A master at shifting with the political winds. Credit: Getty
Gavin Newsom’s new podcast reveals not only a media-savvy politico seeking more exposure to a bigger audience. It also reflects a concerted drive by the onetime self-anointed leader of the #Resistance to reinvent himself as the unique progressive breaking through to MAGA World, as evidenced by his decision to invite Right-wing firebrands like Charlie Kirk, Michael Savage, and Steve Bannon as his initial guests.
This shift away from liberal orthodoxy has shocked Newsom’s long-time progressive allies, who see it as an act of treachery. Yet if they had been paying attention to Newsom’s career — above all, his willingness to morph into whatever identity best serves his quest for power — this wouldn’t be so surprising.
Conservatives, too, will discover that Newsom isn’t a tool of the progressive Left, or a typical California progressives with “communistic” policies, as one conservative outlet described them. On the contrary, Newsom, unlike his predecessor, Jerry Brown, has been a committed, shameless sniffer of political winds throughout his career.
That’s not to say that Newsom doesn’t have a lodestar. He does: namely, the monied elite of the Bay Area, particularly the Getty family. It explains his ease in discarding Left-of-centre dogmas on law and order, and likewise why he has emerged as an unofficial political spokesman for the “abundance” agenda, which is how neoliberal Democrats are rebranding themselves these days. (In a display of virtuoso flexibility, however, Newsom in his conversation with Bannon called out Trump for his closeness with the tech oligarchs — talk about the pot calling the kettle black.)
His oligarchic allegiance has funded, and shaped, Newsom’s career. He projected himself as a relative moderate as mayor of San Francisco. Later in 2011, as lieutenant governor, he challenged the rigid Brown, suggesting pro-business reforms. That year, amid a weakening Golden State economy, he travelled to arch-rival Texas to discover the secrets of the Lone Star State’s boom — much to the consternation of progressives.
Then, as the winds shifted to the Left, Newsom decided to re-centre his appeal to progressives in California and nationwide. He became a fervent advocate of such things as early transgender treatments and banning schools from informing parents about their own kids’ sexual identity issues. His heiress wife, Jennifer Siebel, made a documentary film embracing the transgender cause.
As governor, he could dispense the blessings of full-spectrum progressivism thanks to a massive accumulation of capital-gains revenue during the tech boom. The economy, about which he repeatedly bragged, may have hurt the middle and working classes, but it allowed Newsom and his legislative allies to build a vote-catching “blue welfare state”, as The Nation magazine enthused.
During the tech boom, Newsom ladled out subsidies to poorer Californians; indeed, the Golden State spends more of its budget on welfare than virtually any state, twice as much as Texas, while it generally neglects basic infrastructure like roads and water supply. This sort of liberal welfarism recalls what Marx recognised in the Communist Manifesto as “the proletarian alms bag”.
Today, California’s economy is struggling, and progressive ideology increasingly clashes with reality and voter preferences. Newsom is clever enough to see the writing on the wall — in contrast to Kamala Harris, his possible gubernatorial successor and potential 2028 rival.
Bottom line: rather than frame Newsom as an ideologue, it is better to see him as a representative of the Bay Area tech oligarchy. To the titans of Silicon Valley, issues matter less than power and influence, as evinced in their recent genuflecting to Trump. If tactics need to be changed, if it’s necessary (for now) to learn the lessons of the 2024 MAGA triumph, so be it.
This shift began to emerge even before the 2024 election. As it became clear that wind and solar couldn’t easily replace fossil fuels or nuclear power, particularly in light of the state’s draconian electric-vehicle mandate, Newsom signalled a growing flexibility. He reversed the proposed decommissioning of the state’s last nuclear power plant at Diablo Canyon near San Luis Obispo, as a means to prevent embarrassing blackouts.
This, along with natural-gas plants that account for close to half the state’s electricity, prevented politically damaging blackouts. He has even considered amending the state’s landmark environmental law. The green lobby’s ever harsher energy policies were recently dissed by a Newsom spokesperson as akin to “fantasy and fairy dust”.
Similar fault lines have pitted him against progressives when it comes to race. Newsom was an ostentatious promulgater of Leftist racial cant and racial policies, like reparations and quotas. Yet when reparations legislation suggested cash payments upwards of $640 billion dollars for the descendants of slaves, Newsom recoiled, upsetting the state’s hyperactive race hustlers. He now also expresses concerns about the injustice of transgender men competing in female sports programmes, perhaps aware of the damage done to Harris by this issue.
