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Of the major Democratic candidates waiting in the wings, it seems clear that Newsom is the only viable candidate. And if you’re Newsom, why would you possibly replace Biden now?
This is likely the only shot at President the candidate that (theoretically) replaces Biden has. If Trump wins, the loss against such a villain will serve as the ultimate embarrassment and humiliation for the Dem nominee. Even if they argue that it was Biden’s fault, the base is unlikely to buy it and the attack that the candidate “let Trump win” will be difficult to shake off. This is particularly relevant as the white man quotient in the Dem party continues to decline, raising ever more questions about why the party for which only a (shrinking) minority of white men vote and which is predominantly PoC and female should again elect a white male candidate, especially a loser, over a woman and/or minority who doesn’t have the black mark of “letting trump win” on her resume.
The polls are not favorable to the Democratic Party for now. Even though the economy is arguably fine, people don’t believe it’s fine, housing costs are increasingly unaffordable for many people etc. Newsom would find himself running a campaign built around defending the unpopular record of a mediocre president, including possibly an ongoing war between Israel and Hezbollah depending on how that pans out by November. If Newsom runs against a Republican President or a Republican candidate after a GOP presidency, he can sell a purely optimistic vision without having to defend Biden’s record (he might have to defend his record in California, but most voters won’t care).
Trump still hasn’t built Trumpism into an actual movement that extends far beyond the personality cult when it comes to generating political figures who can take over his legacy. There are people who believe strongly in MAGA, certainly, but there are no incredible GOP candidates waiting for 2028. The non-Trump primary candidates this year were poor. Carlson probably won’t want to run and in any case still has a certain East Coast boarding school effete intellectual vibe to him, even with the log cabin studio. DeSantis is uncharismatic and greasy. There are options, but none of them seem likely to be close to as popular as Trump - certainly they are unlikely to have his pre-existing celebrity, wealth and talent for self-promotion. It wouldn’t even surprise me to see a Rubio return wrapped in a MAGA package, and that would be pretty dire. Gavin is stupid, but with enough training he would be fine against most likely GOP options in 2028.
The public’s desire for continuity often expires at the 8 year mark (if it does not do so earlier). A Democratic nominee who pulls off an upset and wins this year is going to be campaigning on 12 years of blue government in 2028, a proposal that hasn’t won in 70 years. The glory of a two-term presidency is much more easily attainable after the opposition is in power.
Amusingly, the only scenario in which Newsom would be smart to take over Biden’s candidacy would be if he genuinely believed that Biden was going to win. In that case, the 2028 race would be much harder for a Democratic candidate; Kamala would likely be the default pick for it’s her turn reasons and because Trump would have been safely defeated and probably too old and beleaguered to run again (allowing ideology to take precedence over raw candidate strength) and 16 straight years of Democratic control of the presidency seems very unlikely. If Biden wins, Newsom’s next good opportunity might be 2032 or even 2036, in which case he’d be 77 upon leaving office after 2 terms, and that seems like a slog.
I know it's a running meme here at this point that Gavin is an idiot, but is there any media documentation of that? I've never followed the guy closely so maybe I just haven't noticed. All I really know about him is he's a pretty standard California democrat and bears more than a passing resemblance to Patrick Bateman.
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Newsom seems like the least viable candidate, being a California politician with the aesthetics of an 80s movie villain.
Don't forget that he had the Getty Billionaire heir help him secure the funding so Newsom could found a fucking wine company.
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Newsom has the very real baggage of being the governor of California. My impression is that among many Americans, California is disliked, at least on the level of politics, and seen as a model of bad state government. I'm open to being corrected.
How many of those would vote democrat anyways?
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Gavin Newsom? How the hell is he a viable candidate, let alone the only viable candidate? What exactly does Gavin Newsom bring to the table? Does he help retain the non-college whites who voted for Trump in 2016 and Biden in 2020? Does he appeal to black or Hispanic voters? Suburban women? The kids protesting the Israel war? Moderates who don't want either party to go too far? He's a replacement-level California Democrat who some people think is a viable candidate because he goes around telling people he is. His backstory is that he's the son of an appeals court judge and Getty family attorney who was married to Kimberly Guilfoyle, got divorced, and started dating a woman half his age. The only reason he's even in the conversation is because the kind of journalists who will vote for any Democrat recognize his name as the Governor of California. To everyone else, he's the kind of effete, sleazy, West Coast liberal who might hit on your wife, if she's hot. Kamala Harris would be a better candidate. The only reason he may be pulling strings behind the scense to make this happen is because he knows he has no chance in hell of ever winning in the primaries.
This is a sign of how shallow the Dem bench has become. What do they have lining up? Pritzker? Warren (lol)? Mayor freaking Pete? Not Harris for sure. I did say I like Gretch because she ties up MI and isn't otherwise disqualified.
I'd take Roy Cooper again any of them, but really the story here is that the Dems need to spend some effort on the bench and they need to elevate more swing-state folks.
My favourite conspiratorial explanation for this is that the HRC team knew that she was such an unlikeable and unpopular candidate they went and kneecapped all her prospective challengers to make sure she'd have an easy time getting the nomination.
I think it's most likely that Dems just don't have enough people to run every institution they've seized, and the old political office pipelines look unappealing relative to, say, chairing a billion-dollar NGO you can use as a personal slush fund.
See the "embattled" mayor of Oakland and all those others for examples of how poor their pool of low level politicians is; they can't even do the minimum effort to hide their embezzlement enough for Dem prosecutors to ignore it.
Whereas Republicans who didn't go the federalist society judge route are pretty much stuck with starting a political career as mayor of Cowpatsie, Idaho. They don't even get defense contractor work now; it all goes to regime-friendly guys like the motte's Netscape or whatever.
