All. Of. This. As a Californian and a homeowner, I have learned to lean into SB-79 and to Newsom. Like FDR, he may not be perfect, but thank the gods, he's not afraid to throw a punch. I know the fear of every community left out of the original New Deal, especially with Newsom's flirtation with the podcast bros, is that we will somehow again be the disposable bargaining chip as Dems jockey for their next Savior. Still, we are the most pragmatic of all. If he shows up to fight, I am ready to rally behind him. Bring it on, pretty boy, you got this! BTW, as someone who worked in script development for many years, you wrote some damn good Newsom monologues there, Mike!
Thank you, thank you, thank you! My husband Whit Blauvelt (whose name you might recall) and I had a heated discussion about populism last night over dinner, prompted by the apparent implosion of Graham Platner's senate run in Maine. My argument was that if Democrats want to forge a liberal version of populism, we have to stop looking primarily to these stereotypical candidates -- people we think represent the working class -- but in practice who sometimes end up being not so progressive or even liberal (another case in point, John Fetterman). Whit seemed to be arguing that populism isn't even a very useful term for Democrats. I think you've shown precisely how it can be used, even if we don't explicitly say, "hey, here's a liberal populist for you!" Could an oyster farmer/former marine be a great candidate for office? Sure. But let's not let those demographics be our criteria or the things we latch onto as "electability." Look at the distinction between Cuomo and Mamdani in NYC. I think Mamdani represents the same things you are praising (hoping will come to fruition) in Newsom -- smart, educated, perhaps from an elite background, but willing to take on those elites. Cuomo has tried to smear Mamdani as just another elite. But look at who just got Adams's endorsement.
There's some indication that Mainers are standing behind him, and I think Sanders continues to endorse him. Let's hope he can defeat Collins and prove to be the real thing in the Senate. I'm not a Mainer, but my friend who is says Mills is a mixed bag --great for standing up to Trump, but not so great on local issues. She's also of the age where Democrats need to step aside.
In the spirit of "divide and conquer," which worked for the Romans, yet as an admirer of both FDR and Bernie, here's my quibble with the "populist" stance: If we're to gain advantage against the concentrations of wealth, we'll do well to divide those concentrations. For instance, for the energy transition, we need those who are innovating in and building green energy to bring more political leverage, and help directly confront the oil-igarchy. For housing, we need the large, rich home-building firms -- despite the tasteless architectures they largely favor -- to find the same profit potentials Levitt once did in building tens of thousands of entry-level homes, and bring political leverage against the zoning which prevents them. To conquer the rich, we'll do well to divide them, enlisting some substantial portion to real opportunities congruent with our side.
When the Roundheads rose against Charles I, who was similarly focused on collecting tariffs beyond the will of the legislature, he lost because the anti-royalist side had a substantial number of the wealthy with seats in Commons and Lords finding common purpose. We have lost most all the billionaires, yet the larger portion of American millionaires, despite owning near all the stock market, vote for Democrats -- a stock market which includes the firms building green energy, transportation, housing....
The Roosevelts coming from wealth, divided and conquered their peers to serve the broader population. Straight-forward analyses show the wealthy have gained far more under Democratic than Republican national administrations, with the former much better for everyone else. Even when overwhelmingly economically selfish, the smarter of the rich, by economic calculation, should come down against the Trumpists.
Schumer is a disaster. I used to live in his Brooklyn neighborhood. Yet that neighborhood also has the Fifth Avenue Committee, which has worked for decades effectively for the interests of the poor, and the Park Slope Food Coop, with a long history of doctrinaire Marxist practice. Well-off Park Slope wasn't Mamdani's strongest primary showing, but he did easily take the majority there.
My point: We should seek to divide the rich, not simply stand against all in the name of a "populism" which views all who succeed as necessarily seduced by evil, nor denounce all "capitalism" as inherently corrupt and corrupting. When I was in college, half a century ago, there were afternoons where each of the campus socialist parties would have tables set up with literature explaining why the were superior to the others. For socialism to succeed in America -- and it must -- we need to find unity and bring the better side of capitalism into harmony with it. There are many flags which claim to be the true "populist" flag, as their are many parties claiming to be the most-truly "socialist." To unite our side and conquer our enemies we'll do well to divide, as the Romans did, the barbarians set out to sack our nation, and turn those we can to common interest.