Newsom has even backed away from his welfarist inclinations, recasting himself as a fiscally conscious moderate. He fended off proposals from Sacramento progressives, including their calls for a 32-hour workweek; raising the state’s income tax (already the nation’s highest); and adding new payroll taxes to cover universal health care.
After the 2024 election, Newsom’s centrist shift has accelerated. This may still not be necessary in a state that went nearly 60% for Kamala Harris. But state politics are beside the point for the termed-out governor. For him, the prize is no longer in Sacramento — but at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Newsom senses, correctly, that the best chance lies with embracing moderates reacting against the inevitable Trumpian excess. But the Democrats can only win the national vote if they shift away from progressive stances on climate, diversity, and gender — all widely unpopular east of the Sierra.
Ultimately Newsom’s biggest problem, particularly in a general election campaign, will be his miserable record. In a national campaign, he will be made to defend the state’s lousy education system: California’s students perform at among the lowest rates in the country, with nearly three of five Golden State high-schoolers unprepared for either college or a career; in most categories, the state scores below lower-spending places like Texas and Florida.
Nor can he boast of the state’s still massive economy. Once deemed to be the world’s fourth largest, the California economy is now among the weakest in the country and seems destined to fall to sixth place in the near future. His frequent pro-worker pronouncements don’t hold water in a state where unimaginable wealth coexists with the nation’s highest cost-of-living-adjusted poverty rate. Nearly one in five Californians — many working — lives in poverty (using a cost-of-living adjusted poverty rate); the Public Policy Institute of California estimates another fifth live in near-poverty — roughly 15 million people in total.
Then there’s crime. In a recent referendum, Californians overwhelmingly ditched liberalised sentencing laws enacted by Democratic lawmakers and defended by Newsom. Sensing danger, he has moderated on some law-and-order issues. Newsom last year vetoed a bill that would have legalised “shooting alleys” — so-called safe drug-injection sites — in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Oakland. Many of his progressive allies, who favour such programmes, denounced his veto. But a GOP presidential nominee could slam him for his Johnny-come-lately rethink on social order and cohesion.
Newsom also is vulnerable for the utter failure of the state’s climate-focused housing policies. By curtailing new suburban construction, state policies have hiked housing costs to the highest levels in the country, sparking a powerful out-migration trend. And that’s not to mention the state’s dismal performance in response to the horrific LA fires this year, a result of progressives ditching basic infrastructure in favour of boutique climate and “justice” causes.
Overall, whatever his media savvy, Newsom will have to run as former chief executive of a state repeatedly rated by Wallet Hub as among the least efficient in delivering services relative to tax burden. Newsom might be tempted to curtail regulations so he can appeal to business-oriented Democrats and independents. As a white male, Newsom seems ill-suited to compete for the diversity vote, particularly if Harris or some other “person of colour” decides to run.
Whether this lurch to the centre works or not, it is now the most viable path to the nomination. Of course, things may change in response to Trumpian overreach. The 45th and 47th president might just make progressivism great again. If that comes to pass, the governor’s moderate rhetoric will no doubt change. In being willing to bend to any prevailing trend, at least, Newsom is almost perfectly consistent.
Joel Kotkin is a Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and a Senior Research Fellow at the Civitas Institute, the University of Texas at Austin.
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SubscribeGavin Newsom believes in Gavin Newsom.
All the rest is details.
It’s rather fascinating to me that pundits and journalists from both sides are flabbergasted by the spectacle of a politician in a democratic nation doing what politicians in democratic nations are basically obliged to do, that is listen to the voters and respond to their stated political views.
After all, politicians are supposed to be public servants, representatives of the people who respect the people and consider the popular will, not kings and dictators, tyrants who disregard the people’s judgement in favor of their own. Why then, should a commentator react with such shock and horror that Gavin Newsom who governed easily the most liberal state in the nation in a liberal fashion is now speaking quite differently on his own podcast to a national audience? After all, isn’t that the point of democracy, for the people to have a say? A politician changing their tune to appeal to more people and a broader voter base really is something to be applauded, not discouraged.
