Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA), spinning the nation’s condition the way Democrats wish President Joe Biden would, declared the state of the union as “extraordinary” but threatened by former President Donald Trump’s return in this year’s election rematch.
“What I’m feeling is deep optimism but anxiety, so that twin of both inspiration-desperation,” Newsom said on the eve of Biden’s State of the Union address set for Thursday night.
“Let us maintain our democracy and our freedoms by bringing this extraordinary administration back in for four more years,” Newsom said in cheerleading style in a podcast hosted by longtime Democratic organizer and activist Simon Rosenberg.
Rather than falling for those pushing for him to get into the presidential race, Newsom has stood firm in his support of Biden. In his appearance with Rosenberg, he laid out what he saw as the positives under the president and what Trump could undo.
Starting with the overturning of Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court that Trump added three justices to, Newsom charged that the former president and likely GOP presidential nominee would turn the country backward when it comes to rights for women and gay people.
“The whole notion that the last half-century or 60-70 years being rolled back in real time, that’s the consequence of this election, the pre-1960s world these guys want to put America in reverse,” Newsom said on Rosenberg’s subscriber-based Hopium Chronicles outlet, which turned 1-year-old this week.
Rosenberg made the case that the polls showing the general public down on the president are driven by Trump supporters. Many polls do show high disapproval of Biden, but head-to-head Trump versus Biden general election polls still show a neck-and-neck race for the public vote.
“Part of our challenge,” he told Newsom, “is that MAGA people give Biden zero on everything, so it pulls all the numbers down.”
Newsom turned to the success the Democratic Party has had in recent elections to push back on reports and “feelings” that the party is reeling from defeat and poor policy.
“We keep winning. Democrats, we keep winning. It’s remarkable, overperforming consistently 2018, 2020, 2022, 2023, 2024,” he said.
Newsom sounded like he agreed that the party has to do more to talk up its list of wins and to take its fight into red states and to constituencies that are doubtful about Biden going into the fall election.
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He said that the White House has to connect what it sees as a successful economy with what Americans are feeling, which all polls show isn’t good.
“Our job is to mind that gap between performance and what people are perceiving and feeling out there,” the governor said. “We’ve been polarized. We’ve been traumatized in the last many years. We talk about the economy when people really want to talk about them. And there’s a sense that the economy is not very nurturing, the economy is not necessarily supporting that people do feel that stress that they’re one paycheck away, and they do feel that pressure of that paycheck being stretched as it relates to the impacts of global inflation. And so, I do think we have to be mindful of that, as we then assert, as you have forcefully, that the economy is booming,” he told Rosenberg.
