Dianne Feinstein, Democratic senator from San Francisco, has died at the age of 90, and California governor Gavin Newsom has promised to appoint a black woman as a temporary replacement. On Friday’s episode of The Editors, we discussed the somewhat facetious suggestion that Feinstein’s replacement could be Kamala Harris. That way, Democrats could parachute Newsom into the vice presidency, making him better positioned to succeed Biden should circumstances demand it.
Demoting Harris (whose approval ratings are even worse than Biden’s) may be an amusing prospect, but Gavin Newsom’s presidential shadow campaign is no joke. With Biden-Harris, conservatives have gotten used to political enemies being scandal-ridden, gaffe-prone, and unable to speak coherently even when on-script. But that is a low threshold that Newsom easily clears. He is a highly presentable, smooth-talking, skilled political operative peddling the same dangerous ideas in a far more effective way.
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