Debate Me, Bro

By Nick Catoggio

Thursday, August 03, 2023

 

The most substantive debate of the 2024 presidential cycle will involve a guy who isn’t running for president and a guy who might as well not be running for president.

 

That’s what happens when the presumptive nominees of the two major parties are mentally compromised geriatrics. To quench our thirst for ideological bloodsport, we’re forced to turn to also-rans and never-beens who are, at least, compos mentis.

 

In June, Sean Hannity interviewed California Gov. Gavin Newsom and used the opportunity to invite him to debate Ron DeSantis. Why DeSantis instead of Trump, you ask? For one thing, Trump would never agree to it. If he won’t take the arguably necessary political risk of debating other Republicans, he certainly won’t take an unnecessary one by debating Newsom.

 

But Hannity had a better reason to focus on DeSantis: He was taking a cue from Newsom himself. The governor of California has been needling the governor of Florida to debate him for almost a year.

Last fall Newsom wrote to the Justice Department to inquire whether DeSantis might have violated federal racketeering statutes by persuading migrants to board buses to California under false pretenses. “I think his hair gel is interfering with his brain function,” DeSantis scoffed when asked about it. Hence Newsom’s reply: Debate me, bro.

 

That wasn’t the first “incident” involving the two.

 

In July 2022 Newsom celebrated Independence Day by airing an ad in Florida inviting locals annoyed by DeSantis’ culture war to decamp to California. It’s not every day that a politician who isn’t running for president spends money to attack an official in a different state but Newsom had his reasons. He saw an opportunity to build his national profile as an unapologetic champion of left-wing values in case his party suddenly finds itself in need of a new nominee before Election Day 2024—a nonzero proposition.

 

But I think he also sincerely dislikes DeSantis and the demagoguery of his political program. The governor of Florida appears to get under his skin in a way that Donald Trump does not, possibly because Newsom thinks DeSantis’ populism is cynical and disingenuous, possibly because DeSantis’ cultural initiatives are more aggressive than anything Trump did as president.

 

Regardless, when Hannity asked Newsom earlier this summer if he’s willing to debate DeSantis on Fox News, with Sean himself as moderator, the governor couldn’t contain his eagerness. “I’m all in. Count on it,” Newsom said. “I would do it one day’s notice with no notes.” DeSantis wasn’t as eager. When reporters pressed him about debating Newsom, he deflected by goading his rival to “stop pussyfooting around” and jump into the Democratic primary against Biden: “Why don’t you throw your hat in the ring, and then we’ll go ahead and talk about what’s happening.”

 

That was June, not long after DeSantis had announced his candidacy for president. On the day he rejected Newsom’s invitation, he was polling at 21.6 percent nationally against Trump and doubtless anticipating a post-announcement surge. As a serious contender for the Republican nomination, he had no need or desire to give Gavin Newsom the time of day. He was in the same position then that Trump is in now, seeing more downside than upside in debating a prominent left-winger who’s capable of landing hard blows.

 

As of yesterday, DeSantis was polling at 18.1 percent.

 

I’ve lost count of how many campaign “resets” he’s undertaken in the last six weeks to try to reverse that downward trend. He remains, nominally, a “serious contender” for the Republican nomination but chiefly as the first break-glass-in-case-of-emergency option in case you-know-who keels over. 

 

At this point he has nothing left to lose. So when Hannity put him on the spot during an interview last night about debating Newsom, go figure that Ron DeSantis might be suddenly and cheerfully gung ho.

That’s a rare case of him doing something lately that is, unambiguously, strategically correct.

 

***

 

If you’re suspicious that Gavin Newsom’s “debate me, bro” shtick is just another attempt to become his own party’s break-glass-in-case-of-emergency presidential option, you should be.

 

On Tuesday the Sacramento Bee reported that he’s quietly launched a PAC, a super PAC, and a joint fundraising committee, the kind of financial arsenal a politician builds when he’s eyeing a national run. No one believes Newsom will challenge Joe Biden, to be clear; he’s denied it many times and I believe him, as dividing the Democratic Party with Trump looming in 2024 would make him a villain to millions on the left. At 55 years old, the governor can wait.

