Impressions of an Evening: Newsom, DeSantis Square Off

It wasn’t the word “California” or the word “Florida” that could be said to be the most important word to come up in Thursday’s debate between Gavin Newsom and Ron DeSantis – it was “Mississippi.”

In trying to make some sort of point about the allegedly poor state of Florida’s mental health system, Newsom lumped Florida in with Mississippi and Texas as having amongst the three worst systems in the country.

But it was the way Newsom said “Mississippi” that told the story of the night.  Dripping with snide condescension, Newsom slithered the word out his mouth in an oh-so-telling, oh-so-haughty, oh-so-disdainful manner to make sure everyone knew that Florida was as bad as that awful disgusting, backward, fat, red state red meat hell hole.

Newsom dismissed the state – you could hear the “those people?” in his voice – as somewhere he – of the better sort – would not be caught dead in, like a bad chain restaurant.  He waived aside Mississippi, and by extension Florida, with a flit of his Getty-manicured hand as bad odors the nation can clearly do without.

And that should tell you everything you need to know about Gavin Newsom.

But the debate was about more than just one word, obviously.

It was about Newsom not answering questions.  It was about DeSantis looking and sounding far better than he has done since his campaign began.  It was about DeSantis needlessly repeating “French Laundry” and “teachers unions” as if he was ticking off pre-tested talking points.  It was about Newsom chuckling derisively and smirking whenever DeSantis presented a damming fact about his governorship.  

The debate ranged over multiple topics, from the pandemic response to crime to business climates to very basic quality of life issues to the simple fact hundreds of thousands of people have left California while hundreds of thousands of have moved to Florida in the past few years.

While DeSantis missed – for some inexplicable reason – saying directly that “people are voting with their feet” when it comes to the conditions in “blue states” versus “red states,” at least he pointed to lower taxes and quality of life issues as the driving forces.  Newsom failed to answer the question, despite being given two specific opportunities, instead saying DeSantis’ Florida was “focusing on false separateness” as Republicans like him attempt to “roll back national rights” and return the nation to a “pre 1960s world.”

In “response,” Newsom did mention that California has the fifth largest economy in the world and lots of Nobel laureates and “dominates” various and sundry things, but then didn’t explain why people would choose to leave such a wonderous place – https://thomas699.substack.com/p/the-california-whimper .

On taxes, Newsom said Florida’s taxes – while they are in fact lower overall – are very regressive and that the “working class” pays less in California.  The major fact checking organizations will Friday deem that true even though it is not, but DeSantis’ correct reply that California is in fact the most economically unequal state in the nation will not be mentioned.

Newsom touted Bidenomics – apparently not having got the memo that even the Biden campaign has dropped the term – as being a great boon for the entire nation, with lowering inflation, millions of new jobs, and even a $28 million tech-related federal grant going to Florida.

“You just won’t admit” the Biden economy is good, Newsom said to DeSantis, apparently forgetting the existence of anyone who has been to the grocery store lately.

Throughout the evening, the two talked over one another rather often, with Fox News moderator Sean Hannity occasionally complaining he didn’t want to be a “hall monitor.”  Those cross-talk situations actually benefitted Newsom – viewers could hear his voice but not his words, and he admittedly has a decent made-for-tv delivery.  DeSantis should have stepped back at least once in those situations, let Newsom be heard in all of his idiosyncratic gibberish glory but, like too many politicians, he could not resist jumping in.

True, DeSantis did on occasion point out Newsom was not making any literal sense and spewing forth a “blizzard of lies,” but those of us in California are inured to those tendencies while the rest of the nation may not be.

On the pandemic response, Newsom had the temerity to call DeSantis a “lockdown governor” who paid fealty to Dr. Anthony Fauci.  The disingenuous of Newsom’s artless linguistic jiujitsu was breathtaking, though at least one political consultant earned his or her or their pay by confusing the issue even just a little bit.

Newsome accusing DeSantis of being a Faucist was astonishing, somewhat akin to a man falling off of a cliff yelling back to the man who stopped at the edge that they were the same even though the man not plummeting had stopped walking.

The facts are crystal clear: adjusted for age, the death rates for the two states were essentially identical.  Adjusting for the fact that – to our credit – California is in general a much healthier state than Florida, then Florida “wins” by having fewer deaths.  https://thomas699.substack.com/p/florida-bests-california-again 

Considering that California is younger and healthier than Florida, the numbers should not have been close even if both states took the same approach to the pandemic response.  If Newsom’s lockdown-a-palooza really worked, the numbers should have been wildly different and starkly in California’s favor.

They most certainly were not and Florida re-opened, sent kids back to school, and let people get on with their normal lives a year before California did. 

And Newsom’s claim that “tens of thousands of people” died in Florda because of DeSantis’ policies was – just in case you already didn’t know –  false.