Like, a Democrat Thomas Massie would have gone a very different direction after MIT, and reached a much more profitable office than junior representative in charge of sponsoring DOA livestock bills.
But there's definitely a crab bucket effect too, made stronger by the party's power over the bureaucracy. Much easier to sabotage a potential competitor when you can literally order their subordinates to undermine them.
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I think Pritzker is probably their best choice now. He’s very bland. He did an ok job in Illinois. You can just run the election on Trump bad again. Illinois seems to be a better spot for the left to find their candidates than the coast.
That being said Newsome is running if he can get the nomination. You don’t pass up a chance to run when it comes even if it’s not an ideal time. I think he has a lot of personal characteristics that won’t play well in battle ground states.
A fat man cannot be prez.
My prediction anyway.
Trump is fat, he is the third heaviest president ever, I think he lost some weight since he was president though. William Howard Taft was famously rotund. Grover Cleveland was fat. More Americans, and especially republicans, are fat, and would identify with a fat candidate. I wouldn't say it improves anyone's chances. But the fact that Chris Christy even took a stab at it shows it isn't outside the overton window these days.
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Oh wow. I didn't know that. So Gavin Newsom's ex is engaged to Donald Trump Jr.
That's a spicy meatball indeed.
From Guilfoyle’s Wikipedia page:
10-8 Newsom, Trump. From Newsom's current wife's Wikipedia page:
Weinstein hit it first. 10-9 Weinstein, Newsom. It'd be easily 10-8 if not for the possible ambiguity as to what took place. #BelieveWomen charity operating on overdrive.
There's also footage of Newsom playing basketball in China with some schoolchildren. Newsome was a bit reckless, lost his dribble and charged into a boy who had his feet set, followed up with some friendly butt-slaps upon the boy (you know, as one does, when trying to recover from an awkward situation where you just plowed over an eight or so year-old).
10-9 random Chinese boy, Newsom.
I can only conclude that Weinstein ~= random Chinese boy > Newsom >> Trump Jr.
However, more seriously, I think Newsom would be a pretty good candidate. To the extent that's he's merely a "replacement-level" candidate for the Democratic Party, that could be a feature rather than a bug. Biden was mostly just there as a non-offensive candidate (from the Democrat perspective) and to be Not Trump; Newsom could do that but better.
He looks young compared to Trump and Biden (because he is, relatively-speaking) and is tall, has a good haircut, and has good teeth. For better or worse, those are quite important criteria.
I don't see him losing support relative to Biden when it comes to women. If anything, for aforementioned reasons, Newsome would do better; his tabloid-worthy history when it comes to banging younger women only benefits him. I also don't see him being less appealing to blacks or latinos, either, compared to Biden. Perhaps even more appealing.
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The photoshoot makes it even better
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And imprisoned. I think, if Trump loses, there's a very high chance he's found guilty in the Smith case and he goes to prison. That hanging over his head is probably a big reason he's so willing to listen to campaign advisors on so many things.
Worth noting that personally, I think he should be imprisoned, and for about one year, because he literally did do exactly what they are saying he did, with full knowledge that it was bad. Would be, I think, a great inspiration for holding people in power accountable for their actions.
As a practical matter, I probably would have preferred letting sleeping dogs lie, but once you start a case like that you might as well finish it? Does raise the possibility that it might have been smarter for Biden to pardon Trump for that case specifically. Actually, now that I think about it, that would have been a genius political move. And probably healthy for the country.
As someone who is on the record as being relatively pro Trump, I could get behind this as long as it was the cherry on top of a series of good-faith prosecutions of political officials who mishandled classified documents in order of severity... which means that Trump would be coming well after HRC, Biden and a few other people. You'd also have to get the FBI agents who fucked around with the classified documents in question to boot. But absent that actual prosecution of people who did far worse than Trump (there was SAP material on the Clinton email server!), you're not going to get the red tribe to agree to this.
That's a totally fair comment. We'd definitely need to have a conversation about being more consistent about sentencing, too -- I just noticed that Patraeus did something sort of similar to Trump and ended up in a guilty plea deal with 2 years probation and a fine, though it seems people were upset it wasn't more harsh, and it definitely seems like it should have been. Of course I dunno if Trump would accept a plea deal like that.
I don't think Biden's mishandling rises to Trump's level because though there certainly was some lack of care, it didn't seem to be super deliberate and there didn't seem to be the same kind of lying going on. Clinton on the other hand... man, I really think she should have had some major consequences. There were some lies, though I can't recall if any of them were to the feds or just the public, but certainly there was a lack of care strong enough to reach the kind of "criminal negligence" type of standard. Like, in practical terms, we have to be honest that a lot of high level people are positively swimming in classified documents, and documents in general, and things unfortunately do get lost from time to time. But there's certainly some line where people are deliberately and knowing sharing stuff, which is the worst (and even more if they lie about it to the feds), and some lower level where it's just egotistical but also dangerous retention, and then accidents below that. That first category I think there really needs to be some sort of mandatory action standard. Also, it would be very entertaining to play the "mandatory minimums" game that's put so many poor people in jail, and apply that to the powerful. Could be popular as well as fair!
I'm actually not so sure on this one - I don't think it'd be possible to get a really clear view of how bad his case was without exploring the Hunter corruption issue. Biden lies all the time, and I don't think we have a real picture of exactly what went on there. We know that classified documents were being stored in an insecure manner, but we don't actually know how serious it was because it all got brushed under the rug so quickly. It might be a big deal for the big guy, but it might also just be Biden's failing mental state. All that is ultimately an academic concern, however - the partisan disparity is so great as to eclipse any other concerns.
