This Dog HAS pointed out that the California Democratic Governor, who WAS, the ‘sure’ pick for the 2028 Democratic Presidential nomination up to February in the polls?
Has tanked….
Kamala Harris now leads….
(Most of us do NOT Think Harris , or Buttigieg will be the 2028 Democratic President nominee)
The new ‘thing’ seems to be that Newsom is EMBRACING Joe Biden to grab support among Black and Democratic Establishment types who don’t see Biden as having been SOOOO Bad…..
Nate Silver goes into why and what Gavin is doing going forward…..
Following the successful passage of his redistricting referendum in California last November, California Gov. Gavin Newsom began the year as the frontrunner for the 2028 Democratic nomination. But polls suggest that he’s slumping. According to Race to the White House, Newsom’s support among prospective Democratic voters in 2028 has fallen from 25 percent in January to 15 percent today.
That’s a fairly big shift, given that not all that much has happened. The California gubernatorial primary was kind of a mess, with Newsom not endorsing a candidate until Xavier Becerra was the lone Democrat left standing. Still, that’s local news and this is a national primary. And redistricting has remained a big story, even if it ended on a slightly bitter note for Democrats.
But these early polls do have some predictive power, believe it or not. Prediction markets have tracked with them, with Newsom’s probability of winning the nomination declining from 35.5 percent on Jan. 1 to 23.3 percent today.
No one opponent has emerged as the obvious alternative. Bettors see the field as wide open, with the top six candidates having less than a 60 percent combined probability of winning the nomination. But it’s worth noting where the biggest gains have come from: Kamala Harris and Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff. Each presents a challenge for Newsom. Harris, who might or might not be serious about running again, is from the same state, and it’s hard to find much daylight between her and Newsom on policy. And Ossoff, you could argue, mogs Newsom in the “good-looking white guy” category, only with youth on his side and the credential of actually having won elections in a swing state….
…
So my theory is that Newsom’s noisy support for Biden is intended as a signal to the most partisan #Resistance Libs — as an effort at reassuring them that they were right about 2024.
The most effective signals are often costly signals, however. Most voters are extremely skeptical about Biden’s performance in office. The better strategy is probably to invoke some nostalgia for the one Democratic president (Obama) that voters actually do have warm feelings for, while also promising change, generational and otherwise. But someone like Ossoff is in a stronger position to make this case than Newsom.
Maybe Newsom realizes this: that he’s never going to effectively rebrand himself as anything other than a capital-E Establishment Democrat, so he might as well embrace it. It might not be the worst choice as a matter of tactics. But it’s also a sign of weakness. Newsom is never going to be the favorite candidate of the Left (especially after opposing the wealth tax) or the Abundance Libs. But if he can hold the #Resistance Libs, he’ll have a high floor in the Democrats’ highly proportional primary system.
What happens from there? Maybe the same thing that happened for Biden in 2020 and John Kerry in 2004. The rest of the party rallies around the early frontrunner as the “least-worst” choice after an early primary win or two, fleeing to safety when presented with alternatives that seem equally problematic. Newsom has more raw political talent than Kerry or Biden, frankly. And it’s a formula that has worked before in the Democratic primaries — but also one that tends to produce highly triangulating and thoroughly mediocre general election candidates….
image…ABC News
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