 

But the president is a very old man, as you may have heard, and the vice president often sounds in interviews as though she’s sustained a head injury. If poor health should force Biden from the race before Election Day and his party ends up concluding, correctly, that Kamala Harris can’t beat Trump, Newsom is an obvious fallback option. From his fundraising to his willingness to enter the Fox News lion’s den, his political strategy for the next 15 months will aim to communicate precisely two words: I’m ready.

 

And so, for him, a debate with Ron DeSantis is practically all upside.

 

There’s a chance, I suppose, that DeSantis will dominate the event so thoroughly as to shatter Newsom’s image. Getting publicly demolished in a conversation with one of the left’s two least favorite right-wing populists might be a blow from which it’s impossible for a Democratic politician to recover. But Newsom is smart, aggressive, and more naturally charismatic than DeSantis; it’s hard to imagine him doing so poorly that even liberals primed to boast that he won the night would feel forced by bitter reality to concede that he’d blown it.

 

Especially considering the high stakes for his opponent. Being dominated by a progressive as hated as Newsom would humiliate DeSantis in the eyes of Republican voters for whom owning the libs is the highest metaphysical priority. It would effectively end his presidential candidacy by transforming him instantly from a “fighter” into a sucker—and his enemies on the left would know it, and would relish the prospect. If you’re a liberal who hates him and wants to see his presidential ambitions flame out spectacularly at the hands of a prominent Democrat, you’ll screech after the debate that Ron got pwn3d no matter how well or poorly Newsom actually does.

 

Frankly, given what his base will be expecting from this event, Gavin Newsom almost can’t fail to satisfy them. Progressives won’t be watching to see him debate the comparative merits of California’s and Florida’s policies on building new housing, say. They’ll be watching to see Newsom channel the moral outrage they feel at DeSantis’ post-liberal cultural agenda, particularly how it affects gays and immigrants. They want to see him call his opponent a “small, pathetic man” to his face, or to make him squirm by asking him point blank whether he would have done what Mike Pence did on January 6. Newsom won’t disappoint.

 

For DeSantis, the stakes are different.

 

The governor of Florida is at a disadvantage to the governor of California in one sense. The entire left will want to see Newsom do well but, because of the dynamics of the primary, by no means will the entire right be pulling for DeSantis. No matter how effective DeSantis is, Trump will issue a statement afterward insisting that he got his clock cleaned. (He’s friendly-ish with Newsom too, as strange as that may be.) That spin will instantly become holy writ for Trump voters and amplified by pro-Trump media. Just as it’s all but impossible for Newsom to truly fail at the debate, it’s impossible for DeSantis to succeed so impressively that the entirety of his own party will concede that he did well.

 

Still, on balance, taking on Newsom is a high-risk strategy with a potentially high reward.

 

DeSantis wouldn’t dream of taking that risk if he were neck-and-neck with Trump in the polls. Plainly, Newsom’s offer to debate was accepted only because Team Ron is desperate to reverse its fortunes somehow. But as fortune-reversing stunts go, this one seems shrewd. If you were looking for a way to demonstrate DeSantis’ particular strengths to voters and to get undecided Republicans rooting for him, you couldn’t do better than to plop him into a televised debate with Gov. Hair Gel of dystopian California.

 

For starters, the format will elevate DeSantis by lending him a degree of prestige he hasn’t enjoyed since his landslide victory in Florida last fall. At the time it looked like he’d be no worse than a co-frontrunner for the 2024 nomination, if not the favorite. Instead, since the end of March, he hasn’t been within 30 points of Trump. The incredible shrinking candidate will get a boost in stature from the fact that he, not the head of the party, has been chosen to be the champion of the right for an evening in rhetorical combat with Gavin Newsom. If you’re a Republican voter who’s had trouble imagining DeSantis as the GOP’s standard bearer, this will make it marginally easier.

