I don’t get the hate for Newsom. Help me understand it.
To be clear up front, I’m not pushing Newsom. My top two for 2028 are Pete Buttigieg and Jon Ossoff. I’m trying to figure out why so many plugged-in Democrats seem to actively dislike him. I don’t mean casual voters. I mean people who follow politics closely.
It doesn’t look like a simple left vs. center split to me, though I could be wrong. What I keep noticing is that many of the objections seem to bother people only because Newsom is the one doing it. Some examples:
1.Kimberly Guilfoyle. He was married to her about 20 years ago, before she went MAGA. How is that disqualifying? Nobody holds an ex-spouse’s later politics against anyone else.
Going on right-wing media. Buttigieg goes on Fox regularly and gets praised for reaching voters where they are. Newsom debates DeSantis on Fox or has Charlie Kirk on his podcast and he’s selling out.
Changing positions. He gets called a weathervane, but he was issuing same-sex marriage licenses in San Francisco in 2004, when it was politically radioactive and plenty of Democrats blamed him for hurting Kerry. Obama and Biden didn’t come around until 2012, and they got credit for “evolving.” Buttigieg backed off Medicare for All and that’s pragmatism. When Newsom shifts on something, it’s opportunism.
Being slick and good-looking. Ossoff is young, handsome and very polished, and nobody calls him a Patrick Bateman type. Obama’s polish was a selling point.
Family money and connections. The Getty family backed his early businesses, which people bring up a lot. J.B. Pritzker is an actual billionaire heir and is a base favorite.
Naked ambition. Buttigieg ran for president straight from mayor of South Bend. Obama ran after two years in the Senate. Newsom has run the largest state in the country and gets called a careerist for wanting the job.
Trolling online. AOC’s sharp social media is praised as authentic and savvy. Newsom’s all-caps Trump parodies are cringe.
Ideological flexibility. Andy Beshear and Josh Shapiro get credit for picking their spots and appealing to moderates. When Newsom does it, it’s triangulation.
The 2007 affair. It was nearly 20 years ago, he admitted it, and he went into treatment. Democrats moved past Clinton, and that was worse.
To be fair, I’m not saying all of the criticism is bogus. The French Laundry dinner was a real problem. He broke the COVID rules he was setting for everyone else, and I’d be annoyed no matter who did it. Concerns about California’s homelessness and cost of living are fair game too.
Part of me wonders if this is just the normal pile-on whoever’s in first place gets. The frontrunner draws all the fire, and a year from now it’ll be someone else’s turn. But it feels more personal than that with him.
My hunch is that people decided they distrust him first and are finding reasons second. If that’s true, where did the distrust come from in the first place? This is the central question I am trying to answer. Why do so many engaged Democrats seem to be looking for a reason to dismiss him? Or am I missing something? Maybe there’s a real case that adds up to more than the sum of these parts?
This is me. I judge politicians with a gut-level “can I trust this one” check. Newsom fails it. Sorry, life is not fair.
That said, I’ve voted him for governor twice, because he’s tolerable, but not in the primaries. I’ll vote for him the general election for president, if he’s the Democratic nominee, but not in a primary.
The main thing I don’t like about him is that he just gives a sort of oily-hair sleazeball/snarky/I-think-I’m-a-genius vibe. He’s still way better than many other politicians, though, of course.
Speaking just for myself, I think he’s all talk and no action. When Trump illegally mobilized the California National Guard to occupy Los Angeles, the Guard’s commander (i.e., Governor Newsome) should have countermanded the illegal order. He had the authority, and in fact the obligation, to do that on his own. Soldiers are trained to obey orders immediately, but if they had two different conflicting orders, they’d have to have stopped and thought about which order was actually legal. Instead of actually taking action, though, he basically said “OK, just keep on doing that for several months while I let the courts deal with it”.
I would happily vote for him if nominated, but he’s got this used car salesman vibe about him. I do question his judge of character in marrying KG even if it was pre-MAGA. People don’t become evil for embracing MAGA, they embrace MAGA because they are evil.
Not that I know much about Newsom, but people do change over time. It’s entirely possible she was a different person back in 2001 when they married; I would wager most of us are quite a bit different than we were 25 years ago ourselves.
I cut Newsom some slack because he has to maneuver between some of the loudest and least forgiving liberals in the country and Trump looking for an excuse to invade the state or at least have an issue to demonize it as the hellhole that would drive the MAGA base. I definitely loved his trolling Trump on social media.
I don’t know or trust any Democrat at this point. What has anyone done against Trump? I’m ruling no one out until I see what happens in 2028.