All this is made more confusing by the fact that Newsom is actually still governor for two more years. Still, he has to be aware of the fact that Trump gained a lot of ground in California versus the election results in 2020 and 2016. This is despite the fact that Harris was from the state of California. Seems to me that given the relevant facts, a shrewd observer might question the direction the Democratic party is taking in California and everywhere else. The art of politics in a democratic nation is to understand the popular will and make a pitch that appeals to more people than one’s opponent. Once in office, the task becomes balancing the stated wishes of voters with the limitations of budgets, geopolitics, and economics that always impose and avoid catastrophic failures. Blackouts are a good example of a catastrophic failure. It really shouldn’t take a political mastermind to grasp that blackouts would be a political and economic disaster that dwarfs any disapproval from some number of hardcore environmentalist voters and does far more damage to the person in power and whichever party he represents.
Kotkin is right that Newsom is pretty obviously starting his 2028 run for President and he’s also correct that Newsom’s biggest handicap is the objectively awful state that California is currently in with him as governor. On the other hand, based on Kotkin’s observations of some of the instances where Newsom actually defied progressive orthodoxy, Californians might actually owe him a debt of gratitude as things seemingly could have been worse. In questioning Newsom and trying to play him off as an insincere, waffling, finger in the wind politician, Kotkin actually succeeds in making the man sound less like a typical California progressive Democrat and more like a sensible, pragmatic leader who is simply making the best of a bad situation. Newsom even seems to grasp, more than most in his party, why Harris lost and why Trump won. Gavin Newsom has thus risen in my esteem, for demonstrating greater political awareness than others in his party and for having more of a common sense, pragmatic approach to governance than I had given him credit for. Perhaps he’s not so bad after all, and perhaps I was too quick to judge him simply from the state full of silly headed idealist fools he happens to govern.
There is indeed something to be said for a “give the people what they want politician” rather than a ideologue pursuing ideological dreams. The problem is that giving in to popular policies without conviction can end you up like Boris Johnson imposing a lockdown that was popular but contrary to Boris’s instincts that was then flouted by those around him because they knew it was over the top. The stench of hypocrisy that enabled a politically motivated civil servant to deliver the final blow did for him whereas sticking to the Swedish plan that his own instincts likely favoured might have seen him still in power.
A good point. That risk certainly does exist, but the UK is not the US. Boris got dinged for hypocrisy in a country where that accusation matters. Nancy Pelosi did something similar, personally flouting COVID rules, and she’s still in office and just as influential as before. No President would step down for that sort of controversy and if they did, they’d probably catch heat from their own party and voters for doing so. In the US, a politician has to do something pretty low, like cheating on a wife who has cancer, or criminal, like Nixon, and in certain situations even that isn’t enough to tank a political career. American politics is its own animal. Hypocrisy is basically the rule, not the exception, and as long as the results don’t get out of hand, people will accept basically any bad personal behavior. I mean Americans elected Trump twice. That’s a pretty direct testament to the notion that Americans don’t really care about the personal character of our leaders so long as they listen to the people and respect the people’s wishes. The spectacle of hardcore evangelicals embracing a womanizer who has had several wives with his current one being half his age should really have given the world a clue what the American people value. Obedience and loyalty to the voters is number one. Competence is number two. Everything else is too far behind to matter much.
Newsom seems to pass the first condition, and Kotkin makes a decent case for his passing the second. Thus he’s acceptable as a politician in a way Hillary and Kamala never will be. Their personal convictions constitute a political liability and they didn’t do enough to assure the American public that they’d lay those convictions aside to serve the people. That’s a basic expectation here, and anyone who doesn’t show themselves sufficiently dedicated to the people rather than their personal ideology or beliefs will suffer for it. Consider how much controversy Obama generated for his association with that radical black preacher whose name I forget and the lengths he went to distance himself from the man and reassure the people that his loyalty was to the people as a whole, not one church or ideology. The people expect a leader to denounce even their closest friends if that conflicts with their duty to the people. Americans are not a forgiving bunch. They are a practical people, and ruthless in their determination to hold their leaders to account.
You have to remember that the US was always comprised of diverse and different religious, cultural, and national groups. Being able to lay aside one’s native culture, religion, and personal beliefs became a critical factor for early Americans to feel comfortable that their leaders wouldn’t favor his denomination or his cultural heritage or his personal values. It’s simply a fact of American politics. Many who oppose Trump and Republicans do so because they believe Republicans represent a traditional protestant set of religious and social values and don’t want those values imposed.
Thanks an interesting point. Traditionally US politics has been much less ideological than UK politics it is something of an aberration that “progressive” politics has been imported from the States into the UK such as Black Lives Matter when we don’t have the history of slavery and the colour bar on UK soil and a generally unarmed police force.
