How Gavin Newsom can help Joe Biden defeat Donald Trump

9:57PM Aug 29, 2023

Speakers:

Steve Schmidt

Keywords:

donald trump

biden

presidential campaign

ron desantis

country

campaign

stakes

president

desantis

sean hannity

democracy

candidate

articulate

debate

gavin newsom

election

governor

american history

people

run

One of the scariest and most inexcusable aspects of this era is the degree to which so many opponents of Donald Trump use him as a prop to better position themselves. The Biden presidential campaign is a perfect example. Make no mistake, Joe Biden's presidential campaign wants Donald Trump to be the Republican nominee. They are hoping that will happen. What that means is that the Democrats around President Biden are hoping Donald Trump that he moves closer, not further away, from the presidency. The theory goes that Donald Trump is the easiest Republican candidate, the easiest extremist candidate for the president to beat. This is a normal line of thinking in a presidential campaign. For example, in 2004, the Bush campaign feared Dick Gephardt as a candidate more than any other. I've always believed that had he been the Democratic nominee, it's likely he would have been elected president in that year. But at any rate, this isn't that year. This is 2024. And the stakes of the coming election are existential. The Biden campaign has made it clear that they're not worried about the president's age as a political liability. In fact, they view it as an asset. In fact, they intend to run on President Biden's wisdom. That's how they said it. Now, there's an important consideration in the construction of a presidential campaign. There is the way the world is, and there is the way we wish it to be. It is essential in the business of presidential politics to know where the boundary lines between those two worlds are. Because it is essential for the person who seeks to be commander in chief, head of state, president, to be fully in touch with the country, with the American people. Apparently, the most articulate and effective spokesperson in the Democratic Party, in the eyes of many Biden staffers, is a nuisance, not an asset. And even more disturbing, there is deep unhappiness, apparently, on vice president Kamala Harris's team. They're worried that Gavin Newsom, governor of the fifth largest economy in the world, the mega state of California, the chief driver of America's economy, America's agricultural breadbasket, is a little ahead of himself, that he's being disrespectful and that he's out of line and out of position. Apparently, Team Harris has their eye on the 2028 primary, according to an NBC news story. And if that doesn't make you want to scream out loud, and swear at the top of your lungs, I don't know what could possibly make you do so -- it is so outrageous. The election, right now, in a proposed general election matchup between Trump and Biden is very, very close. How is that possible, considering that Donald Trump is the worst president in American history? He led a coup and an insurrection and faces 91 felony counts. The race is too close. And anybody who says that Donald Trump cannot be elected on any given day is a fool. Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, has agreed to a debate challenge offered to him by Sean Hannity, the primetime Fox News propagandist, who has stewarded the fascist age in the United States. He asked the California governor if he would debate Ron DeSantis. And the California governor said yes, just like Mark Zuckerberg said yes, to Elon Musk's fight challenge. But it seems that DeSantis, like Musk, is a bully who runs from his fights. Again, DeSantis got Sean Hannity to pick the fight, asked for the challenge. And now DeSantis is the one who was hiding? Because what will happen? When Governor Newsom and Ron DeSantis sit down with Sean Hannity for the time that that is on the air, those viewers will be exposed to reality. And they will be exposed to a world-class communicator who can explain the stakes, who can explain that we are one nation, that the American people should not wish for civil war, that our leaders should be faithful to our people, to our democracy, and to the constitutional oath that they take. By the time Ron DeSantis gets to the end of the debate with Gavin Newsom, his career will be shattered. There is no risk for the Biden campaign. There is no risk for anyone except Ron DeSantis in the debate, but the Biden campaign is worried for some reason that's unclear. The simple fact is that it will be a hard campaign. And there is a dichotomy of voices within the NBC News story. Within the campaign, there are voices that seem completely checked out from the reality of what is happening. If those voices are the dominant voices within the Biden campaign, and we don't know, because the sourcing is anonymous within the stories, the whole country is in a lot of trouble because the people who are running the effort that will be at the tip of the spear defending American democracy don't understand what's happening. Donald Trump is the gravest threat this country's democracy has faced since the Confederacy. What he did, should our democracy survive, will be judged as the greatest act of treachery and betrayal in American history by our descendants. But what will they say about us, this generation of Americans, who will decide the fate of the country? Will we measure up? The months ahead will give an important series of clues to that answer in the 2024 political contest. We'll know by the time we get to the New Year. Could new candidates enter? Maybe, but the truth is, at this moment, at the end of the summer, Donald Trump and Joe Biden are heading to their party's respective nominations. This is with no hyperbole. The most important election ever. It's existential. Both sides are all in. Losing means that Donald Trump will return to the White House, and within a year, our 250-year-old American republic will be gone. It will exist in name only. Our country will be down the road, down the path will become like a far-right version of Hungary on the North American continent. It will be led by a nationalist nativist, racist, extremist faction that has no interest in the protection of minority rights, natural rights and sees no limits whatsoever to its power on any issue -- ever. It will abuse its power. It will prosecute and persecute its political opponents. It will eradicate dissent everywhere it can. That's what's at stake. That's what the fight is about. The ability to articulate those stakes is essential to winning that fight. That's why whomever on the Biden campaign thinks it's a good idea to sideline the most articulate Democratic governor in the country isn't ready for primetime, and shouldn't be working on a presidential campaign. Not one where the stakes are this high.