The Democratic Party has been in full meltdown mode since Trump bulldozed his way to victory in the 2024 election. The fallout is hard to overstate. Even before Joe Biden dropped out of the race in the wake of his disastrous debate performance, Trump was steamrolling him in the polls. Then Kamala Harris took over and proceeded to raise and burn through a billion dollars, losing every single swing state in the process. The party is desperate to win the White House again, but do they have anyone who can pull it off?
I have my doubts.
Despite early polling showing Kamala leading the clown car of Democrat hopefuls, no one believes the party will try to win with her again. She was a terrible presidential candidate in 2020, and her 2024 was a dumpster fire.
Former President Bill Clinton believes that Gavin Newsom is the Democrats’ best hope. At the Clinton Global Initiative, Clinton called him “the most talented politician” in the party and gushed about his potential to win back the White House. Clinton didn’t just drop Newsom’s name in passing—he went out of his way to suggest that Newsom has the right stuff for national leadership, throwing his support behind the “dedicated student” he believes could make Democrats competitive again.
Newsom is now basking in the front-runner spotlight for the Democratic nomination. Recent polling gives him a comfortable lead over the rest of the pack, which sounds a lot better than it really is at this point.
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Newsom’s coronation isn’t the sure thing Clinton and the media hope. Even inside the Democratic Party, skepticism runs high. Sen. John Fetterman hasn’t held back, slamming Newsom for his phony pivot toward the center.
"Everyone's going to go into the middle," Fetterman said. "But people forgets that the internet exists and all of the clips and all of the outlandish things that they've said or they've done, that's going to have about 20 or 30 million dollars that can pound you for those things."
We’ve been calling out Newsom’s radical record for years, and you can bet that it won’t sit well with the American center. In 2020, he approved SB145, a bill that eased sex-offender registry rules for adults who engage in sex acts with minors, all under the banner of LGBTQ inclusivity. Then in 2023, he vetoed AB 957, a measure that would have rewritten California’s Family Code so judges could weigh a parent’s “gender identity” affirmation in custody battles. The veto looked like a strategic play to cast himself as a centrist on transgender policy, despite everything he has championed before… and since.
While Newsom has tried to move to the center on social issues, he hasn’t gotten the message that Trump’s immigration policies are popular because, back in September, he signed laws meant to curb federal immigration officers’ access to schools and medical facilities, force them to identify themselves in every interaction, and even outlaw the use of face coverings while on duty.
So, when you take all that away, all that he has left is his trolling of President Trump on social media. And that isn’t exactly a solid foundation for a presidential campaign.
Clinton’s early endorsement makes for good headlines, but can Newsom really be the frontrunner today and hold that status for the next three years? I doubt it. Newsom may be the frontrunner today, but the chances are higher that another candidate will eclipse him soon enough, and the media will talk about how Newsom peaked too early.
