California Governor Gavin Newsom is among the few nationally known Democrats who can get his shots across the bow at Fox News, having cultivated a working friendship and mutually beneficial relationship with Fox firebrand Sean Hannity. This fact alone makes him a rare candidate on the national scene, even if — officially — Newsom isn’t running for anything.
Designated a surrogate for the Biden campaign, presenting the Democratic Party talking points after a recent Republican presidential debate, and even debating — 1 v 1 — the sinking Ron DeSantis in an undercard battle of polar opposite governors with (relative) youth on their sides, Newsom is seen by many as the next likely Democratic candidate for President.
It’s a role Newsom relishes, as he treads gently around fellow Californian and VP Kamala Harris and as he lionizes rather than criticizes Joe Biden, whose age has brought out the critic in other ambitious young Democrats.
Now Newsom has dropped a virtual presidential campaign ad that is ostensibly a celebration of the unique character and qualities of California, the nation’s most populated and complex state, which — it is often said — has a GDP larger than that of most countries.
“We’re a state of dreamers and doers, no doubt bound by our live-and-let-live embrace of personal freedom,” Newsom says in the ad.
In Newsom’s slick, high production value spot, it is progressive thinking and a can-do belief system that makes California special — the softly spoken subtext being that those qualities could do the same for the United States as a whole, if deployed more broadly.
“More than any people in any place, California has bridged the expanse between freedom for some and freedom for all,” Newsom intones, echoing the essence of the American dream.
California is a state of dreamers and doers. The story of progress throughout our history continued to be our story in 2023.
— Office of the Governor of California (@CAgovernor) December 27, 2023
Our state offers a reason for hope in the future of our nation—we'll keep fighting to bridge the expanse between freedom for some and freedom for all. pic.twitter.com/BIeC95fd4k
“Expanding rights is always the right thing do to. And yet there are still forces that want to take this nation backward, selling regression as progress, repression as freedom,” Newsom says — a reference and rebuke to the promise of GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump to make America great again.
Not everyone in the comments buys the notion that California is molding “the future of the nation,” as Newsom asserts. With some success, Newsom argued with Hannity against most of the charges laid out in the comment below, but his vision and his version of the results clearly aren’t shared by all Californians.
California freedom:
— Dorian Gray (@Dorian_G_DnD) December 27, 2023
-Unconstitutional laws limiting the 2nd Amendment
-Controlling the daily lives/choices of citizens through utility controls/access, inequitable taxes
-Increasing crime through zero bail, early release, decriminalization of crime, homelessness, lax prosecution pic.twitter.com/IfjQ47lZNE