Texan here. You laid this out perfectly, Mike. Love your modeling of dialogue- specific and needed. Sure hope Newsom reads it! Newsom may or may not be the one to do this- maybe it’s Pritzker? If Talarico were more well-known and especially if he is able to take this TX senate seat from Cornyn or Paxton it could be him in 2028. He even named our TX Christian nationalist billionaire puppet masters by name on Rogan! He is a totally uncorrupted politician who is a fighter and not embedded in the national party. I’ve met him in person- he is the real deal and has the state house voting record to prove it. Btw, the TX Dem party has turned a new youthful working-class leaf with Scudder at the helm that I’m sure the national party hates- funny thing happens when you are in a state that has been on the frontlines of the corruption under single party rule- the opposition sharpens it’s voice under the dulling oppression. Thank you for your excellent Substack. So glad to have discovered you!!
We’re Californians active in local environmental issues and sometimes Gavin makes us crazy. That being said if he runs we will send him boatloads of money. I don’t see a better option, and he’s been working to put to flight the image of the wimpy democratic compromiser.
I agree that if he can connect with the precariate that could be the power-up he needs. He’s a pal of the Getty family, so he’s got a lot to work around to get there. Good suggestions in this post.
Love your analyses, this one is excellent! Californian here and I like Gavin. He and his staff have taken a great approach in “sticking it” to Trumpists. And I like the trajectory of your thoughts. My question is: do you see any other governors/senators who could step up similarly for 2028? Pritzker, maybe Whitman come to mind as potentially willing to take on establishment Dems. Taking in monied interests is by far our best path forward!
Look at Talarico in TX. He’s not on the national stage (yet) but he should be. And he’s absolutely convicted, centered, and 100% real. Check him out on the Rogan podcast to get a good look at someone willing to fight.
Wow, hell yes!! This is exactly the template Dem leaders must follow to beat Trumpism and the oligarchs. You realize there is huge pressure from the moderate middle which is why Dems like Schumer and Jeffries won’t support Mamdani. AIPAC looms large! Dems need to answer anti trans smears and be the party of FDR again, defend Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unions, affordable public transportation and housing. And yes graduated income tax and inheritance taxes! How did Dems hold power for forty years before Clinton went pro business with NAFTA? Show that Obamacare is a great program!! We have great history of progressive programs!
Wow is it refreshing to read this from someone who understands what is going on. Thanks for your good work, Mike.
The number of voters who could be convinced to change their voting preference by compromising, centrist policies is, what? Two or three percent, maybe? At best?
The number of voters who could be convinced to start voting if they believed someone had policies that helped them is, what? About 30 or 35%? (Just a guess, but clearly a vastly larger number.)
The math is clear. But like you wrote, turning the math into political success requires pushing back on the oligarchs who've dictated party policy for decades now.
I like this, Mike. Your already great thinking is evolving and growing more coherent, which is about the highest compliment in my book. Keep growing. You’re thinking and writing amazing things.
Great analysis. Of course, I’m a pessimist who is afraid that prescriptions like yours will continue to be ignored but I especially like the framing that the current generation of democratic leaders are good people but not able to adjust to new realities. Whether they are or not is a different issue.
I like everything about this except Gavin Newsom. I think there's only a vanishingly small chance that he'll take the path of FDR and Teddy Roosevelt. I will support him if he steps up, but I think the Democrats need another 4 years in the wilderness starting in 2028 because they absolutely refuse to stand up to the donor class and they cannot win until they do so.
One must play the cards they have. The idea it would be better to allow an authoritarian dictatorship to consolidate until 2032 to clean the slate to your satisfaction, seems like a psychopathic position. Because I don't want to live through that.
I'm not endorsing Newsom for President. I'm identifying a path he has. I hope there is a competitive primary.
I don't want an authoritarian dictatorship for four more minutes, much less four more years. But I call the plays as I see them, and the Democratic party has a long history of remaining in the political wilderness because they can't update their agenda to reach the average voter where they are.
It is very clear to me that Democrats want to govern, but they don’t want power badly enough. And for some reason, they cannot seem to put two and two together and realize if you do not have power, you cannot govern. You can have power and not govern as is very clear right now, but if you do not have power, you cannot govern. Full stop. Is it really that hard to understand!? And why in the world are they saying anything remotely like, well we don’t have any power right now. Honestly, would Mitch McConnell ever have said anything like that? I want our next Democratic president to have huge you know whats to take care of business! Ugh.
My feeling, from having seen some of each man, is that the person who can actually walk this line is someone with Gavin Newsom's wins on economic policy combined with Andy Beshear's rhetorical style.
