Gavin Newsom Is Giving the DSA the Mainstream Makeover It Always Wanted

Lame duck California Gov. Gavin Newsom, whose term ends at the end of this year, is spending his fall stumping for Democrat candidates across the country while still denying that he's trying to set the stage for a presidential run in 2028. Recently his long-time frenemy and the front-runner among Democrats in polling for that race, former Vice President Kamala Harris, emerged from her Malibu cocoon to do the same. That's problematic for Newsom, who — perhaps thinking that Kamala's absence from campaign events over the summer meant that she wasn't going to run in 2028 - told Jake Tapper in September that if she runs, he won't. 

So now he's gotta low-key differentiate himself from her, while still plausibly holding to his promise that he won't run. Apparently that includes letting people know that, in his view, the Democrat Socialists of America (DSA) is "going to be a mainstream Democratic [party] movement" in 2028 because, in his view, the current Democrat Party is too far gone to fix; it must be "reimagined" - and that the DSA's "energy...desire and demand for bold change, not incremental change," is the way to do that.

Newsom made the comments in mid-October to an undercover journalist attending a rally for Stefany Shaheen in New Hampshire, who caught the exchange on video. She started her conversation with Newsom by saying that she and other younger voters don't want more Kamala Harris, they want more Democratic Socialist policies, and asked him where he sees the Democratic Party going.

"No one is arguing to manage the status quo and fail more efficiently. So I think that the DSA, the energy and the desire and demand for bold change, not incremental change, is very much going to be dominant. I mean, that’s going to be a mainstream Democratic movement. Absolutely. No question about that. 

"You can’t play in the margins anymore. The whole – the system’s broken. It’s completely unbalanced, and we can’t manage the decline. We have to completely reimagine.”

According to Newsom, both the capitalist system and the Democrat party are broken and need to be reimagined. (Gee, I wonder who he thinks the reimaginer-in-chief should be?) And next week there could be a completely different system that's broken... if polling shows him that voters or donors think so. Because he doesn't really believe what he's saying. He's been flirting with the DSA for quite a while, and will say he believes deep down in his core whatever the most popular thing of the day is. 

Kamala took a different approach regarding the DSA last week in Mississippi when she told CNN, referencing the role of the DSA in the party, "We are, as we say, a big tent, and I don’t think anybody should be kicked out.”

Newsom's numbers had been well below Harris' in 2028 Democrat primary polling, but a New York Times poll released Saturday showed Harris leading with 12 percent and Newsom in second place with 9 percent among self-identified Democrat primary voters, with 45 percent undecided. 

Editor's Note: The mainstream media continues to gaslight, spin, and lie about President Trump, his administration, and conservatives.

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