Though with all that said I don't feel terribly bad about classified documents being leaked - I'm a big supporter of Julian Assange, Ed Snowden, Binney, Drake, etc. I like it when classified documents are mishandled and leaked, in part because those leaked documents usually reveal some kind of malicious or nefarious government behaviour. As far as I'm concerned, it was a good thing when details of PRISM got leaked, and likewise when Collateral Murder was leaked, so it feels kind of hollow for me to say I'm looking forward to prosecution for document mishandling.
I mean, he voluntarily undertook the search for documents, and they found a couple at an old office of his as well. To me, that seems fairly organic. It's of course possible that the whole thing is a smokeshow for some other, far more serious classified doc location or exposure, but I judge that unlikely. There was Hur assigned to look into things so it wasn't like the whole thing disappeared. And Hur did in fact look at the exact same Trump route, too! Biden's memoir writer, who didn't have clearance. Sounds like he did share some stuff, but evidence is so-so, and the writer deleted some recordings. However, apparently he had plausible, innocent sounding reasons (we can leave to the reader to judge if this is true though), cooperated a fair amount (supposedly this led to them recovering a good chunk of some deleted stuff). So anyways all this to say I trust Hur to have had decent access to what he needed and to have come to a relatively accurate conclusion that Biden was sloppy and careless but not big-criminal level. Trump on the other hand often had his lawyers stonewall, some of his people moved boxes, deleted footage, etc. even after things started, and maybe even got job perks for accepting lawyer help from Trump (and thus presumably buying them out).
In theory the system is supposed to identify degree of harm to the US if the info is exposed, but as you mention some of the reasoning is awfully consequentialist, rating "we did something bad that would make people hate us" as a degree of harm by itself, which is somewhat circular reasoning. To me the more compelling argument is more about how when things leak often enough, sometimes from a counterintel perspective you almost have to assume that merely unsecured information == leaked information. And that's a major, legitimate pain. Aside from confidential sources occasionally being outed. At least people like Snowden kinda-sorta tried to curate what they released with these considerations, whereas simple classified info exposure does not even have those protections.
The problem here is that I don't actually have any faith that the people doing the searching and investigation are doing so with a desire to actually find the truth. While I can't actually prove that Biden's case was soft-walked, there's a comparable case that happened just recently - the Hunter Biden laptop. Given your level of knowledge I'm going to assume you're familiar with the details of the case, but they paint a picture of an FBI that's thoroughly unwilling to go after Biden despite impeccably documented evidence of serious crimes. While they did eventually prosecute Hunter after it became a major issue and was leaked to the press, this only happened as a result of serious public pressure and attention. The FBI actually had his laptop for quite some time before the contents were leaked to Giuliani, and they didn't do anything about it. We know from the contents of the laptop that there were several unarguable and undeniable crimes (the doing crack part at the least) as well as traces of what seemed like an obvious influence-selling case... but the government did absolutely nothing with it, only intervening when the contents of the laptop started showing up in the media. Furthermore, there were multiple figures in the intelligence community who came out to knowingly lie about the origination of the laptop in order to help Biden's election chances. At the same time, we know that the government has actually been reprimanded in court for fucking with and manipulating evidence in the Trump documents case. The two sides are very clearly not being treated equally.
I freely admit that there's no direct evidence of serious wrongdoing here, but the last time the FBI came out and said that a Biden hadn't really done anything worth being charged for they were lying through their teeth and were only forced to recant once the evidence became public. That they were forced to actually admit something happened at all is enough to make me extremely suspicious - but I don't know what they could really do to assuage my doubts. Politicisation is a hell of a drug, and it means that I don't really have any trust or faith that they're telling the truth THIS time, when a lie would be perfectly in character and advance their political goals (for the record I believe these goals are anti-Trump rather than anti-Republican).
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It's good to see someone more or less on the other side willing to admit it. The problem remains that there were not, in fact, major consequences, that the way she escaped those consequences drastically reduced trust in the system as a whole, and that similar failures have multiplied over the last few decades. At this point, it's hard to see why we shouldn't simply continue to heighten the contradictions.
One of the major reasons I've supported Trump, from the start, is that I hate how establishment politicians are above the law. I am entirely willing to see Trump mulched by the justice system, but I see no reason why I or any other Red Triber should support this process in any way. Let the Establishment fight uphill for the rule of law they have consistently undermined and evaded. If they fail, then at least my champions will enjoy the benefits they have heretofore kept for themselves. If they succeed, then we should ensure they do so at the cost of significant investment, making it that much harder for them to evade these new precedents in the future.
I am willing to accept Trump going free. I am happy to accept Trump and most of the rest of Washington going to jail. I see no reason to accept Trump going to jail alone.
That's for sure some helpful perspective!
I really can't bring myself to join either party still. On the Democratic side, it really feels like they don't actually want my vote. As a small example, they've effectively purged all pro-life people from the party, and seem to have lost the tolerance for middle-grounders. Even though in my personal morals, I'm pro-life with only rape/murder/incest exceptions, as a matter of policy I like the three-trimester approach just fine due to the difficulty of finding universal moral agreement and practical considerations. But man, the way I've been treated like scum for saying such... or the condescension of some presumably well-meaning 'wokists', or the disdain for religion, or the holier-than-thou preaching, it's a lot.
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Committing a fraud on the US? I’m not so sure (and SCOTUS has read fraud narrowly). With Fischer gutting most of that indictment I think Trump is innocent in that case. Of course he was innocent in NY and we saw what happened there.