Sure, and that might well work. I'm just skeptical that Newsom has it in him to do it.
If he can, more power to him, and I hope it works (would love for him to set an example of how we can break up our own homeowner NIMBYism here), just from what I've seen from him he doesn't have the chops to do it, and from what I've seen of Beshear he might just.
If you haven't seen it, this is an op-ed Beshear wrote in the immediate wake of the 2024 election: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/12/opinion/democratic-party-future-kentucky.html (I recalled it because I just read "On Moral Witness and Coalition Politics", and it reminded me of what Beshear discussed of his approach to governance.)
Newsom has already evolved quite substantially. He had all of Palo Alto, Beverly Hills, Newport Beach and various other donor-enclaves screaming in his ear to veto SB 79. I was worried. Then he signed. That impressed me. I say this as a resident of one of those enclaves.
This is informed by my own experience of watching US politics primarily for its impacts here (since we are, as I have said, under what many of us perceive as a direct threat of an Anschluß), but I observed how Governor Newsom communicated about the economic pain California has experienced from Canadian boycotts (primarily in tourism) compared to how Governor Beshear communicated about Kentucky's (primarily in alcohol).
Newsom's response was to put out an ad begging Canadians to return to California, claiming that his state is "safe". He did not, anywhere in it, acknowledge that to reach his state in the first place we must cross border checkpoints controlled by CBP (where there is a very real chance of being pulled into an office for what amounts to enhanced interrogation and having your devices searched for anything anti-Trump or anti-Israel or pro-Palestine or whatever), which he cannot control, and that he also does not control any ICE patrols that might be on the streets in his state. He completely misread the situation and communicated to a group that was largely unreceptive to his pleas, and did not address what actually concerns us. (This same has been true of other Democratic politicians, such as Janet Mills in Maine.) It came across as a shameless plea for our money to prop up California's flagging tourism sector, not an actual welcoming message addressing why we might be avoiding the United States.
Newsom's message, then, was essentially to misdiagnose the problem: the economic pain Californians experienced as a result of a tourism downturn was not the fault of Trump's policies, but Canadians' response to those policies--never mind that we would not have responded that way in the first place had Trump not enacted the policies he did.
On the other hand, Beshear faced a similar problem. When Trump imposed tariffs back in March, Canada's initial retaliation was swift: dollar-for-dollar matching tariffs from the federal government, and provincial governments signing orders-in-council (mandatory Wab Kinew video: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/l6WFdnipcH8 ) to order provincial liquor purchasing bodies to cease stocking or selling American alcohol. (The purchasing contracts typically provide that the producers are only paid when bottles are sold, so pulling the booze off the shelves and returning it to the manufacturers unsold resulted in at most a negligible monetary loss in shipping costs.) This, of course, posed a problem for Kentucky's economy, because while they might not have the sort of tourism sector that a state like California does, we are a major purchaser of Kentucky bourbon and other such beverages.
Beshear's response was not to beg Canadians to start purchasing Kentucky bourbon again. His response was to address Kentuckians to explain clearly what sort of economic pain they were going to experience and why: alcohol sales were going to fall, there were going to be job losses, and it flowed ultimately not from Canada's retaliation but from Trump's actions, that if he had not imposed tariffs (and made threats of annexation) then we would not have in turn begun a boycott of American goods. Any economic pain experienced by Kentuckians over the matter, therefore, was not the fault of Canada, but rather due to Trump's policies. He properly diagnosed the problem and implored the people of his state to direct their ire accordingly.
That is what I mean when I say I'm not sure Newsom has it in him to properly address the problem, and I suspect Beshear does, because from what I've seen (I will concede, in a limited sphere, because that is, I hope understandably, the sphere through which I view American politics) Newsom failed in diagnosing the root cause of California's tourism downturn and addressed the wrong constituency in his attempt to remedy it, and didn't even address or acknowledge many of the concerns of that constituency, while Beshear communicated clearly and correctly about the root cause of Kentucky's alcohol sector downturn and addressed the constituency most able to influence the decision-makers whose actions resulted in the downturn.
All. Of. This. As a Californian and a homeowner, I have learned to lean into SB-79 and to Newsom. Like FDR, he may not be perfect, but thank the gods, he's not afraid to throw a punch. I know the fear of every community left out of the original New Deal, especially with Newsom's flirtation with the podcast bros, is that we will somehow again be the disposable bargaining chip as Dems jockey for their next Savior. Still, we are the most pragmatic of all. If he shows up to fight, I am ready to rally behind him. Bring it on, pretty boy, you got this! BTW, as someone who worked in script development for many years, you wrote some damn good Newsom monologues there, Mike!
