Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) called on the Democratic Party to take inventory of the mistakes it made last year to avoid facing another devastating election cycle.
A stream of dismal polls and internal power struggles has revealed that Democrats are still grappling with how to rebound from their losses during the 2024 elections. The governor reflected on the state of his party during an interview with the Hill on Monday.
“I don’t know what the party is,” Newsom said. “I’m still struggling with that.”
“We have not done a forensic of what just went wrong, period, full stop,” he continued. “I don’t think it, I know it. I mean, to the extent that I’m marginally part of this party, I represent the state larger than 21 state populations combined, and I can assure you there hasn’t been a party discussion that I’m aware of that has included the state of California.”
“If you don’t learn the lessons of the past, you will repeat them,” Newsom warned.
However, the governor said there is a glimmer of hope in the overflowing rallies spearheaded by progressive champions Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). Despite that, Newsom cautioned that it would be difficult to sell progressive ideas wholesale to the American electorate come election season.
“I don’t know that an electoral victory from a prism of 2028 lies there,” he said about casting the Democratic Party into Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez’s mold. “I’m not convinced of that.”
Led by President Donald Trump, Republicans swept the White House and both chambers of Congress last fall by hammering Democrats on illegal immigration and the economy. Republicans criticized the Left for targeting niche progressive issues, such as expanding transgender protections, instead of focusing on bringing down inflation and securing the border.
An ardent opponent of the GOP, Newsom pressed the Democratic Party and even criticized himself for failing to effectively rebuff Republicans’ arguments to voters.
“Who are we? And if we’re a bunch of dangling verbs and policy statements — I make this mistake often, too. I answer a question with 10 policy responses, as opposed to what do [I] stand for,” he told NBC News.
A grass-roots style of reform is needed to revive the Democratic Party, Newsom added, as he criticized the focus on the dearth of national leadership.
“We just have to move beyond the guy or gal on the white horse that’s going to come save the day — it’s exhausting,” Newsom said. “This party needs to rebuild itself from the bottom up, not top down. We are as dumb as we want to be.”
Newsom has attracted fire on all sides for launching an eponymous podcast in February. The governor has used the platform, centered on a bipartisan approach, to engage with guests harboring an array of ideologies, including prominent conservative voices such as Charlie Kirk and Steve Bannon.
Conservatives, including Kirk, have warned that Newsom’s newly moderate positioning on LGBTQ policies and other issues is a deliberate attempt to leave behind the controversial policies he previously backed ahead of a 2028 presidential run.
Some Democrats have expressed outrage that Newsom is platforming Republican activists and condemned the governor’s newly centrist stances revealed during conversations with his guests on issues such as transgender athletes playing in girls sports.
“The reaction has been a little more bumpy than I even anticipated,” Newsom said of the backlash to his podcast.
“The reaction when I had Charlie Kirk and Bannon on was exactly to me Exhibit A of what I feel is wrong right now with my party: an unwillingness to even engage in a platform, to listen,” he continued.
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The governor expressed frustration with his party’s lack of introspection.
“The fact that we’re not even stress-testing what the hell just happened and we’re having an honest forensic conversation,” he said.
