Gavin Newsom For President

I am not a Democrat.  I used to be a Republican before they became too loathsome to associate myself with.  I'm a center-right kinda guy, so politically I'm pretty lonely these days.  But my number one priority in the election is to get rid of that horrible, horrible man, so I'm a Democrat this year.  I'll vote for whomever is nominated.

Except for maybe Bernie Sanders.  I'm not convinced that Bernie isn't worse than Trump.  And, since it seems that Sanders is well on his way to becoming the nominee, that's a problem.

At this point, I'd much prefer a brokered convention to one of the declared nominees.  So my strategy for voting in the upcoming Texas primary is pretty simple:  Vote for whoever can peel the most delegates away from Bernie.  I haven't decided who that is yet, but my guess is that I'll just look at the most recent polls and vote for whoever has the most support besides Sanders.

Now let's assume that my strategy, writ large, is successful, and Sanders comes to the convention with fewer than half the delegates.  That almost certainly means he won't be the nominee, which is good.  So who should be the nominee?

Bloomberg is a possibility, but he has all the personality of a piece of wet cardboard, and the Democratic base views him with extreme distaste.  You need a moderate to attract people like me, but you need someone who's leaning at the progressive side of moderate to keep the base in line.  Buttigieg and Klobuchar kinda fill the bill.  Biden fills the bill, but I think he's too damaged to win.  Warren?  Pretty far out there.

But there is somebody out there who has pretty good progressive-but-not-insane credentials, has tons of charisma, lots of executive experience, and is young enough to stir things up.  That would be the current, one-year-into-his-first-term governor of California, Gavin Newsom.

Newsom is way too green to actually run for president yet, but he has enough experience in San Francisco and California to generate some excitement, and a clean enough paper trail that he can't be drowned in oppo research.  He's feisty, speaks well, and is just the right amount of ambitious.  If the convention offered him the nomination, he'd take it.

And Trump wouldn't know what hit him.

I'm not a huge Newsom fan.  I think his policies are busy turning California into a place where only the super-rich and super-poor feel comfortable.  But that is pretty much where the Democratic Party is headed, if you leave out the Bernie Bros.  I can live with that if it means we don't have to deal with Trump any more.