Thank you, thank you, thank you! My husband Whit Blauvelt (whose name you might recall) and I had a heated discussion about populism last night over dinner, prompted by the apparent implosion of Graham Platner's senate run in Maine. My argument was that if Democrats want to forge a liberal version of populism, we have to stop looking primarily to these stereotypical candidates -- people we think represent the working class -- but in practice who sometimes end up being not so progressive or even liberal (another case in point, John Fetterman). Whit seemed to be arguing that populism isn't even a very useful term for Democrats. I think you've shown precisely how it can be used, even if we don't explicitly say, "hey, here's a liberal populist for you!" Could an oyster farmer/former marine be a great candidate for office? Sure. But let's not let those demographics be our criteria or the things we latch onto as "electability." Look at the distinction between Cuomo and Mamdani in NYC. I think Mamdani represents the same things you are praising (hoping will come to fruition) in Newsom -- smart, educated, perhaps from an elite background, but willing to take on those elites. Cuomo has tried to smear Mamdani as just another elite. But look at who just got Adams's endorsement.
I do think Platner should stay in the race. And I think he could surprise.
There's some indication that Mainers are standing behind him, and I think Sanders continues to endorse him. Let's hope he can defeat Collins and prove to be the real thing in the Senate. I'm not a Mainer, but my friend who is says Mills is a mixed bag --great for standing up to Trump, but not so great on local issues. She's also of the age where Democrats need to step aside.
I hope so.
In the spirit of "divide and conquer," which worked for the Romans, yet as an admirer of both FDR and Bernie, here's my quibble with the "populist" stance: If we're to gain advantage against the concentrations of wealth, we'll do well to divide those concentrations. For instance, for the energy transition, we need those who are innovating in and building green energy to bring more political leverage, and help directly confront the oil-igarchy. For housing, we need the large, rich home-building firms -- despite the tasteless architectures they largely favor -- to find the same profit potentials Levitt once did in building tens of thousands of entry-level homes, and bring political leverage against the zoning which prevents them. To conquer the rich, we'll do well to divide them, enlisting some substantial portion to real opportunities congruent with our side.
When the Roundheads rose against Charles I, who was similarly focused on collecting tariffs beyond the will of the legislature, he lost because the anti-royalist side had a substantial number of the wealthy with seats in Commons and Lords finding common purpose. We have lost most all the billionaires, yet the larger portion of American millionaires, despite owning near all the stock market, vote for Democrats -- a stock market which includes the firms building green energy, transportation, housing....
The Roosevelts coming from wealth, divided and conquered their peers to serve the broader population. Straight-forward analyses show the wealthy have gained far more under Democratic than Republican national administrations, with the former much better for everyone else. Even when overwhelmingly economically selfish, the smarter of the rich, by economic calculation, should come down against the Trumpists.
Schumer is a disaster. I used to live in his Brooklyn neighborhood. Yet that neighborhood also has the Fifth Avenue Committee, which has worked for decades effectively for the interests of the poor, and the Park Slope Food Coop, with a long history of doctrinaire Marxist practice. Well-off Park Slope wasn't Mamdani's strongest primary showing, but he did easily take the majority there.
My point: We should seek to divide the rich, not simply stand against all in the name of a "populism" which views all who succeed as necessarily seduced by evil, nor denounce all "capitalism" as inherently corrupt and corrupting. When I was in college, half a century ago, there were afternoons where each of the campus socialist parties would have tables set up with literature explaining why the were superior to the others. For socialism to succeed in America -- and it must -- we need to find unity and bring the better side of capitalism into harmony with it. There are many flags which claim to be the true "populist" flag, as their are many parties claiming to be the most-truly "socialist." To unite our side and conquer our enemies we'll do well to divide, as the Romans did, the barbarians set out to sack our nation, and turn those we can to common interest.
Texan here. You laid this out perfectly, Mike. Love your modeling of dialogue- specific and needed. Sure hope Newsom reads it! Newsom may or may not be the one to do this- maybe it’s Pritzker? If Talarico were more well-known and especially if he is able to take this TX senate seat from Cornyn or Paxton it could be him in 2028. He even named our TX Christian nationalist billionaire puppet masters by name on Rogan! He is a totally uncorrupted politician who is a fighter and not embedded in the national party. I’ve met him in person- he is the real deal and has the state house voting record to prove it. Btw, the TX Dem party has turned a new youthful working-class leaf with Scudder at the helm that I’m sure the national party hates- funny thing happens when you are in a state that has been on the frontlines of the corruption under single party rule- the opposition sharpens it’s voice under the dulling oppression. Thank you for your excellent Substack. So glad to have discovered you!!
