Are Democrats Allowed to Replace Biden With a White Guy?
California’s governor is a leading contender for 2024. But there’s a problem.
by Ellie Gardey
October 6, 2022, 11:21 PM
Gavin Newsom appears to be making a presidential bid.
Aside from placing full-page ads in Texas newspapers and funding billboards in Indiana — efforts designed to raise his national profile — the California governor is exercising some uncharacteristic moderation. He vetoed drug-injection sites for addicts, for instance, a turnabout from his election pledge in California. What’s changed is not his desire to shoot up junkies but rather his fear that Michiganders or Arizonans may not take well to such a program.
Even as he downplays some of his most extreme policy positions, Newsom is projecting himself as a strong leader who can build a progressive utopia and contrasting that with the weakness of Biden.
“Where are we?” Newsom asked Democrats in Texas last month. “Where are we organizing, bottom-up, a compelling alternative narrative? Where are we going on the offense every single day?” Biden, the leader of the Democratic Party, was the unspoken object of Newsom’s ire.
With Biden always getting lost at podiums, it’s easy for Newsom, age 54 and under the impression that his vibrancy makes him charming, to pose as the antithesis to the mentally declining 79-year-old.
Newsom can rightly claim to be on “the offense” in progressives’ book with the array of quasi-communist policies he’s foisting on California, including forcing fast food restaurants to pay their workers a prescribed wage, requiring car companies to cease selling gasoline-powered vehicles, and handing out cash to solve inflation.
He is also taking on Florida Gov. DeSantis, who is seen as one of the top contenders for the GOP presidential nomination — an effort that sets Newsom up as DeSantis’ natural opponent in a general election. Last month, Newsom challenged DeSantis to a debate, saying, “Clearly you’re struggling, distracted, and busy playing politics with people’s lives. Since you have only one overriding need — attention — let’s take this up & debate.”
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https://spectator.org/democrats-replace-biden-with-newsom-white-guy/