The [Jack] Smith case I assume was being referred to is the Florida classified info case, which by all accounts appears to be pretty open and shut. You only really need the recording where Trump shows the classified doc to an author, acknowledges it's highly classified, and how he can't declassify it any longer. Boom, done. Like, if you had to come up with a recording that contained literally every single allegation all in a two minute span, and proved them all, it would be this recording. On top of the willful retention stuff, and the hiding evidence stuff, which is not as ironclad but likely still supremely provable.
I thought OP was referencing the Smith case in DC. I concur that Trump appears to be guilty in Florida but that is the one case where you honestly might get jury nullification given the treatment of other high profile politicians not being tried on similarish fact patterns.
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The only answer I can think of is "for the same reasons Biden isn't dropping out."
Newsom seems to view high political office as his manifest destiny. At that level of politics, maybe most of them view things that way; you'd almost have to, I think, to run in the first place. If Biden and his handlers were even halfway humane, he would have retired years ago (same goes for Trump). There is something deeply narcissistic about believing that you, and you alone, can effectively steer the community/state/nation at this particular time--but if you didn't believe that, why would you run for office? I'd love to hear "a keen sense of civic duty responding to the insistence of one's fellow-citizens regarding one's merits as a leader" but I know that kind of idealism just gets me laughed out of the room.
It's really something to imagine Newsom or DeSantis in place of Biden or Trump at the CNN fiasco. This year's presidential race is a textbook-crafted thought experiment on inadequate equilibria in political contexts, brought to painful life.
Some presidential candidates do run because people around them recommended they do it enough. Most of the truly unwilling are from farther back in American history, however. Including at least one former president!
The more practical answer is the desire and ambition to run for president needs to be there as a prerequisite, but actually doing it and also the crucial question of timing actually does depend a great deal on the advice and wishes of people around you, as well as sometimes popular appeal. Obama was one of these! He wanted to wait a few more years (remember, his time as Senator was actually pretty paltry, traditional wisdom definitely said to wait). But a few things pushed him to do so sooner. For one, actually a bunch of Senate leaders said he should run, and might win, even if they weren't willing to endorse him because they didn't want to cross the Clintons. He had done a few events and saw how enthusiastic people were about him. Even got feted on a trip to Nigeria. So popular support does enter into the conversation.
I could go on. There's a long list of people who wanted to run, but only actually did so because of the people in their orbit. Jeb Bush was one. Of course, manifest destiny thinking and raw ambition is still more common. But it isn't universal. And in some ways, the idea that it's either-or is inherently contradictory. How do you think some of these politicians gain such egos? It isn't all inherent. If you go to enough campaign events and enough of what (to you, selection bias!!) seem to be random people tell you how much they love you, that does something. So yeah, in a sense, fellow citizens do play a role. See for example Biden's decision to run in 2020 was shaped by ego and manifest destiny thinking, but you can also see the role of random advisors and event attendees saying their piece too. He mistakenly started taking credit for Obama's wins as well.
And to be fair, voters deserve some of the blame. After all, Biden did not end up committing to a single term in 2020! Bet the party bigwigs wish they had extracted this concession, somehow.
I’d never thought about it in precisely those terms before but this has to be true. Having crowds of strangers tell me that they love and admire me would break my brain. It’s the ultimate superstimulus for a social species.
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I will dispute 3). Greg Abbott is not personally very charismatic but has an incredible amount of support among red voters on the basis of his record, is good at politics, and can stand on what's more than likely to be twelve years of a well-managed economy and relative racial peace. His weak spot is abortion but that issue is probably about as prominent as it's ever going to be. He's among Trump's favorites right now and all he has to do is maintain that spot to get the backing of Trump personally in 2028. It's unlikely that there's any kind of major scandal still undiscovered about him, either.
It remains to be seen if backing from Trump is even an asset in 2028. Trump kiss-asses don't have a great track record in elections, and while Abbot is certainly much more savvy than someone like Kris Kobach, if Trump loses this year it remains to be seen if Republicans continue to ride the Trump Train. Actually, if Trump loses this year it remains to be seen whether he can be persuaded to sit out in 2028. Yeah, he'll be 82 but he'll continue to talk about what great shape he's in, and he never gave a fuck about any Republican Party that he wasn't at the center of, so it's not like he'll be persuaded not to run. His own base is so dedicated that he'll suck up a large percentage of primary votes just by being in the race and any contender will need to stand head and shoulders above the crowd to have any kind of chance.
In general, I think it's premature to start talking about who the next big contenders will be. It wasn't that long ago that everyone thought Ron DeSantis was the future of the Republican Party. Unfortunately, he didn't kiss Trump's ring because he thought it would hurt his chances in Florida, ending any chance of being the heir apparent, and then compounded the error by running against Trump directly but refusing to criticize him. I outlined the challenges DeSantis faced here on several occasions and I remember getting heavily downvoted by merely suggesting that he wasn't all he was cracked up to be. Maybe it looks like Abbot is making all the right moves from where we sit now, but in four years those could easily turn out to have been the wrong moves.
Abbott has enough distance from Trump that he won't go down with the ship when Trump predictably fails to solve the US's biggest problems. Ensuring that is probably the main reason he turned down Trump's veepspot on live TV.
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I don't see that Gretch isn't viable for no other reason that she gets home state advantage in a critical swing state. She's charted a decent course as governor, no major disasters.
I still don't think it's likely for anyone to swap in, but conditional on a swap, my money is on Gretch over Gavin.
Non-sequitur, but how fucked is Michigan right now?
The population hasn't grown in 30 years, and the pension crisis looms. The state's premier institution, the University of Michigan, only serves to hoover up any local talent and send it to the coasts. And 90% black Detroit is an absolute anchor around the state's neck.
