Gavin Newsom’s Tough Tuesday – WSJ

The Journal’s Ken Thomas, Catherine Lucey and Tarini Parti report:

House Budget Committee Chairman

John Yarmuth

(D., Ky.) said the Democratic strength in the midterms was tied more to issues including abortion rights and threats to democracy.

“I don’t know that I would delude myself that it was a positive mandate for Joe Biden,” he said. “I say that as a big supporter of his.”

Greg Perry, chairman of the Charleston County Democratic Party in South Carolina, said if Mr. Biden announced a re-election bid in the coming months, he would wait to see if other Democratic candidates challenged the president before giving Mr. Biden his backing.

“He has done a great job as president, but I think that we can definitely consider other options with other individuals who may be highly qualified,” he said.

One can imagine how the other options are feeling. Californian Joel Engel tweets about the Golden State’s Democratic Gov.

Gavin Newsom,

who coasted to re-election on Tuesday:

If Trump was the biggest loser of the night, Newsom was second biggest. He thought the path was clear, but now he’ll have to primary Biden. On what grounds?

To be clear, neither Mr. Engel nor this column necessarily considers Mr. Newsom highly qualified to be president and the governor has said he’s not interested in running. But his endless series of stunts to attract national media attention say otherwise.

Also, having worked to achieve peak liberalism in state policy-making, does Mr. Newsom really want to hang around Sacramento and risk being held accountable for the results?

At Cal Matters, Dan Walters writes of Mr. Newsom:

What does he do now?

Would he simply serve out his second term, expanding his crusade for a carbon-free economy and implementing his experimental approaches to California’s social ills? He has a massive ego and a penchant for pursuing “big hairy audacious goals”… albeit with a spotty record of success to date.

The record would present a challenge in trying to appeal to voters outside California. David Lightman writes for the Sacramento Bee:

Crime is up. The economy is teetering. California has almost a third of the nation’s homeless population… Newsom is presiding over a state that looks to many Americans like an out-of-control mess.

On top of that comes the messy issue of an unpopular president who doesn’t want to step aside. Politico’s Lara Korte reports:

If Newsom is indeed harboring presidential aspirations, he’ll only have a small window to fulfill them. President Joe Biden hasn’t bowed out from 2024. If he does, Vice President

Kamala Harris

is widely expected to run again in his stead. Even though the governor has been willing to criticize Democrats on the national stage, he seems reluctant to directly counter Biden or Harris, who, like Newsom, came up through the high-stakes world of San Francisco politics.

Speaking about the vice president in May, Newsom said he’s hopeful that “she’s the next president of the United States.”

Deference aside, Democrats, including those close to Newsom, acknowledge there is an appetite for new leadership in the party.

So Mr. Newsom says he’s not interested in running and publicly supports the president and vice president but “those close to Newsom” say Democrats want Joe to go. That’s sweet.

Even those not close to Newsom are worried about Mr. Biden’s ability to lead the party in 2024. Frank Bruni frets about the president in the

New York Times

:

He doesn’t project anything like the ebullience he once did. His flubs transcend malapropisms. Last month, he erroneously claimed that student loan forgiveness — which he decreed by executive action — passed Congress by a few votes. That was the most glaring misstatement of his own record but hardly the only one.

But Mr. Bruni’s not impressed with Mr. Newsom or the more obvious alternative to Mr. Biden:

Many Democrats cringe at the thought of Kamala Harris as the party’s 2024 nominee. They regard that as party suicide, pointing to her persistently low approval ratings and her miserable 2020 presidential campaign, which ended before the Iowa caucuses began.

What about Transportation Secretary

Pete Buttigieg

? Mr. Bruni quotes a former campaign aide to Bernie Sanders:

“You have to give credit to a guy who went from being a mediocre mayor of Indiana’s fourth-largest city to getting the most delegates in Iowa,” said Ari Rabin-Havt, who was Sanders’s deputy campaign manager in 2020, referring to Buttigieg’s time in South Bend. “I think he’s the most potent wine-track candidate who exists.”

This column, too, was impressed with Mr. Buttigieg’s popularity in the absence of achievement. But being popular among the most affluent, educated sauvignon sippers on the political left may not necessarily make a majority. Readers may recall that candidates who decide to target the “yoga vote” can end up assembling too narrow a coalition. In any case, Mr. Bruni sees others with potential for broad appeal and writes:

Gretchen Whitmer,

a Democrat who just won re-election by an impressive margin in the key presidential battleground of Michigan, is Pabst Blue Ribbon with just the right measure of merlot.

One can’t help but wonder what “those close to” Gov. Whitmer will soon be telling reporters about President Biden.

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James Freeman is the co-author of “The Cost: Trump, China and American Revival.”

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Follow James Freeman on Twitter.

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