Strategist Garry South and Mark Z. Barabak debate Newsom 2028

Gavin Newsom is on the march, eyeing the White House as he enters the far corner and his final year as California governor.

The record of California Democrats and the presidency is not good. In the nearly 250 years of America’s existence, not a single left-coast Democrat has ever been elected president. Kamala Harris is just the latest to fail. (Twice.)

Can Newsom break this losing streak and make history in 2028?

Loyal readers of this column – both of you – certainly know how I feel.

Garry South disagrees.

The veteran Democratic campaign strategist, who has been described as possessing “a pile-driving personality and a blast-furnace mouth” – by me, in fact – has never been short of strong, colorful opinions. Here, in an email exchange, we discuss our differences.

Barabak: You worked for Newsom before, didn’t you?

South: Indeed, I did. I was a senior strategist during his first campaign for governor. This lasted 15 months in 2008 and 2009. He left the race when we didn’t know how to beat Jerry Brown in a close Democratic primary.

I happen to be the one who wrote the catchy line from Newsom’s speech at the state Democratic convention in 2009 that the race was a choice between “a walk down memory lane or a sprint into the future.”

We found ourselves on memory lane.

Barabak: Do you still advise Newsom, or members of his political team?

South: No, although he and I are in regular contact and have been since his time as lieutenant governor. I know many of its employees and consultants, but I do not work with them on a paid basis. Plus, the governor’s sister and I are friends.

Barabak: You watched Newsom closely during that 2010 race. What are his strengths as an activist?

South: Newsom is a masterful communicator, has great stage presence, cuts a good figure and can hold an audience in the palm of his hand when he’s really active. He has a mind like a steel trap and never forgets everything he is told or read.

I have always attributed his incredible memory to his difficulty reading, due to his lifelong struggle with severe dyslexia. Because reading is such an arduous effort for Newsom, what he reads is imprinted on his mind for apparent perpetuity.

Barabak: Demerits or weaknesses?

South: Given his remarkable command of facts and data and his mastery of the English language, he can sometimes go on for too long. During that first gubernatorial campaign, while still mayor of San Francisco, he gave a seven-hour State of the City address.

Barabak: Fidel Castro must have been impressed!

South: It wasn’t as bad as it seems: it was divided into 10 “Webisodes” on his YouTube channel. But still…

Barabak: So let’s go. I think Newsom’s chances of being elected president are somewhere between slim and none – and slim was last seen along I-5 in San Ysidro on his way to Mexico.

You don’t agree.

South: I completely disagree. I think you are underestimating the Trumpian (rotten?) changes made to our political system over the last 10 years.

The election of Trump, a convicted felon, not once but twice, really upended the conventional paradigms that we’ve had for decades in terms of how we evaluate the viability of presidential candidates — what state they’re from, their age, whether they have problems in their personal or professional lives.

Not to mention their criminal record, if they have one.

The American people actually elected to a second term a man who fomented a rebellion against his own country when he was first president, including an armed attack on our own nation’s capital in which a woman was killed and for which he was rightly impeached. It is foolish not to conclude that the old rules, the old preconceptions about what voters will accept and what they will not, are abandoned for good.

It also doesn’t surprise me that you’re poo-poohing Newsom’s prospects. It’s common for home state reporters to burst out laughing when their own governor is introduced as a presidential candidate.

First, familiarity breeds contempt. Second, a prophet is without honor in his own country.

Barabak: I’ll give you a few points.

I’m old enough to remember the days when friends in the Arkansas political press scoffed at the idea that their incredibly gifted but wildly undisciplined governor, Bill Clinton, could ever be elected president.

I also remember those old advertisements for Clairol coloring: “The closer it gets… the better you are!” » (Google, children). It’s the exact opposite when it comes to presidential candidates and the journalists who cover them day in and day out.

And you’re certainly right: The nature of what constitutes a scandal or disqualifies a presidential candidate has changed dramatically in the Trump era.

That said, some fundamentals remain the same. If we go back to the Clinton campaign of 1992, it is always the economy, stupid. Or, in other words, it is about people’s lived experience, their economic security, or lack thereof, and their personal well-being.

Newsom is, for now, a favorite among the chattering political class and online activists because a) these are people who are already engaged in the 2028 race and b) many of them are excited about his Trump-style fall from the president on social media.

When the focus shifts to issues affecting voters’ ability to pay for housing, health care, groceries, utility bills and just get by, Newsom’s opponents will have glory days trashing him and California’s high prices, homelessness and a shrinking middle class.

Kamala Harris unsuccessfully applied for the White House twice. His losses continued an unbroken streak of left-coast Democratic defeats.

(Kent Nishimura/Getty Images)

South: It’s not just chatter class.

Newsom is now the leading candidate among rank-and-file Democrats. They had been begging – begging – for years for a Democratic leader to step out of the box, take over and fight back, giving Trump a dose of his own medicine. Newsom responded to that demand with wit, skill and fierceness – not just on social media, but by passing Proposition 50, the Democratic gerrymandering measure.

And the Democrats recognize it and appreciate it

Barabak: Hmmm. Maybe I’m a little unimaginative, but I just can’t imagine a world in which Democrats say, “Hey, the solution to our heartbreaking defeat in 2024 is to nominate another well-coiffed, left-field product from that bastion of artisanal Americana, San Francisco.

South: Um, Americans twice elected a president who was not only from New York, but who lived in an ivory tower in Manhattan, in a penthouse with a 24-karat gold front door (and, allegedly, gold-plated toilet seats). Do you think Manhattan is a little more representative of Central America than San Francisco?

As I said, state of origin is less important now, after the previous Trump.

Barabak: Trump was a larger-than-life – or at least bigger than Manhattan – celebrity. Geography was no obstacle because he had – and has – a remarkable ability, far beyond my estimation, to present himself as a tribune of working-class, downtrodden and economically struggling Americans, even as he spreads gold leaf around him like a child with a can of Silly String..

Speaking of Kamala Harris, she isn’t ruling out a third attempt at the White House in 2028. Where would you put your money in a Newsom-Harris matchup for the Democratic nomination? What will happen to Harris in the general election, against whoever the Republicans choose?

South: Harris running again in 2028 would be like Michael Dukakis making a second attempt at the presidency in 1992. My goodness, she not only lost every key state and the Electoral College by almost 100 votes, but Harris also lost the popular vote – the first Democrat to do so in 20 years.

If she doesn’t want to embarrass herself, she should listen to voters in her home state, who in the latest CBS News/YouGov poll said she should not run again — by a margin of 69-31. (Even 52% of Democrats said no). This is yesterday’s news.

Barabak: It sounds like you think a simple walk down memory lane is more than enough. We’ll see if Harris — and, more pertinently, Democratic primary voters — agree.