In an effort to elbow his way to the front of the line of Democrats seeking to square off against whomever the Republicans run in 2024, California Governor Gavin Newsom launched an attack ad in Florida today.
He hopes that the ad (see below) will accomplish several purposes. First, he wants to show that he is the one — the only one — willing to go one-on-one with DeSantis, or Trump, or anyone else the Republican Party nominates for president in 2024, and do it on their turf.
Second, he wants to become, in Democrats’ minds, Bernie Sanders 2.0 — the farthest-left politician — and remove that mantle from the aging Vermonter.
Third, he hopes to provoke DeSantis into responding, setting up a war of words that would serve to keep Newsom in the forefront of Democratic voters’ minds.
And fourth, the ad challenges the would-be candidates already waiting in line for the Democratic Party: the aging and increasingly mentally incompetent present occupant of the Oval Office, or his equally incompetent but eminently more unpopular vice president, Kamala Harris.
Watch ad here:
On the surface, the ad is nonsensical. Or funny. As one Facebook commenter said: “This is hands down the funniest video ever. I laughed and laughed. Thank you for that.”
In the ad, Newsom says:
Your Republican leaders … they’re banning books … [they’re] making it harder to vote, restricting speech in classrooms, even criminalizing women and doctors.
The issue is freedom as defined by the hard Left. Come to California, “where we still believe in freedom: freedom of speech, freedom to choose, freedom from hate, and the freedom to love,” Newsom said.
Of course, Newsom’s definition of “freedom” clashes with the normal one: his policies favor freedom to murder unborn children, freedom to live at the public’s expense in homeless villages, freedom to rob and steal without sanction thanks to the leniency of progressive DAs, freedom to marry any sex one likes, and so on.
Newsom adds:
Freedom: it’s under attack in your state.
I urge all of you living in Florida to join the fight — or join us in California.
The ad did provoke the desired response from DeSantis’ campaign committee. Its spokesman, Dave Abrams, took the bait: “Pass the popcorn for his desperate attempt to win back the California refugees who fled the hellhole he created in his state to come to Florida.”
According to the South Florida Business Journal, 18,000 Californians moved to Florida in 2019, and another 17,000 made the move in 2020.
But that isn’t the point. Newsom knows this. He isn’t trying to reverse the flow, he’s calling out to those Democrats living in Florida — all 5,080,697 of them — to support him in his run for the presidency in 2024.
He doesn’t need them to move back to California, he just needs them to support him in the primary.
And, of course, he could always use their money.