We’re Californians active in local environmental issues and sometimes Gavin makes us crazy. That being said if he runs we will send him boatloads of money. I don’t see a better option, and he’s been working to put to flight the image of the wimpy democratic compromiser.
I agree that if he can connect with the precariate that could be the power-up he needs. He’s a pal of the Getty family, so he’s got a lot to work around to get there. Good suggestions in this post.
Love your analyses, this one is excellent! Californian here and I like Gavin. He and his staff have taken a great approach in “sticking it” to Trumpists. And I like the trajectory of your thoughts. My question is: do you see any other governors/senators who could step up similarly for 2028? Pritzker, maybe Whitman come to mind as potentially willing to take on establishment Dems. Taking in monied interests is by far our best path forward!
Look at Talarico in TX. He’s not on the national stage (yet) but he should be. And he’s absolutely convicted, centered, and 100% real. Check him out on the Rogan podcast to get a good look at someone willing to fight.
Wow, hell yes!! This is exactly the template Dem leaders must follow to beat Trumpism and the oligarchs. You realize there is huge pressure from the moderate middle which is why Dems like Schumer and Jeffries won’t support Mamdani. AIPAC looms large! Dems need to answer anti trans smears and be the party of FDR again, defend Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unions, affordable public transportation and housing. And yes graduated income tax and inheritance taxes! How did Dems hold power for forty years before Clinton went pro business with NAFTA? Show that Obamacare is a great program!! We have great history of progressive programs!
Wow is it refreshing to read this from someone who understands what is going on. Thanks for your good work, Mike.
The number of voters who could be convinced to change their voting preference by compromising, centrist policies is, what? Two or three percent, maybe? At best?
The number of voters who could be convinced to start voting if they believed someone had policies that helped them is, what? About 30 or 35%? (Just a guess, but clearly a vastly larger number.)
The math is clear. But like you wrote, turning the math into political success requires pushing back on the oligarchs who've dictated party policy for decades now.
I like this, Mike. Your already great thinking is evolving and growing more coherent, which is about the highest compliment in my book. Keep growing. You’re thinking and writing amazing things.
I am a Californian, and I couldn’t agree more. Well said.
100%. I hope Newsom reads it.
A left populism is needed. Is Newsom the guy?
Opportunity knocks!
Great analysis. Of course, I’m a pessimist who is afraid that prescriptions like yours will continue to be ignored but I especially like the framing that the current generation of democratic leaders are good people but not able to adjust to new realities. Whether they are or not is a different issue.
I like everything about this except Gavin Newsom. I think there's only a vanishingly small chance that he'll take the path of FDR and Teddy Roosevelt. I will support him if he steps up, but I think the Democrats need another 4 years in the wilderness starting in 2028 because they absolutely refuse to stand up to the donor class and they cannot win until they do so.
One must play the cards they have. The idea it would be better to allow an authoritarian dictatorship to consolidate until 2032 to clean the slate to your satisfaction, seems like a psychopathic position. Because I don't want to live through that.
I'm not endorsing Newsom for President. I'm identifying a path he has. I hope there is a competitive primary.
I don't want an authoritarian dictatorship for four more minutes, much less four more years. But I call the plays as I see them, and the Democratic party has a long history of remaining in the political wilderness because they can't update their agenda to reach the average voter where they are.
Yet, he signed SB79. Even as the wealthy donor-class of California was screaming in his ear to veto it.
It is very clear to me that Democrats want to govern, but they don’t want power badly enough. And for some reason, they cannot seem to put two and two together and realize if you do not have power, you cannot govern. You can have power and not govern as is very clear right now, but if you do not have power, you cannot govern. Full stop. Is it really that hard to understand!? And why in the world are they saying anything remotely like, well we don’t have any power right now. Honestly, would Mitch McConnell ever have said anything like that? I want our next Democratic president to have huge you know whats to take care of business! Ugh.
My feeling, from having seen some of each man, is that the person who can actually walk this line is someone with Gavin Newsom's wins on economic policy combined with Andy Beshear's rhetorical style.