But what's coming is worse. The Detroit auto industry is about to get obliterated. They have 120 years of expertise in building internal combustion engines. All those factories, all that human capital, is going to zero within 20 years. The Big 3 lose gobs of money on every EV they sell. On a level playing field they simply can't compete with China. Not when Detroit workers make 5x what Chinese workers do and are far inferior. Even with 100% tariffs, it's not clear how Detroit can win.
The right tarrif level on Chinese imported cars will fix this problem.
Tarriff's can potentially fix the problem for the domestic market (though economists look at the gains to auto-workers, and losses to car buyers, buying expensive American cars to avoid tariffs, and declare the loss greater than the gain)
But Americans have traditionally made fat profits and high wages from exporting cars. They cannot expect foreign countries to tax Chinese EVs but not American EVs, for the sake of American workers, at the expense of their own people. Losing export markets will hurt.
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Tesla pays California salaries for the workers in Fremont and has a high margin.
Tesla executed amazingly. But their margins were an artifact of first-mover advantage, massive subsidies, and the Covid stimulus. Elon played it perfectly, but it's not sustainable.
Elon now sees EVs as commoditized and therefore a dead end. That's why Tesla is pivoting towards autonomous driving and robots. A couple months ago they fired their entire supercharger team.
Tesla won't beat China on cost either. But as a luxury carmaker, Tesla will do better than the Big 3. Luxury has been one of the few things able to withstand Chinese competition.
Again, I plead for Jero-Bloomberg coverage of energy markets.
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I don't buy that this is going to happen any time soon. There's almost zero overlap between the products GM and Ford sell and the products a Chinese company like BYD sells, even accounting for the fact that the Americans are mostly ICE cars. GM and Ford no longer sell regular sedans in the US because all their customers want is large trucks and SUVs. BYD's products aren't merely sedans, but small sedans and hatchbacks. Every time someone sounds the alarm bells about some foreign company that's making cars incredibly cheaply forgets that Americans don't want cheap cars, they want some semblance of luxury. There was a period in the 1980s when Japanese manufacturers made huge inroads into the American market, but there were two factors involved that don't apply here. First, there were oil shocks the likes of which hadn't been seen before, and the Japanese offered fuel-efficient products that the Americans weren't producing. These days, efficiency gains have made it so the marginal advantage of having a more efficient car is lowered, and we're more used to occasional price spikes, so that isn't really in play. Maybe there's a chance for a huge spike that would be a shock, but I wouldn't bet on the Chinese until something like that actually happens. And even then, there are still plenty of efficient Japanese and Korean cars on the market that already have that segment cornered.
The second factor is that, by the 1980s, Japanese manufacturers were making vehicles of much higher quality and reliability than American manufacturers. The Americans are much more competitive on that front now (though still not at the top), and the best I've heard about Chines brands is that they're approaching the American brands in quality, so not exactly a ringing endorsement. Aside from that, you can sell a subcompact for $10,000 but that doesn't mean anyone is going to want to buy it. This is a country where poor people buy SUVs. When I was a kid, it seemed like every working-class dad had a compact "getting around town" car with a standard transmission and no options, but it seems that most of these guys drive decked-out pickup trucks now. I used to have a Saturn. It was a great car, but even in the 2000s, no one wanted a great car as boring as a Saturn. Scion tried the same thing and failed.
The reason Tesla succeeded where EV manufacturers had failed for so many years is that they understood that marketing a vehicle based on efficiency wasn't going to cut it. So they played up the EV's performance advantages and marketed it as a sports car, and then as a luxury car, and now they're slowly making the transition to mass-market vehicles, though they're still a status symbol. The Chinese can't compete in this market because it would mean making an entire line of America-centric products that would be too big a gamble.
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Swing state, if they have to ban Chinese (or indeed all third world) car imports they will.
Of course, abandoning the “ban all cars that aren’t pure EV” plan will handily accomplish this without the need for tariffs simply because pure EVs are inferior to everything else.
Doesn’t matter, Chinese EVs at $6000 new would still dominate among the bottom 50% of Americans by income when US built cars are $30k+.
If and only if a dealership keeps them in stock and offers financing for those suffering from irregular income and limited credit, that is. And that probably means they're $12k, not six, at a minimum.
The American poor don't know how to order a car from China. They won't sit and wait on one. And they need financing to spend thousands of dollars, even six thousand.
There's ways to do this without a dealership (see Tesla).
It still involves a middleman to make it doable for the American poor, who are broadly not great at planning or coming up with six thousand dollars. That middleman is going to drive costs up because that’s what middlemen do.
Selling the same used car more than once is a lucrative business. Replacing them with electric cars is a risk, albeit one that could easily pay off, but it’s going to double costs to where it’s not actually that much cheaper than used ICE cars(which is what poor people drive today).
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If only the 7500-dollar Elio had not been a scam…
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As one of those sub-normal poors, can confirm I've actually been looking at $5k electric kit cars on Alibaba, but no way I'm pushing that button without a test drive.
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I mostly think the Dems won't attempt a Hot-Swap for all the reasons you outline for why Newsom wouldn't do it. The candidate is likely doomed. That said, I think your analysis misses a bunch of key points that need to be considered, and if there was a Hot-Swap I wouldn't be surprised to see Newsom placed in the candidate slot.
