California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) said during an interview with “PBS NewsHour” that the socialist party’s ideas are being worked into the Democratic platform.
Amna Nawaz asked Newsom, “So, let me ask you about how Democrats can win back control of Congress, because it’s been a pretty revealing primary season for the party, right? A reckoning, some have called it, too. You saw how many wins DSA candidates, Democratic Socialist candidates, were able to win, Donavan McKinney in Michigan, Chris Rabb in Pennsylvania, Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, he doesn’t identify as DSA, but was sort of aligned with them. If you have these candidates and this platform that is clearly animating the base, energizing turnout, should more of those ideas be worked into the broader Democratic platform?”
Newsom responded by saying, “I think they are. We want money out of politics. I’ve been supporting clean money campaigns for decades. We have a public finance –” before Nawaz interjected to state, “But there seems to be a little distance between some leadership and those DSA candidates.”
The governor then declared that ideas are shared among both socialists and Democrats. “I believe in universal healthcare, and I believe in Medicare for All. The party does overwhelmingly, you poll people in the party. So, if it’s about more money in your pocket, lowering costs, it’s about getting money out of politics, and it’s about Medicare for All, I think we’re pretty aligned,” he explained. “It’s about recognizing that we’ve got a planet that is getting hotter and drier, and that we’ve got to address the issue of climate change, and we want energy security, and we want to move off fossil fuels. That’s a DSA position. That’s a mainstream position within the Democratic Party.”
“So, I think, in many ways — it’s just a label. And it’s a familiar — forgive me, you’re talking to the wrong person, it’s such a familiar label to me. We called them progressives. It was the Green Party. I ran against the Green Party. It sounded — the exact same platform 20 years ago, maybe it’s because I’m from the Bay Area, maybe it’s because I’m from California. And I think it’s healthy,” Newsom continued. “I just think it’s — I’m not consumed by this. I don’t think there’s a great — I just — I think it’s the natural — it’s the — how — it’s reflected in Kucinich and just aspects and component parts of our party that we’ve always had, and it’s a healthy dialectic within the party.”
Newsom’s comments that such ideas are “healthy” within the Democratic platform echo those made by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who said, “The Democratic Party right now is, I think, going through a kind of experiment, like who can actually respond particularly to young people’s very real concerns about where they are at this point in their lives and what kind of future do they have for themselves? I think that is healthy.”
