California Gov. Gavin Newsom is widely viewed as a strong contender for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination, particularly by Gavin Newsom. But his record is a real problem, just not in the way pundits think it is.
Take, for example, his determination to thwart the 2026 California Billionaire Tax Act, which would impose a one-time 5 percent levy on residents of the state worth $1 billion or more. This is hardly Bolshevism, as keen mathematicians will note that 5 percent still leaves 95 percent, meaning those affected would wake up the next morning in the same economic bracket that calls to mind a camel and the eye of a needle. Regardless, Newsom remains firmly in the plutocrats’ corner.
There was also his appearance at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, late last month — always a popular destination for those angling for high office — amid President Donald Trump’s lunge toward Greenland. Just as European leaders were discovering that, having tolerated U.S. imperialism in Venezuela, it was now threatening their own backyard, Newsom kindly offered some unsolicited advice, scolding them that “Trump is a T. rex — you mate with him or he devours you, one way or the other, and you need to stand up to it.” (The revelation that T. rexes can be defeated by standing up to them will come as a surprise to anyone who’s seen “Jurassic Park.”) Trump, for his part, merely shrugged in response: “I used to get along so great with Gavin.”
Last week and with much publicity, Newsom launched a review of TikTok’s moderation practices, accusing the platform of suppressing Trump-critical content after a deal was finalized to transfer Chinese ownership of the app to a consortium of pro-Israel, Trump-loving billionaires, including Larry Ellison and Michael Dell. It is unsurprising that social media is an issue of concern for Newsom, as he is apparently the last person on Earth under the impression the Trump administration can be tweeted into submission, a strategy which will surely pay dividends any day now.
Finally, students of shameless self-promotion may already be familiar with “This Is Gavin Newsom,” the podcast launched in early 2025 in which the governor has sought to bridge the political divide by sitting down for chummy dialogue with far-right celebrities like Ben Shapiro and the late Charlie Kirk. What this looks like in practice is Shapiro goading Newsom into denying Israel’s genocidal conduct in Gaza, while Kirk earned Newsom’s fulsome agreement about the nefarious menace of trans women playing sports.
Yet there are those in the political media unbothered by all this — if anything, it is the kind of thing they would like to see more of. Instead, their concern comes from a different direction, if not an alternate universe, altogether.
Writing in The Atlantic late last month, Marc Novicoff and Jonathan Chait argued “Gavin Newsom’s Record Is a Problem.” While acknowledging he has “sensed what Democrats want … and is delivering it with a roguish charisma” (your mileage may vary), they nevertheless worry he may be perceived as too progressive. This will, one assumes, be followed by essays on why Chuck Schumer is too courageous and JD Vance is too likable.
Novicoff and Chait posit that Newsom’s tenure as governor has seen California “fall hard for faddish progressive policies on immigration, education, and crime that either didn’t work, violated the intuitions of most Americans, or both.” As proof, they offer the state providing Medicaid to undocumented immigrants and gender-affirming health care for prisoners, both of which they present as catastrophic missteps that will come back to haunt him in 2028.
Such is the modern centrist credo: to overcome a perception rooted in fantasy, it may be necessary to make the reality of people’s lives worse.
Such is the modern centrist credo: to overcome a perception rooted in fantasy, it may be necessary to make the reality of people’s lives worse. In fact, it would seem their preferred litmus test for a candidate is that they not only refuse to recognize the rights and basic humanity of immigrants, LGBTQ+ people, and the incarcerated, but that they also must never offer even the most superficial indication to the contrary.
This is all par for the course from Chait, who maintains Kamala Harris’s 2024 defeat had little to do with her support for Israel during a genocide, her proud past as California’s “top cop,” or her unwillingness to distance herself from Joe Biden’s legacy. Instead, Chait blames those few instances during her Hindenburg-like 2019 stab at the Democratic nomination where she briefly and unconvincingly pivoted left before returning to the comfort of political moderation.
In the real world however, the arch-centrist Chait got everything he could hope for in Harris, who promptly blew it; now, with Newsom as the alleged front-runner for 2028, the fact that Chait is already preemptively recycling the same excuses for failure does not inspire confidence.
“Just about everything people don’t like about the Democratic Party has come true in Newsom’s California,” Chait and Novicoff write, inadvertently stumbling onto a point. Many Americans despise the Democrats for their craven coddling of billionaires and corporate interests, their fealty to zombified Third Way snake oil, and their twitchy, terrified suspicion of any mass movement too radical for their own beige, milquetoast taste — and sure enough, in the California governor’s mansion sits a man who personifies all these grim qualities.
If Newsom — who treats billionaires as a treasured natural resource, who mobilized thousands of National Guard troops to quash Black Lives Matter protests, who made a photo op of breaking down a homeless encampment with his own hands — is not impeccably centrist enough for the likes of Chait, who the hell is? A John Fetterman who’s on the ball and not acting like a Republican? A Kyrsten Sinema whose personal life isn’t straight out of a daytime soap opera? A reanimated WelcomeFest speaker stitched together in Matt Yglesias’s laboratory?
It does ring true that Newsom will be painted as a deranged radical out of some Californian hippie dystopia, because under Trump, what was once McCarthyism is now standard practice. So why would anyone still believe the forces he represents can be met halfway, given they will inevitably smear as commies anyone to the left of “The Turner Diaries”?
Watching Newsom’s refusal to accept this reality has not been edifying. Following the murder of Renee Good by ICE last month, Newsom’s press office released a post on X which simply read “STATE. SPONSORED. TERRORISM,” a position which held for a little over a week until Ben Shapiro badgered him into walking it back. For all his tough-guy posturing, one wonders how tough a politician can really be if Ben goddamn Shapiro — whose greatest enemies are socialism, wokeness, and things on high shelves — can get you to fold like a cheap lawn chair. But this is Newsom’s style: blustering proclamations that might, to the casual observer, be mistaken for principle or policy, closely followed by the reticence and cowardice that defines mainstream Democratic politics.
It should go without saying that Newsom’s palling around with right-wing pseudo-intellectuals like Kirk and Shapiro — along with his assurances that he does not favor abolishing the death squads currently occupying Minnesota — do not appear to have won him any converts, respect, or sympathy from the American right. And why should it? In Trump, they have found a president that will indulge their darkest desires, liberate their deepest prejudices and deliver the violence they yearn to see inflicted on all those they judge as deserving — in short, everything they could ever want. Meanwhile, there are still those who believe the key to defeating American fascism is making sure the left gets none of what it wants. Go figure.
Unsurprisingly, there has been little indication the American progressive left perceives Newsom as deserving anything but disdain. Recent weeks have only bolstered the sense that committing to the abolition of ICE is a prerequisite for any remotely moral candidate in 2028. If Newsom fails to become that candidate, it will not be because he appeared too left-wing, but because he lacked the guts or the inclination to be anything except what he manifestly is: a preening political operator, beholden to a status quo that no longer exists.
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