On immigration, Newsom said DeSantis should not even really be allowed to talk about the issue, alleging he once supported a very different approach than his current hardline stance, and his using people as “political pawns” was immoral.  As is typical for a California politician, Newsom repeatedly pointed to a multi-billion dollar plan to fix the problem but failed to discuss the specifics of said plan and/or what to do in the meantime.

Money promised, it seems to Newsom at least, equals progress – case closed, move on along.

The quality of life differences between the two states were a constant undercurrent of the debate.  Again – like a San Franciscan using the poop map app – Newsom repeatedly side-stepped the issue, baldly claiming California’s crime and homelessness issues are not really that bad and Florida has a city with a lot of murders, more than “even San Francisco.” (interesting Freudian slip of the word “even” on Gavin’s part, but I digress.)

Homelessness – rate of 44 per 10,000 people in California, 12 per in Florida – has been an issue on California ever since Ronald Regan shut down the mental hospitals, said Newsom, adding that he is “the first governor to take this use head-on” by spending massive amounts (again, money=solved.)

It was during this discussion that Newsom slimed out the word “Mississippi” while criticizing Florida’s allegedly poor mental health services.

On Israel, Newsom pointed out he visited Israel and saw terrible videos, adding, to his credit, that Hamas was evil and needed to be “eliminated.”  Newsom then seemed to accuse DeSantis of having “countenanced antisemitism” in his state by not “calling out” some actually antisemitic group operating in Florida.  This was one of Gavin’s low points.

Along with his dismissing DeSantis acclaim San Francisco was cleaned up only for a “Chinese dictator,” an interesting thing for Newsom to dismiss considering he admitted doing that at the time – https://californiaglobe.com/articles/los-angeles-san-francisco-mayors-clean-up-cities-for-visiting-dignitaries-but-not-for-residents/  – Newsom said he “confronted Xi” on issues like fentanyl importation, after DeSantis characterized Gavin’s recent trip as “grovel(ing)” to the “number one threat” to the United States.

Newsom claimed California students experienced less learning loss than Florida kids during the pandemic response, that DeSantis was banning books willy-nilly, that he wanted to “light democracy on fire,” that he uses education as a “sword in (his) cultural purge,” that he wants to lock up women and doctors because he signed a six week abortion ban, that parental control of schools is in California’s constitution, that the “bully” DeSantis demeans different people, that trans-tourism kids are “just trying to survive,” and that California is “re-imaging schools.”

For his part, DeSantis said Newsom’s governorship has been leftist “ideological joyride,” that he has refused to rein in city-destroying disasters like LA DA George Gascon, that San Francisco cops thanked him for standing up “for the blue’ when he visited recently, that Californians take off watches and jewelry before they go out of their homes, that Florida avoided the “generational damage” California will soon see because it kept schools closed for so long, that “sanctuary city” policies get people killed, that California’s sense of public safety has collapsed, and that schools should be about “education not indoctrination.”

Both governors got in a couple of good one liners – Newsom said DeSantis is trying to “out-Trump Trump” but is trailing the former president in his home state by more than 40 points in primary polls.

“How’s that going for you, Ron?” Newsom asked.

DeSantis pointedly pointed to Newsom’s tendency to lie, obfuscate, not answer questions, and blather about Florida not being “free.”

It seems freedom may mean different things to different people, with DeSantis pointing out that in California it means “the freedom to defecate in the streets.”

In the end, though, it comes down to if and when either DeSantis or Nesom will actually be their party’s presidential nominee.  Newsom gave a full-throated “A” grade to the “Biden-Harris team” and he expects them to ride to victory November, though he – again – wouldn’t quite say he would not even consider being the nominee if it were offered at the convention next summer.

Newsom even said he does not think Biden is in any state of “cognitive decline.”

DeSantis scoffed at that “…or are you going to believe your lying eyes?” claim, saying of course Newsom knows Joe may not quite make it.

“That’s why he is running his shadow campaign,” DeSantis said.

As for 2028, that didn’t come up, but as for 2024 Newsom did boldly predict that neither of them will be their party’s standard bearers.

We’ll see about that.

NOTE – During the debate, for some reason I scanned the New York Times “live chat” feed featuring a number of its reporters commenting on the proceedings.  One was California-based Shawn Hubler, who on multiple occasions chimed in to note how great and right and wonderful Gavin was.

Hubler pointed out, falsely, that “by most measures, even adjusting for differences in age and population, California’s (pandemic) approach saved significantly more lives,” that Newsom was a Tesla owner, and – in a monumentally absurd, historically pathetic, “well, at least he didn’t get both hands cut off” way that “(A)s for Californians leaving “in droves,” to be clear, there are still 39 million people in California. And the outflow to Florida last year wouldn’t fill the Florida Gators’ football stadium.”

But – most tellingly – in response to another reporter referencing Newsom’s “slick” image, there was this:

“Newsom actually is not slick in person. He tends to be pretty sincere and nerdy.”

Remember that line every time you see the name Shawn Hubler at the top of a “news” story.