I agree in general that most of the hate is that he doesn’t seem trustworthy and it makes it a lot harder for him to avoid criticism as a result.
However I think you’re glossing over a few things.
Shapiro is in a purple state and Beshear is in a bona fide red state where he has no business being in office. Of course they have to appeal to moderates. Newsom is in California so most of his ideological flexibility is some combination of intra-party Democratic debates and pivoting from California where he has no need to be moderate to the national level where he imagines himself winning states like Pennsylvania. All of this just makes it look like he changes positions due to being power-hungry rather than someone like Beshear who changes positions because his constituents are more conservative than him and/or he actually wants to get things done in the office he currently holds.
I’ll say I personally think Americans are too distrustful of ambition in general and it’s a bit silly that every politician denies wanting to move up to any higher office immediately before doing so, but given that people don’t like politicians being ambitious, being a weathervane likely because you’re so ambitious is going to turn those people off more than someone like say Ossoff who goes along with the kayfabe that he isn’t even thinking about a presidential run because he’s too busy with his current position.
Yeah this is a huge deal and I’m more than annoyed by it. It’s the height of hypocrisy and makes you question if he has any values at all. It’s another case where it’s even worse given that he’s the governor of California and doesn’t have to worry that a Republican will beat him if he doesn’t (illegally) court campaign donors.
“Trump looking for an excuse to invade the state” is not a reason to try to appease Trump. In fact, it’s a reason to do exactly the opposite. The fact that Newsom has chosen appeasement is the problem.
You and many other Democrats believe this. I believe this is political theater that is real-world insanity. When people talk about splits in the party, this is what they’re talking about.
He’s been an officeholder in California for over twenty years. This means:
He has never faced a competitive general election against a Republican and is surrounded by people who have no idea how to win one. Same problem Kamala had. In some of his elections the second-place candidate was from the Green Party or “an independent nudist activist.” He is essentially the equivalent of someone who has never run in or won an election at all in terms of relevant experience with the national electorate’s demographics.
The job - the only job and only rational selection criteria - of the Democratic nominee for president is to win the election by appealing to centrist swing voters. Centrist swing voters do not like people heavily identified with California politics, because the current state of California is repulsive to them. Newsom is far, far worse than Kamala was in this regard. He’s been the governor of California forever and was the mayor of San Francisco before that. There’s no single person viewed as more responsible for California’s situation.
Those reasons are the start and end of why he would be a horrible choice for nominee. The other stuff is applicable to everyone - yeah, of course people obsessed with identity politics are going to accuse any candidate who doesn’t make ultra-maximum trans stuff the centerpiece of the campaign of “throwing trans people under the bus.” That’s just noise.
“Newsom thinks the reason people like Trump is because he is rude to people and uses profanity on Twitter so he started imitating it” is just a reflection of point 1, he doesn’t know anything about why normal voters make their choices and shouldn’t be the candidate for that reason, period.
I don’t endorse “hate” as my sense of him, but I readily go with my gut leading and my brain then looking for reasons to justify my gut. Which are post hoc definitely findable.
I have gotten the same sense from a few CEOs. It’s a sense that there is no real core belief there other than self interest.
That sense is a significant thing to me, because presidents are more effective leaders when we at least believe they believe in where they are wanting to lead us.
I will gladly vote for Newsom in the general election, but not in the primary.
There will be Democratic candidates with a proven ability to win a tough race in a state like Georgia, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Kentucky or Michigan. There no need to risk someone without tough general election race political experience due to being from Illinois, New York, or California.
I don’t need a reason. All I need to know is that 1) my gut instincts are a strong nope on this one; and 2) years of experience have taught me that I am a pretty typical middle-of-the-road Democrat, and if I’m a “nope” on a primary candidate, or unenthusiastic about the party’s nominee in a general election, that candidate tends to lose, because my gut instincts are in fact a pretty good proxy for everyone else’s. And I don’t want to lose in 2028.
He’s a major example of what’s wrong with the Democratic establishment right now - too corporate-friendly, panders to wealthy donors, talks a big game but is noncommittal when it comes to actually taking action, stands in the way of progressive legislation, and generally acts like he’s entitled to your vote because “what are you gonna do, vote Republican”?
A Newsom presidential campaign would wind up the same way Kerry, Clinton, and Harris did.
Bringing Democrats together behind a candidate or even a handful of candidates is going to be, practically speaking, impossible. But they are going to have to find a way to get together in order to stop the madness that is trump.
The current state of California is completely unknown to them, and if they did know it, they’d probably like it. What’s repulsive to them is the caricature of California that shows up in Republican propaganda.
But you might be right that, regardless of how they got that impression, a lot of voters won’t want to vote for a Californian.