And I’m sorry the US exported such nonsense. The people of Europe and the UK have good reason to resent American cultural influence. I lay the lion’s share of the blame at the feet of globalist oligarchs, intellectuals, and elites. Trump’s political success is an attempt, flawed, chaotic, and rude though it be, to remedy some of the damage done and begin to untangle the mess of globalism. I personally wouldn’t begrudge citizens of the UK and EU a level of antagonism towards the US and its people given Trump’s insults and the policies that long preceded him.
Or… instead of voting for a politician who swivels with the wind, simply vote for one whose instincts you agree with in the first place.
Many do, but America is a sufficiently diverse place that this is basically never enough to win a majority in most places and certainly not enough to win the electoral college. Elections are almost always decided by ‘independent’ voters who do not have any allegiance to either party or the ideological factions within the parties. Independent voters broke heavily for Trump, So did those who decided late in the last two weeks before the election. Such voters were presumably not aligned with Republican or Democratic ideology, and voted on which politician they felt comfortable with, probably some factor unrelated to policy or ideology because those were already well known.
Trump’s inconsistency, his tendency to reverse course and flip-flop, and all those things that would make him toxic in European politics actually work to his benefit in the American system. It shows him to be responsive to the people and willing to reverse his party or himself in the face of public outcry, and the people are more comfortable with that than with someone who might become a tyrant and impose their personal ideology. Trump’s success in the US and his deep unpopularity in Europe are not simply attributable to rhetorical style and policy choices. Trump is a politician that offends European sensibilities of what a leader should be, but is much more acceptable to American political sensibilities. He reveals the differences in our respective cultures and political expectations. I don’t believe that these differences are particularly good or bad. I just recognize that cultures are different and that’s why we need sovereign national governments, borders, and laws to govern ourselves that reflect the culture and politics of our individual nations.
Why then, should a commentator react with such shock and horror that Gavin Newsom who governed easily the most liberal state in the nation in a liberal fashion is now speaking quite differently on his own podcast to a national audience?
Because it reveals an absence of principles? In lieu of that, because it reveals a craven opportunist who will say or do anything? Either way, Newsom has a track record that involves the destruction of a city and a state. Yeah, he IS that bad after all.
If the absence of principles is such a problem, why did we elect Trump? He embodies the concept to a degree few can match. He has demonstrated no moral compass or set of consistent principles over his decades in politics or in his personal life. He has a few consistent positions on politics and economics over the decades, but they are pretty vague, and they’re his own ideas, not established external principles. He trusts his own judgement and he’s famously impulsive, making decisions in the moment based on whatever the evidence or his instinct or some combination thereof suggest to him personally or he listens to various opinions from his advisors and picks which advice to follow and which to discard. He’s constantly shifted his rhetoric and policy wildly from time to time based on, depending upon one’s interpretation, either practical strategy or whichever advisor happens to be in his good graces at the moment. When has he ever demonstrated integrity, character, or moral consistency?
I’m not complaining about that mind you. I legitimately prefer a more flexible, adaptable leader who is willing to change his mind and his policy in the light of new evidence or unexpected results. What I see as Trump’s advantage in being pragmatic rather than ideological I apply equally to others, and to the extent Newsom deviates from his party orthodoxy and breaks with ideology for reasons of practical political consideration or good governance, he is preferable to other Democrats. Note this is a comparative statement, not an absolute. I’d rather be shot in the leg or the shoulder than in the head because survival is likelier in the former cases. That isn’t the same as saying getting shot in the shoulder is good.
What are you talking about. Newsom destroyed San Francisco and then went on to destroy the once beautiful state of California. He’ll do the same for America with people like you voting for him, giving him the benefit of the doubt.
Honestly, it’s like a spouse in an abusive relationship with Democrats and their politicians. You keep getting beaten up, but you just can’t leave the abuser.
“… things seemingly could have been worse” is probably not a good campaign slogan on which to base a WH run.
True, but it’s better than simply declaring everything is fine when the house is burning down around us.. One actually recognizes and accepts the judgement of the people who assert that no, everything is not fine actually, while the other looks increasingly like delusional thinking and denial of reality. It speaks to how detached progressives have become that Newsom is able to distinguish himself by being less than completely oblivious to the situation and practical realities.