Newsom would get to run for President against Donald Trump. That's a huge advantage being handed to him. The campaign so far has had the feeling of one of those extra inning baseball games where nobody seems to want to win, and both teams seem unable to string together any hits. Rat race for last place vibes. Trump's support is terry cloth soft among a large part of the suburban Republican base. This is hard to see on the internet, the left wants to paint every Republican as a MAGAtard and the online right is largely running Trump for GEOM. But day to day, it's different. Going door-to-door for local candidates, you run into a lot more of "I'm a registered Republican but I haven't voted Republican in years" or "I'm a Republican but I'm embarrassed about it." Nikki Haley continued to get 20% of the vote in states where she was on the ballot, even after she dropped out and stopped campaigning. His favorability is 11% underwater among the general population. He could literally end up with a prison sentence!
Anecdotally, I'm not seeing the same enthusiasm for Trump I saw in prior years. Fewer Trump flags, fewer red hats that aren't for the Phillies, a lack of homemade Trump signs, less outre Trump memorabilia. It's early yet, and I didn't keep records, but at this time in 2016 and 2020 it felt like every road trip through the country was filled with homemade Trump signage and billboards and barn paintings. This year, it mostly falls flat. Even at the beach, even in North Carolina, the novelty shops aren't stocking Trump-joke T shirts and knick-knacks the way they did before. There was a Trump rally in my town, and my whole family planned our day around it, basically planning on avoiding leaving the house for fear of traffic/disruptions; this was based on prior experience of Trump visits. Nothing really happened, the turnout numbers are always fake and gay, but there wasn't even really a profusion of signs on the route for Trump, just for other Republican primary candidates who wanted to piggy-back on him. A lot of Republicans want to be rid of Trump, even if it cashes out to just a few percentage points it makes a big difference on election day.
But the biggest weakness for Trump isn't the Republicans who lack enthusiasm, it's the die-hards who have too much enthusiasm for Trump and who they are. This is why I'm still expecting Dem victories in November despite the headwinds, what Trump supporters might do (and/or be baited into doing by November. I fully expect someone in a red hat to shoot a cop by October, and for that to be treated as the number one issue on the news for weeks. The other thing you run into when you go door-to-door is people who scare you. Guys adjacent to this aren't all that rare and a lot of them have Trump flags outside their home. Does Trump actually control their actions in any reasonable way? No, but when you lie down with dogs you get fleas, and the media certainly isn't going to be hesitant to tie them together.
Newsom also gets the nomination handed to him in a way where California is massively valuable, having a huge mass of delegates and a font of fundraising, rather than a liability in a primary campaign where significant numbers of Democratic primary voters might not like the place. Which isn't a small thing, many cognoscenti anointed candidates have fallen apart in the primaries, from Mario Cuomo to Ron Desantis. You might get unlucky like Hillary in '08 or Huntsman in '12 and run a good campaign but run into a better talent on the other side that you don't even know about yet and can't beat. If you get on the ballot with a major party nomination, you at least get a puncher's chance.
In sports, I frequently talk about how we underrate runners-up, second place finishers. The Reid-McNabb Eagles teams I grew up with are always considered bridesmaids, teams that were good but never quite made it, because they never won the Super Bowl. But if, say, Tom Brady tears his ACL in the playoffs in 2005, we're talking about them as the first Eagles team to win the Super Bowl. And you can never know when someone will tear their ACL. Boxing and MMA are littered with examples of guys who were considered routine title fights for dominant champions, or guys who never should have gotten title shots at all, and got lucky. Chris Weidman won his first shot against Anderson Silva because Silva got cocky and lazy, and won the rematch against Silva because Silva's leg just kind of did that. Matt Serra and Buster Douglas were both lucky enough to get shots at dominant champions when those champions were partying too hard. My point being, if you get a title shot you should take it, because you might get lucky.
Because everything worth doing is worth doing with fake math, let's play with the numbers a bit. Assuming that we're only modeling odds of becoming POTUS, other goals are diffuse enough and unpredictable enough that they may be served better or worse by either course.
I think the puncher's chance for any candidate of a major party is never below 15%, because something horrendous can always happen to the other candidate. Plus whatever the chance is that everything goes right for both teams and Newsom and the Dems still win. FiveThirtyEight currently gives Biden a 51/49 edge in odds to win the presidency, while Manifold gives Biden+Harris+Newsom 37% odds. Let's take the Manifold number for a Dem winning is a good conservative estimate: Newsom gets somewhere between a 15% and a 37% chance of winning the presidency if he accepts the nomination.
Now, what if he runs in '28? I don't give any candidate a better than 50% chance of winning a national primary. Too many other candidates, too many variables. You might have a great campaign lined up and run into a junior senator from Illinois or a short-fingered vulgarian with his finger on the pulse of the nation. HRC in '16 was the best primary campaign ever run, having spent years putting the entire party apparatus behind her, and she only narrowly won. Then you have the odds that Dems win in '28. Obviously that depends on who wins in '24, and what happens to different political movements in between. If Biden wins on that 1/7-1/3 chance in '24, 12 years of Democratic rule seems unlikely, and if Harris or Whitmer win after a Hot-Swap then Newsom probably doesn't even get to run. Who emerges in the meantime on the R side, at this time in '04 Barack Obama hadn't even given his keynote speech at the DNC that catapulted him to fame; and at this time in '12 Trump was a punchline arguably at the nadir of his fame, with the Apprentice dropping from top-ten television to out of the top 100. Newsom himself will have significant weaknesses that grow between '24 and '28. But let's just call it 50% odds at this point, naively. That gives Newsom a 25% chance at POTUS if he runs in '28 or '32 instead, adjusted up or down for a number of other factors.
