antisemitism. All forms and now many of top leaders! now there might not be enough Jews in this country to turn around a presidential election but they will be a factor. We shall look to the 2026 midterms for an indicator.
Sherrod Brown is a 72 year old white male and I don't think he's ever had a job in the private sector. Do you really think he has a chance in the Dem primary? Or winning a presidential election?
I don’t think any Democrat has a chance. I just mentioned him as it does seem to me that he is putting up a trial balloon in saying that he may seek his Senate seat back. He is well known as a liberal. I kind of just threw it out there. I believe that the next president will be JD Vance, a might also be Marco Rubio.
I keep wracking my brains but can't think of a single person. Even the maybe-not-so-crazy ones have terrible records.
My model has J.D. Vance beating Newsome with 320 EVs, possibly as high as 340. But we have 16 months of further deportations, voter registration shifts, and CA voter roll purges, not to mention a possible census redo. That Vance total could be higher. Currently I do not have Newsome or any Democrat candidate addressing the "five civil wars" in the party I have elaborated on, and indeed probably would exacerbate them.
As I wrote in my basic comment, it depends on the economy in the spring of '28, just as it has in all but a couple elections in what by then will be 80 years. If the economy is doing well in the second quarter on '28, I think your model will be too conservative.
Interesting. It's highly possible. Right now, the AI economy that is coming is lacking WATER. I don't hear one person, not even Trump, talking about desalinization.
A.I. as an economic driver is brain dead.
If Democrats have not learned from the failed and humiliating Biden presidency that simply being "not Trump" is not going to be enough to hold the White House, then their continuing succession of failures will be as deserved as they are inevitable.
The very future of the nation's oldest political party is on the line, so get serious folks. Or at least more serious than the handsome political hack Gavin Newsom.
Honestly, do not think GN is handsome. He is photogenic in a kind of GQ way, but if we were going to score D. men on looks I suggest Colin Allred, Jared Golden, or Ruben Gallego.
Well, I try not to score anyone on looks, but sadly too much of politics has become almost as superficial as Gavin Newsom.
I know, me either-- but most of what we see abt GN is commentary on his looks so if Dems take looks into consideration there are other possibilities.
Good point. He may actually benefit from the any deflection to his looks from his inane words and deeds. It's nothing new. I recall when living in Indiana how Dan Quayle rode clips from Robert Redford's role in the movie "The Candidate" to win acSenate seat and later become an even more embarrassing vice president!
Another problem not mentioned here is Newsom's stance on the batshit-insane ideology of "transgender."
Sure, he made a weak-tea comment about how boys shouldn't be on girls' sports teams -- which they shouldn't -- but then at the first sign of foaming at the mouth by other Democrats, he backtracked. And of course did nothing about it.
Men are being housed with women in women's prisons. All they have to do is say the magic words, "I'm transgender," and voilà! In they go. Men-faux-women have attacked and raped women in these prisons. And what do Newsom and the Dems do? Double-down on the insanity.
And don't forget that Newsom signed a bill that prohibits schools from notifying parents if their children want to change their "gender identity."
Women are over half the population in this country. We are sick of being told to shut up and take a back seat to men who are so deluded they think they can magically morph into the opposite sex. And we're sick of the "trans allies", male and female alike, who are going along with it.
DIAG -- Democrats for An Informed Approach to Gender -- is fighting back. We know that many women out there are not going to put up with a candidate like Newsom, because they tell us. https://www.di-ag.org/
Newsom is a contender for Democrats just like dog shit is a contender for fertilizer.
Those Tweets are unreal. I couldn’t believe they actually came from a governor’s office, and had to dig around the web to see if they were authentic or from some random parody account. I was saddened to find a Newsweek article where he discussed them.
Is this what we’ve become?
Is this how we describe the qualities we want in a president — a guy who makes the kinds of public statements that sound like they were written by an eighth grader?
Don’t tell me Trump does it, too. I know. My point is this: is crassness our role model now?
This is why the Dems lose. They love to talk in lofty terms about how awesome they are, and never quite get down to the hard work that has to be done in order to actually create something of value. I suppose that’s too boring, and not glamorous enough, especially when you can be a cool-kid influencer on social media and LARP as a noble resistance fighter circa 1942 instead.
In other words: there’s no there there. All people like Newsom do is tear stuff down. We need leaders who can unite us around a set of common goals, and move forward to meet them.
Newsom has done nothing good for California, only made bad situations worse, including small quality of life issues that seem trivial, like banning plastic bags that actually can hold your groceries, but they annoy every one constantly for no purpose at all. I want to note that his so-called actions to increase the housing supply are not what he says they are. There is no reduction in permit restrictions on construction, it's just a different kind of permit mess now. Note how many (not!) permits have been granted for rebuilding after the LA fires in January. He has been trying to override local zoning regulations to increase, he says, housing by allowing multifamily units to be built in single-family neighborhoods. Combined with other mandates to build low-income housing, this has the effect of forcing significant changes in the character of communities, which will of course reduce property values because even liberals don't want to live next door to welfare families and all the social problems they bring with them. Newsom has also done nothing to increase the supply of water although there are practical things the state could do to capture storm surges, add height to dams, and other things to reduce the wasted water that runs out to sea every year, but instead he is imposing major and impossible restrictions on water use in cities. He has already cut back so far on water for farmers that a lot of agricultural land is being taken out of production for lack of water. His war on the oil and gas industry has been savage and unrelenting. His narcissism has no bounds to think he has the slightest chance of being President.
Newsom was once married to the botoxed horror known as Kimberly Guilfoyle. I rest my case.
Petty
I live in California, so I have a full appreciation of the level of incompetence in Sacramento (not by any means limited to Newsom). But Newsom is uniquely distasteful because he is such a nauseating opportunist, avoiding every opportunity to lead in an actually productive direction if he detects any chance of blowback from the nutcase wing of his party, or elsewhere.
The current conditions in the once-great State of California are such that the Republicans will have an unparalleled field day with political ads. And I cannot believe voters in the rest of the country are going to have the slightest interest in any candidate from California, the slippery Mr. Newsom or otherwise.
Yes and Democrats need a program
Indeed. They have a pogrom, but no program.
Same with the state of California. But here we are.