As proof of the adage The more things change the more they remain the same, consider California governor Gavin Newsom this year and past.
A year ago, Newsom went out of his way to convince anyone listening that a struggling Joe Biden was compos mentis. Here’s the governor working the Sunday morning television circuit, pushing back against concerns about an octogenarian president’s acumen: “I’ve seen him up close, I’ve seen him from afar, but here’s my point: It’s because of his age that he’s been so successful.”
And just to make sure that no one could questioned his bona fides as a party loyalist (an asset had the Democrats’ search for a Biden replacement turned into an actual competition rather than a Kamala Harris coronation), Newsom went so far as to call the Biden presidency “a masterclass”—a curious term considering that Biden was about 11 points underwaterat the time (i.e., higher disapproval than approval ratings), which is usually a sure sign that reelection isn’t in the cards.
There’s a word for what Newsom was up to back in the days when Democrats were panicking over the fragile states of a president and his electability: “gaslighting.” Adapted from the 1930s British play Gas Light—in which a husband convinces his wife the dimming lights in their apartment are in her imagination, as part of a plot to convince her that she’s losing her marbles—to “gaslight” means to engage in psychological manipulation, convincing others to believe what they’re told rather than what they see.
Why this cynical conclusion?
Just listen to this installment of This Is Gavin Newsom, in which the governor converses with the authors of the book Fight, which chronicles last year’s presidential election. Whereas Newsom, vintage 2024, tried selling the public on the notion of a masterful commander-in-chief, this year’s Newsom confesses to his podcast guests that he was, in effect, putting on a show—admitting that he saw a “vulnerability” in the frail Biden but nevertheless championing his cause on the campaign trail.
Why so? As Newsom justifies during the same podcast: “I’m one of those guys, you go home with whoever brought you to the dance. That’s how my father raised me. I felt compelled, and that’s why I went out campaigning for Biden . . . after doing the spin room and being out there.”
If the estate of the late Patrick Hamilton is willing (he wrote the play), Gaslight would be an apt title for Newsom’s podcast. After all, that seems to be its main purpose—to convince the world (or more to the point, America’s political press corps), that he’s more complicated and nuanced than the first impression might give of a predictably progressive governor whose state suffers from social and fiscal woes that Newsom seemingly can’t fix, much less admit to.
Sadly, it seems California’s press corps took the bait.
A Sacramento Bee article, for example, notes a Newsom “pivot to the center” on transgender rights and homelessness. But whereas the Bee would have its readers believe that Newsom said he “opposed allowing transgender athletes to compete in sports,” what he actually said in an earlier podcast was as follows: “The issue of fairness is completely legit. So, I completely align with you, and we’ve got to own that, and we’ve got to acknowledge . . . it is an issue of fairness. It’s deeply unfair.”
Not exactly a declarative policy shift, is it?
Moreover, Newsom remained silent when a California State Assembly committee recently killed a pair of bills that would have banned transgender athletes from girls’ sports, locker rooms, bathrooms, and dorms. Nor has the governor signaled that he’s willing to revisit the 2014 law enabling transgender California students to participate in all school programs, including competitive sports.
As for homelessness, the centrist narrative stems from the governor’s ordering state agencies last summer to move homeless populations out of camps—putting him at odds with the Democratic mayors of San Jose and Los Angeles. Meanwhile, the governor remains wed to a homelessness approach that’s already spent over $24 billion over the course of five years yet is woefully poor at such basic functions as tracking spending and results. (Newsom, citing redundancy, last fall vetoed a bipartisan bill requiring state-run homelessness programs to regularly submit cost and outcome data to the California Interagency Council on Homelessness.)
Taken a step further, the concept of “gaslighting” applies to the podcast itself.
What began with a splash—Newsom garnering attention (and progressive wrath) for allotting time to MAGA provocateurs like Steve Bannon and Charlie Kirk—has since turned into calmer, safer waters. Yes, there’s the occasional guest who gives the Left heartburn (in April, former Trump acolyte-turned-antagonist Anthony Scaramucci stopped by). Otherwise, such Democratic-friendly guests as Minnesota governor Tim Walz (who apparently considers his vice presidential nod a token appointment), Ambassador Rahm Emmanuel, and New York Times opinion columnist Ezra Klein make for little, if any, civil disagreement.
Not to mention poor ratings. Whereas Newsom’s interviews with Kirk generated more than 850,000 YouTube views, an installment with Rhode Island senator Sheldon Whitehouse (26 minutes of Big Oil bashing) drew all of 12,000 views.
There’s one other adage that seems to apply to Newsom’s alleged shifts: Abraham Lincoln and the notion of fooling “some of the people some of the time . . . but not all of the people all of the time.”
The same Sacramento Bee story reporting the governor’s newfound centrism also included the following polling data courtesy of Probolsky Research, which touts itself as a “woman and Latina-owned market and opinion research firm.”
Among the findings:
More than 40% of California voters believe Gov. Gavin Newsom’s recent pivot to the center on issues such as transgender athletes and homelessness are either a betrayal of his principles or an effort to make himself more palatable to moderates as he mulls a run for national office . . . [and]
Twenty-six percent of respondents said they believed the governor’s recent remarks on transgender athletes in sports, order to break up homeless encampments, and sending state police to help local agencies crack down on violent crime were “a fake attempt to make people think he is changing, but he will never really change.”
Here's a suggestion for a future Newsom podcast: former president Bill Clinton. Not also his wife, whom Newsom endorsed in her two ill-fated presidential runs, but just her husband, who supported Newsom in his brief but likewise doomed 2009 gubernatorial run. (The backstory to that: Newsom was running against Jerry Brown; Clinton will never forgive Brown for words said about his and Hillary’s character during a 1992 presidential debate.)
Why Bill Clinton? Because he’s no stranger to the concept of gaslighting (just ask Monica Lewinsky). But also because, as a presidential candidate at the same time a young Gavin Newsom was beginning to build a business empire and still years away from elected office, Clinton successfully sold the media on the notion of a Democratic governor who’d discovered the joys of breaking with progressive orthodoxy—in 1990s’ parlance, “triangulation.”
Granted, Clinton had the benefit of running a southern state that’s rarely confused with California. And in 1992, he ran in a Democratic presidential field devoid of most of its luminaries, which may or may not ring true for the 2028 election.
Stay tuned to This Is Gavin Newsom, to see if he wants to build a bridge to the 2030s . . . and if, like Bill Clinton, he still believes in a place called Hope.