But we're probably modeling Newsom's decision making all wrong here. Maybe you know him personally, but my impression of him generally is a great haircut looking for a policy position. Nobody other than poor old uncle Claudius finds themselves in that kind of political power without a great deal of self belief. You don't survive multiple elections without self confidence, without thinking that maybe you're the best to ever do it. Newsom won't turn down the nomination if it is offered to him, because he's an optimist and an arrogant ambitious prick. He's likely to overrate his chances in '24 if he accepts the nomination. He's not a utility-maximizing computer program, he's not a timid investor carefully husbanding capital, he's an ambitious Governor, with only one brass-ring still to grasp, who got here taking chances and will keep taking them. Dangle it in front of him, and he's going to take it.
Further, theMotte has a noted weakness in always modeling institutional actors as cynical fakers. A lot of Catholic Church politics and policy, a lot of PRC politics and policy, makes more sense if you assume that a great many potentates within those institutions actually believe in what they are saying. Similarly, it is likely that Newsom rates the odds of Democratic victory a lot higher than we do, because he actually believes in Democratic policies, and thinks that the public does as well if only they had the right salesman. He likely believes in the Democrats' message, and if that message isn't reaching the public across the nation, he likely blames the messenger before he blames the message. With the right candidate, surely the people will see the light. Newsom likely doesn't believe that there's a huge backlash to woke/trans/BLM/LGBTQWERTY, or if he does believe that such a thing exists he believes that it is the result of misinformation, or a lack of zeal and skill on the part of the Biden admin. Put him, Gavin, and his haircut and his tasteful mild cosmetic surgery in charge of things and he'll roll up the deplorables and the bitter clingers.
So, that's my call: if Newsom were offered the job, he'd probably take it. And he'd probably be smart to take it.
Enthusiasm for Trump isn't what it was, but he's been in the sphere for close to 10 years, lessened excitement is to be expected. There was the euphoria among Obama supporters in 2008 that felt entirely gone by 2012. Disillusionment is some of it, but a rounding error is people flipping, a lot of it is going to be people who have become apathetic about politics or who have more immediate concerns in their life, but most in the right are the people who became disillusioned with the government. They hoped Trump was redress, everything got worse, now they want an open radical. A Tucker with Vivek's platform amped to 11: Garrote by XO the major alphabet agencies, fire everyone employed at the pleasure of the Executive including most of the military officership and start over. A tidier candidate with Trump's charisma--so easy--with that platform would do extremely well, especially in 2028.
That platform is the key, it's why I say Trump will win in a landslide. It's not him drawing a second wind in voter enthusiasm but the Michael Moore factor, the "Molotov at the establishment." A million if not millions will vote in November for Trump even as they dislike him or even hate him because they hate the establishment more. Trump's a lot of things, but for politics, the thing that matters more than all else is that he embodies being the anti-establishment, and it doesn't even have to be anything he's done, it's everybody who's against him. His haters are the cred.
On real issues, the price of milk and eggs should have the DNC in an endless waking panic, nothing should matter more. I'm a conscientious shopper with a damn near eidetic memory for grocery prices, I cook a lot, and I'm good with my money, but that's me. The people making less, worse with their money, less interested and capable in cooking, who now have to spend another $50 every trip, every week or every other week, what are they not buying? What are they delaying that they need or not paying off? There's a torrent of negative effects from decreased purchasing power and nothing causes regime change like economic instability. A lot of people experience this most viscerally in the checkout line gut punch, then they look at what the left is championing. I know there might be a million women who vote this fall for the sole reason of keeping abortion lines open, that's a "valid" insofar as it's an effective political platform, it's also grotesque. They can say it's not that, it is, its presence at all necessarily means it is, but also they should, because couching it? Yeah, in what? Doomsday climate change while opposing nuclear power? Increasing welfare? Not prosecuting violent criminals? Keeping the borders wide open? Classroom proselytizing of the queer religion? These people get the same say as me, I say keep it to abortion. Better insouciant than imbecilic.
But for all this, for an election scenario the DNC should be existentially incapable of winning because of the nature of the average voter's day-to-day experience with buying anything, the discussion here is the presidential prospects of the governor of the state most representative of the failures of establishment doctrine. Newsom is actually incapable of winning a national election unless he breaks his ankles pivoting so hard from the reasoning and politics of the decisions that ruined California, and that's 2028. Trump would slaughter him on the topic of the state, the state would become the topic of the election, and I bet Trump would, he certainly could do it while praising everything the state once was. It's wonderful even still, I'd love to live in California if I had a way to dodge the Big One, but it's so far from its past glory because of people who are selectively blind about what is and tragically govern on what ought to be.
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Bryce Harper for President! I’d say Rob Thomson, but he’s Canadian.
My pick would be Trevor Bauer for maximum seethe. He currently wears a red hat for the Diablos Rojos del México.
It’s interesting how so many fans in baseball still don’t want him on their team even if he was good. There basically is no evidence some people will accept to exonerate someone accused of sexual assault.
He was guilty.
Guilty of providing the sexual violence that a woman craved, and standing up for himself instead of Believing Women when they say he's wronged them, accepting a plea bargain, compen$ating the victims, promising to be better, and seeking therapy. Cheap bastard even only gave a queen thousands of dollars instead of the $1 million she deserved:
True. Funny thing is these very same people would tell people not to kink shame.
There’s always an unholy alliance of conservatives and progressives eager to punish and villify men for women’s coffee moments, rather than consider if they should update their priors as to women’s Wonderfulness.
Men will continue to be confused and angry until they realize casual sex never existed and never will.
Maybe gay marriage got you turned around. The institution has a role beyond some legal conveniences and small tax advantages. There are some rules about it written down somewhere.
What happened to Bauer is obviously an outrage, but there were cultural protections that he didn’t feel like he needed for one night of fun.
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Got into the league too young, he's still only 31.