If Newsom’s pandering to anyone he thinks gives him a political advantage were not so obvious and awful, I might admit some merit to the argument that he is listening to voters and changing his stance on issues accordingly. However, he absolutely cannot be trusted with any more power than he already has because he will bend to any political wind that blows his way. That has been disastrous for California with the progressive policies he has pushed through. Further, he is not at all interested in the boring but necessary mechanics of actual government, like ensuring that public services function. He would be worse than Biden or Harris as President because he has no principles, only politics, and would do whatever the loudest voices told him to do. We all know those are the extreme Leftist progressives. If you want California in your state, vote Newsom. Otherwise, run like h***.
This is a good counterpoint. Kotkin mentioned a few points where he stood up to progressives to avoid catastrophe or to appeal to voters but these are simply a couple of examples within a record that consists of mostly just rubber stamping the progressive policies of the silly idealistic notions of both Californians and the liberal true believers they regularly elect. There are two sides to everything, and as Kotkin says, Newsom’s record and the situation in the state he governs is pretty damning no matter what apologies one can come up with. I would say there’s still enough evidence to declare he’s better than Harris, but that’s not exactly a high bar.
despite the fact that Harris was from the state of California.
Hmm .. Despite? Or because?
So Newsom is shifty.
Who knew ?
He’s a pragmatist. That makes him a much more reasonable Dem that the rest of the offering.
He’s the idiot who ruined once beautiful California. He did it pragmatically though, so that’s OK.
Honestly, I respect him more for being an openly unscrupulous political hypocrite than I would for being a committed hardcore socialist. At least now I know he’s just a shameless opportunist rather than an unrepentant far left lunatic. He really looks like he should be a villain in Demolition Man still though.
Newsom was never going to be a tax the rich socialist. His wife has too much money. That’s why he was so happy that the Left forgot about the poor and concentrated on culture wars.
He’s both of your apt descriptions. He morphs. Only fools are fooled.
Great analysis. I’ve lived in California most of my 60 years, and can attest that nothing – absolutely nothing – has improved in any way in the Golden State since the early-90s when the Democrats got a lock on state government.
By every single quality of life measure we are worse off: highest taxes in the country; some of the highest rents and cost of living; awful traffic and crowding; more, vast homeless encampments; increase in quality of life crime; masses of illegal immigrants welcomed by “sanctuary cities.” Our public schools are the most expensive but rank near 30 out of 50 of the states. Absolutely nothing can get built to the massive amounts of red tape and regulations imposed by Democrats. Our “train to nowhere” is a rusting example of how truly dysfunctional Democratic governance has become.
As the article state, Newsom has exemplified the Democrats’ instinct to simply hand out more welfare, rather than improve the conditions that require welfare.
The attack ads for Newsom’s presidential run in ’28 write themselves.
Somewhere, there’s a low-budget 1980s cyberpunk thriller that’s missing its villain.
Well he believes in Gavin Newsom.
Well he certainly believes in Gavin Newsom
The man ruined a once-beautiful city and then did likewise with a state. Instead of trying to figure him out, a sane person would look at results and discount him from holding future political office. Yet, the Dems actually see him among their contenders for 2028.
The state seeing more people vote with their feet and leave than any other; the state with the largest populations of welfare recipients, homeless people, and illegals; the state that ranks among the bottom five in almost everything. Not only have the Dems learned nothing from the last election cycle, they are proud of their ignorance and intent to broadcast it. Worse, roughly half the country will be receptive to that message.
Unbelievable. Joel Kotkin wishing the Progressive blight on all of us again. You can hear it in his final paragraph, the longing for Trump to fail to make America Great Again. It’s quite pathetic.
By the way, could have saved Me Kotkin a lot of trouble writing this article on whether Newsom believes in anything. One word. No.
Newsom only ruined a city and a state. Let’s unleash him on the country. What could go wrong? And no, he is not reinventing himself. Gavin is a committed progressive but he’s also a politician with a long history of saying anything to a given audience.
I’m confused. Do they have the worst economy in the nation, or is California falling to sixth?
This dude is nothing but an empty suit, amoral, not eloquent, but connected. He believes in “Gavin” and nothing else. The perfect prototype for the Modern Liberal. At least some of them are eloquent and appear less grasping. Ole Gav panicked after the LA fires, and in the news interviews, he reminded me of Howdy Doody.
The product of MONEY in these times.
Newsom’s constant ideology is power for himself.
Newsom changes his “deeply held opinions” as easily as Vance and Starmer!