PETER ROFF: Is Gavin Newsom The Solution To Dems’ Joe Biden Problem?

PETER ROFF: Is Gavin Newsom The Solution To Dems’ Joe Biden Problem?

Peter Roff on April 15, 2023

The Democrats have a problem. Joe Biden wants to run for president in 2024 while more and more likely voters don’t.

A recently released Rasmussen Reports survey showed less than half the voters want the president to seek a second term and two-thirds said he should be challenged in the primaries.

The numbers don’t lie. Just a little more than a third of likely voters — 39% — thought he should seek re-election 39. Nearly half — 48% — didn’t think he should run at all. That’s not good when you’re the incumbent. If you’re ambitious, rich, and progressive, it’s music to your ears.

Enter Gavin Newsom, the good-looking, politically well-connected governor of California. He wants to be president, which is why he has already full-throatily and unambiguously endorsed Biden for a second term.

It was a gutsy move, especially since his allies behind the scenes are probably already working on ways to maneuver Biden out of the race if something else doesn’t.

There is the matter of getting around Vice President Kamala Harris — by the time the election rolls around possibly President Harris — but many Democrats already think she and her obnoxious cackle would surely lose to almost anyone the GOP could put up. She won’t be hard to deal with.

As evidence, consider how Newsom is running around the country going toe-to-toe with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, the man many Republicans hope, expect (and pray) will seize the Trump mantle if the frontrunner stumbles.

Make no mistake, Newsom’s running, likely on a platform calling for the Californication of America. He believes his state, which has adopted one progressive measure after another during his tenure, is the model for the nation.

He’s been at it for a while. In July 2022 he bought ads on Florida television to take a poke at DeSantis. In the spot, standing on an immaculate beach, bathed in warm sunshine, he urged Floridians to “join us in California, where we still believe in freedom.”

That’s a good one, especially since anyone who’d dared to venture out on that same beach during the lockdowns would likely have been chased off or arrested. The Newsom regime enforced the closure of public parks and the like with ruthlessness and determination not seen in most states.

If California is the model, why are so many of its businesses and people moving elsewhere? According to a study by the prestigious Hoover Institution, “California business headquarters left the state at twice their rate in both 2020 and 2019, and at three times their rate in 2018.”

To the think tank, the reason is clear. The government is driving them out. “(S)tate and local economic policies have raised business costs to levels that are so high businesses are choosing to leave behind the many economic benefits of being in California and move to states with better business climates featuring much less regulation, much lower taxes, and lower living costs.”

Governors in other states like Virginia Republican Glenn Youngkin have called that a crisis. Newsom doesn’t seem much bothered by it, even though 11 Fortune 1000 companies have left the state in the last three years.

On paper, Newsom seems like the perfect candidate. He’s got an impressive resume and as San Francisco Democrat, a phrase the late Ambassador Jeanne Kirkpatrick used as a pejorative, but which is now seen within the party as a badge of honor, he has the progressive credentials and access to dollars that will leave most of the other possible replacements for Biden in the dust.

Should a spot on the ticket open up, he thinks he’d be the perfect one to fill it. But then he doesn’t think he needs to defend his record.

A former UPI senior political writer and U.S. News and World Report columnist, Peter Roff is a senior fellow at several public policy organizations including the Trans-Atlantic Leadership Network. Contact him at RoffColumns AT gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and TruthSocial @TheRoffDraft.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.