Come ON!….
The 2024 Elections ain’t even OVER!….
Yes we KNOW California Democratic Governor Newsom IS laying the ground work for the next Presidential Election…
But lets get thru this one first?“
Doesn’t he look much better in person?” asked state Sen. Margie Bright Matthews, a Democrat from Walterboro. Onlookers roared at the backhanded compliment, as she continued to swoon. “Oh my God, as we say in the South, ‘that’s a nice glass of tea.’”
There was California’s governor, in a distant land — 2,700 miles from home and still not adjusted to Wednesday morning’s Eastern time-zone change, yet finally in the nerve center of early state presidential politicking. And already, some of his party’s most important voters were sizing him up as a White House aspirant — consuming themselves with the distant election when November is still months away. It went beyond his appearance, with some convinced he was too progressive for the South.
“He’s a liberal,” said Democrat Mary Anne Gnage, ahead of Newsom’s remarks to residents at Sun City Hilton Head, the sprawling retirement community. Gnage likes Newsom, but she was blunt when asked about her initial skepticism of his future prospects here. “Maybe sometimes he’s too liberal.”
It’s a perennial issue — and often a fatal one at that — for elected officials from California who try to export their emerging brands beyond the Golden State’s borders. And it’s one that Newsom was confronting directly, even as he worked to spread the gospel of Biden-Harris.
Newsom wanted to give stump speeches ahead of the state’s new, first-in-the-nation Democratic primary, appearing there for the first time as a headliner and getting early exposure to its powerful blocs of Black voters and rural Democrats. They, meanwhile wanted to test his 2028 chops….
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The Biden campaign is putting dozens of surrogates on the road ahead of South Carolina’s Feb. 3 primary. The president moved the state to the front of the line, believing that despite it being deeply red, it’s a better representation of the country writ large than the deposed states of Iowa and New Hampshire. South Carolina holds a special place for the president, hosting Biden family vacations and putting him on a glide path to the nomination in 2020, on the strength Black and older voters.
“It’s not hyperbole to say that no one can be the nominee without the support of our electorate,” said Christale Spain, chair of the state Democratic Party. “Because South Carolina picks presidents.”
In recent days, Newsom has been comparing former President Donald Trump’s pecking order in the Republican Party to a Tyrannosaurus rex. “You either mate with him, or he devours you.”
But Newsom views the former president as weaker in the general election than the conventional wisdom. Newsom “likes,” and sometimes he even “loves” Democrats’ odds against Trump….
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“I think that’s going to be our next president in 2028,” the mayor said. someone asked him about Harris. Cohen listened, and repeated the line about Newsom….
image…Politico