Chase Utley, these days, is perfectly suited to be America's dad, having a catch. Utley/Howard '24? Pennsylvania is the Keystone.
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That's not as meaningful as it sounds. We only have presidential elections every four years, so 70 years is 17.5 election cycles. And during that time Democrats have only lost the Presidency four times. This is a pattern based on four data points.
Hypothetically, if every election were a 50/50 chance, you would only expect Democrats to extend their hold on the White House to three terms one in four times, so they haven't done significantly worse than chance in that respect.
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Newsom would be dumb not to take the opportunity now. There's no guarantee of coronation as candidate in 2028, just ask 2008 Hillary.
The flip side was RDS. He was in a tough spot. If he waited until 2028 and Trump won, then he is going against Trump’s VP. If he ran with Trump and Trump lost, then he is done. If he ran against Trump and loses, then he also is probably done. He choose the last option. People will blame RDS for running a bad campaign but once the indictments hit the election was over. Indeed RDS still had pretty high favorables amongst republicans (including trump voters); they just preferred Trump.
Timing a run for president is basically really hard. Sometimes going too early is a problem. Other times waiting is also a problem. Sometimes the stars simply don’t align.
Desantis lost because he was too much of a coward to actually run against Trump. He was facing an uphill battle anyway, but his plan of tickling Trump's balls was always guaranteed to fail. He never answered the question of why MAGA voters should support him instead of Trump when he should have been slamming Trump for being a fat old man, a puppet of his advisors, a sore loser, a man who fundamentally did not have the right stuff to Make America Great Again.
You’re not wrong but I also think DeSantis lost because anyone running against Trump was suspected of being a spoiler candidate. Trump’s unique asset is that he is obviously and viscerally loathed by the Cathedral / rich donors and got to the top through TV fame so he is felt to be uniquely independent. The more respectable people pushed DeSantis as being ‘Trump but respectable’, the less popular he became.
Trump's unique asset is that he is deeply and irrationally loved by a significant body of low-IQ conservatives who will rabidly attack anyone who challenges him. As such, he can threaten to spoil any Republican strategy that doesn't elevate him. The point the strategy outlined above is to try and break his hold on these people because insofar as they are responsive to anything, it's to vulgar social dominance. You're never going to win them over by arguing that you're better qualified or more competent, because they don't care. Nor can you win them over by appealing to principles, because they don't have any. You have to simultaneously tear Trump down as a weakling and present yourself as a better vessel for their inchoate rage.
Insofar as Desantis had a plan, it was hope that Trump was too old or too imprisoned to run.
There are genuinely smart people who genuinely love Trump above Desantis and Nikki Hailey. They point to his regulation cuts, relative isolationism, and that he says exactly what he’s going to do.
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The Trump base might not be the most articulate but there are absolutely smart people in their orbit who understand their grievances and why they're so angry. You can win them over to someone who isn't Trump - but you need to understand why they went for him in the first place, and if you're going to claim that was because of vulgar social dominance you're going to fail each and every time. If you're interested in a good article that explains what attracted those voters to him, I recommend https://www.resilience.org/stories/2016-01-21/donald-trump-and-the-politics-of-resentment/
I didn't say every Trump supporter is stupid. I said that he has a dedicated core of supporters who are very loyal but not very bright or discerning, which I will stand by because I think it goes an enormous way towards explaining the durability of his support in particular despite losing as an incumbent and because it conforms to the general pattern with populist politicians more generally.
I've read it before. I'm not impressed. Many of its factual claims are tendentious or more reflective of self-image than reality (e.g. the persistent efforts to paint Trumpism as the voice of the working class). Much of it boils down to saying "liberals don't like conservatives and say mean things about them." Conservatives don't like liberals either and say mean things about them, so I'm not sure what I'm supposed to take away from that, other than that maybe conservatives care more about what liberals think of them than vice versa.
Once we cut past that, it is essentially a more sympathetic framing of my claim that Trump functions as an empty vessel for the nebulous fury of his supporters. The difference is that Greer thinks they are basically justified on grounds of economic neglect while I think the economic anxiety narrative is bullshit and they are attracted to Trump because he promises to vicariously remediate their sense of humiliation.
I actually agree with this, but I think that this is true of any large political movement. There are plenty of people in the democrat base who are utterly thoughtless and pick their vote/political allegiance based purely on tribal instinct as well - this isn't something unique to Trump. though his personal charisma likely means he has a larger number of these people than other politicians.
I disagree with this reading of the article - you don't seem to have grasped the point actually being made, which is that Trump has been using this tendency on the part of the left to ingratiate himself with his base. He knew that he'd be able to get the talking heads to talk shit about him in ways that would make people who dislike those talking heads support him as a result, and so he went out of his way to get the media to attack him. This is stated explicitly in the article so I'm not sure if repeating it here will do any good, but that's what you're meant to take away from that particular section.
You think the economic anxiety narrative is bullshit? Do you have any kind of argument against the claims he makes?
Where's the bullshit here? Are you living in another America that doesn't have a massive fentanyl crisis and didn't outsource huge swathes of productive industry to China? I (and Greer, based on the quote) can understand not wanting to talk about it or admit that it happened, but there's a substantial amount of fire beneath the smoke of economic anxiety. Is there an element of vicarious remediation of humiliation? Absolutely! But to pretend that's the only motivating factor strikes me as absurd.
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This is leaning way too heavily into "boo outgroup." Let's not start the "low information voters" and "NPC" discourse here. You're free to argue that a specific group behaves a certain way or that a specific position or belief is uninformed, but just labeling all your opponent's supporters "low IQ" ain't it.
I don't think Skibboleth did?
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