Yesterday we started the day off with a long, winding look at how the Democratic Party has tried to play both sides of the street— Wall Street and working families— whose interests are widely divergent. One egregious example was the Democratic Party’s disgraceful support for deregulation in the form of Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in 1999, repealing Glass-Steagall, which had separated commercial and investment banking since the Great Depression. That repeal was the #1 contributor to the financial crisis of 2008, which was so catastrophic for working families. And it didn’t stop there. The Democrats supported other deregulation efforts, such as the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, which deregulated the financial derivatives market, used for speculation (hedging), leading to banks taking excessive risks, the costs of which were borne by the working class and the taxpayers, not by the banksters who took this risks and failed.
George HW Bush failed— because of Democratic congressional opposition— to pass NAFTA. Upon Bill Clinton’s election, he basically said “hold my beer” and he and Rahm Emanuel beat up on enough congressional Democrats to pass this disastrous Republican trade agenda… which became, in the minds of workers whose lives were destroyed, a disastrous Democratic trade agenda.
The Democratic Party has come to have deep ties to Wall Street. Many of the party's donors are wealthy Wall Street executives and firms. In 2016, for example, the top ten donors to the Democratic Party were all from the financial industry. Democrats became addicted to their money and sold out entirely. Clinton, for example, seems to have forgotten FDR’s warnings about the banksters and instead appointed Robert Rubin, CEO of Goldman Sachs, Treasury Secretary. Other Wall Street garbage who have been appointed to high-level positions that have been directly detrimental to the interests of the working class include Lawrence Summers (another Clinton Treasury Secretary), Timothy Geithner (an Obama Treasury Secretary), Gary Gensler (Obama’s chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission), ex-NY Stock Exchange chair Mary Jo White (Obama’s SEC chair), Michael Froman from the neoliberal asswipe Peterson Institute (Obama’s US Trade Representative). More recently, Biden appointed Wall Street shill Gina Raimondo Commerce Secretary and Adewale “Wally” Adeyemo, former chief of staff for BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, Deputy Secretary of the Treasury.
This cataclysmic Wall Street takeover of the Democratic Party— accelerated by Bill Clinton and Rahm Emanuel— has left Trump and the GOP with the opportunity to make tremendous inroads with the working class, now a big and growing part of the MAGA movement. Old news… why bring it up now? Gavin Newsom. He’s spending as little time as possible at his current job while working furiously to cement his name into the consciousness of Democratic voters as their post-Biden nominee. Everything I just described above… that’s Gavin.
He’s another shitty neoliberal, pro-business, anti-working class Democrap— not bad on social issues, of course… first big city mayor to officiate at a same sex marriage on the steeps of city hall, in San Francisco where, on a 1-10 courage scale, that would be about 0.3. Just like his performative debate with Ron DeSantis was a few days ago, which had almost 5 million viewers. California-based Democratic strategist Kate Maeder: “For Newsom, this was further auditioning for the national stage. And I think he got what he wanted. Newsom is becoming one of the best surrogates for Biden and the Democratic Party. And it’s no surprise to anyone that Newsom is ambitious.” Everyone I know says he lost the debate to Clem Kadiddlehopper, the dullest national politician in recent memory.
David McCuan, a political science professor at Sonoma State University in California: “[Newsom] clearly is a star for Democrats. He’s clearly someone who has been positioning for a national rise. He is clearly someone who’s influential in terms of the shortlist of Democratic national figures… [He] can’t become a serious presidential candidate until he’s chewing on a fried pork chop at the Iowa State Fair… What you saw at this debate was a guy who is about 60 percent ready for the national stage, but can’t quite make that leap.”
My personal experience with Newsom is that he does his homework and comes across as very smart— and very slick. I met him in a roomful of lefty political bloggers and I’m pretty sure I was the only one who didn’t like him. I think the glow has begun diminishing in California though. It took long enough! Also... keep in mind his judgment was poor enough so that he married Kimberly Guilfoyle, today a severe cocaine addict and the mother of Donald Trump, Jr's 9 year old daughter Chloe Sophia Trump. That's the kid on the right with her senile, neo-Nazi grandpa.
Despite his rising star status, Newsom is underwater in his state, the most populous in the nation, according to recent polling.
A Los Angeles Times-UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll published last month found Newsom’s popularity at an all-time low of 44 percent among California voters, down from 55 percent in February.
Newsom’s administration has faced criticisms over California’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and concerns about homelessness in the state— topics that came up during his debate with DeSantis.
McCuan noted Newsom “works really well for the other side,” as Republicans take repeated aim at the big blue Golden State as an example to blast over hot-button issues.
And despite the potential benefits of Newsom’s national profile, experts noted, California voters may also feel somewhat disregarded by their governor as he leaves the state to advocate for Biden elsewhere in the country.
“This is, yes, about being a proxy for the Biden administration. But it’s also about doing a lot of hard work over the next couple of years because he and his team knows where they’re deficient or where they’re lacking,” McCuan said.
I don't know that she-- or he-- could win a general election in 2028 (a long way off) but I sure as hell would rather see AOC run as the Democratic candidate rather than a corporate whore like Gavin Newsom or, even worse, Pete Buttigieg or Gina Raimondo.