Well, I am suggesting Newsom modify his rhetorical style. I even gave examples!
Sure, and that might well work. I'm just skeptical that Newsom has it in him to do it.
If he can, more power to him, and I hope it works (would love for him to set an example of how we can break up our own homeowner NIMBYism here), just from what I've seen from him he doesn't have the chops to do it, and from what I've seen of Beshear he might just.
If you haven't seen it, this is an op-ed Beshear wrote in the immediate wake of the 2024 election: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/12/opinion/democratic-party-future-kentucky.html (I recalled it because I just read "On Moral Witness and Coalition Politics", and it reminded me of what Beshear discussed of his approach to governance.)
Newsom has already evolved quite substantially. He had all of Palo Alto, Beverly Hills, Newport Beach and various other donor-enclaves screaming in his ear to veto SB 79. I was worried. Then he signed. That impressed me. I say this as a resident of one of those enclaves.
On policy, sure. As I said, he got policy wins, and that's good. But I'm skeptical that he can sufficiently reform his rhetorical style.
I don't know what that means. I think people have internalized way too much right-wing propaganda on the left and are afraid of their own shadow.
This is informed by my own experience of watching US politics primarily for its impacts here (since we are, as I have said, under what many of us perceive as a direct threat of an Anschluß), but I observed how Governor Newsom communicated about the economic pain California has experienced from Canadian boycotts (primarily in tourism) compared to how Governor Beshear communicated about Kentucky's (primarily in alcohol).
Newsom's response was to put out an ad begging Canadians to return to California, claiming that his state is "safe". He did not, anywhere in it, acknowledge that to reach his state in the first place we must cross border checkpoints controlled by CBP (where there is a very real chance of being pulled into an office for what amounts to enhanced interrogation and having your devices searched for anything anti-Trump or anti-Israel or pro-Palestine or whatever), which he cannot control, and that he also does not control any ICE patrols that might be on the streets in his state. He completely misread the situation and communicated to a group that was largely unreceptive to his pleas, and did not address what actually concerns us. (This same has been true of other Democratic politicians, such as Janet Mills in Maine.) It came across as a shameless plea for our money to prop up California's flagging tourism sector, not an actual welcoming message addressing why we might be avoiding the United States.
Newsom's message, then, was essentially to misdiagnose the problem: the economic pain Californians experienced as a result of a tourism downturn was not the fault of Trump's policies, but Canadians' response to those policies--never mind that we would not have responded that way in the first place had Trump not enacted the policies he did.
On the other hand, Beshear faced a similar problem. When Trump imposed tariffs back in March, Canada's initial retaliation was swift: dollar-for-dollar matching tariffs from the federal government, and provincial governments signing orders-in-council (mandatory Wab Kinew video: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/l6WFdnipcH8 ) to order provincial liquor purchasing bodies to cease stocking or selling American alcohol. (The purchasing contracts typically provide that the producers are only paid when bottles are sold, so pulling the booze off the shelves and returning it to the manufacturers unsold resulted in at most a negligible monetary loss in shipping costs.) This, of course, posed a problem for Kentucky's economy, because while they might not have the sort of tourism sector that a state like California does, we are a major purchaser of Kentucky bourbon and other such beverages.
Beshear's response was not to beg Canadians to start purchasing Kentucky bourbon again. His response was to address Kentuckians to explain clearly what sort of economic pain they were going to experience and why: alcohol sales were going to fall, there were going to be job losses, and it flowed ultimately not from Canada's retaliation but from Trump's actions, that if he had not imposed tariffs (and made threats of annexation) then we would not have in turn begun a boycott of American goods. Any economic pain experienced by Kentuckians over the matter, therefore, was not the fault of Canada, but rather due to Trump's policies. He properly diagnosed the problem and implored the people of his state to direct their ire accordingly.
That is what I mean when I say I'm not sure Newsom has it in him to properly address the problem, and I suspect Beshear does, because from what I've seen (I will concede, in a limited sphere, because that is, I hope understandably, the sphere through which I view American politics) Newsom failed in diagnosing the root cause of California's tourism downturn and addressed the wrong constituency in his attempt to remedy it, and didn't even address or acknowledge many of the concerns of that constituency, while Beshear communicated clearly and correctly about the root cause of Kentucky's alcohol sector downturn and addressed the constituency most able to influence the decision-makers whose actions resulted in the downturn.
I surely hope you have mailed a copy of this to Governor Newsom
I hope he reads it!