 

The format should also work for him. Like him or not, DeSantis is a very bright guy, willing and able to immerse himself in the details of policy. It’s been a long time since Republican voters got to see a major candidate from their party speak thoughtfully and confidently on behalf of their preferences and ideological beliefs. The governor is capable. And if he proves it in the debate with Newsom, he’ll reinforce the core theme of his campaign—that he, unlike certain people, is serious about policy and will move the right’s agenda in creative directions as president. Reminding Republicans that politics is supposed to be about effective governance rather than identity or spectacle can only be good for the anti-Trump cause. The debate should help.

 

All the more so because Gavin Newsom is a dream opponent for Team Ron. They’re both authoritarians, but on issue after issue the state Newsom governs represents the antithesis of the DeSantis program.

 

Do you favor legal limits to abortion for the sake of protecting human life? California is your nightmare.

 

Do you worry about law and order breaking down if bleeding-heart liberals are put in charge? California is your nightmare.

 

Did you resent endless COVID restrictions, particularly those that set children back by keeping them out of schools? California is your nightmare.

 

Do you fear that progressive support for trans rights is getting increasingly weird and extreme? California is your nightmare.

 

Do you believe high taxes and hyper-regulation do more harm to society than good? California is your nightmare—and has been for decades.

 

DeSantis will stand on a stage opposite Gavin Newsom and tell Republican viewers truthfully that as governor he moved all manner of legislation to prevent California’s social ills from infecting Florida. That’s a good message for him. Primary voters need to be reminded that he’s foremost an enemy of leftism, not of Donald Trump. 

 

And they also need to be reminded of his status as the most outspoken culture warrior among America’s Republican governors. Picking a fight with the most outspoken culture warrior among America’s Democratic governors is an efficient way to do so.

 

There’s one more way in which this stunt might benefit DeSantis, though.

 

***

 

The timing of the debate is unsettled but Newsom has proposed holding it on November 8 or November 10 in Nevada, Georgia, or North Carolina. Why he’s chosen those states is obvious; they’re all battlegrounds in which an aspiring national figure should want to make a splash. The dates are less obviously explained but those days happen to fall right after Election Day this year. Perhaps Newsom is expecting a major win for Democrats on Ohio’s closely watched abortion ballot referendum and wants to put his opponent on the defensive about it.

 

Given the trajectory of DeSantis’ presidential campaign, three months seems awfully long to wait. There’s a chance that he’ll have slipped to third place (or worse?) by then and a small chance that he’ll have quit the race entirely. Last fall he was riding high enough that he didn’t think debating Newsom was worth his time; this fall, he might be riding low enough that debating DeSantis isn’t worth Newsom’s time.

 

There may be a silver lining to the scheduling, however. Pushing the debate deep into the fall could extend DeSantis’ “shelf life” as a candidate in the minds of Republican voters.

 

After all, we can’t be more than a month away from Trump and his cronies pushing aggressively for the other Republican candidates to drop out and clear the field for him. Trump is unbeatable, they’ll say, not unconvincingly. By staying in, his opponents are pointlessly dividing the party when we should be pulling together to defeat the DOJ’s scammy rigged prosecution hoax.

 

It’s already begun, in fact.

How DeSantis’ polling will hold up as that argument begins to catch on is anyone’s guess; the worse he does at the first Republican primary debate a few weeks from now, the more persuasive it’ll seem. As MAGA flunkies insist with growing vehemence that continuing to run against him is a form of treason, the governor and his fans will need counterarguments.

 

The debate with Newsom is something Team Ron can point to. The fact that DeSantis will represent the right in a nationally televised battle of wits with the governor of California proves his stature as a national figure, they might argue. His performance against Newsom could change some Republican minds and win over others that haven’t been made up yet. If he were to quit the race, the debate might not even come off. He owes it to his supporters and to the right more broadly to stay in the contest and face off with Newsom in November.

 

It’s something Republican voters will look forward to. And if they’re looking forward to it, they might be more patient with DeSantis about continuing his campaign into the fall.

 

That might buy him an extra month or two to try to build some momentum against Trump. If he does perform well against Newsom, sparking interest in his presidential candidacy, the timing will be fortuitous: November is right around when casual voters will begin to pay closer attention to the presidential race. A Fox News spotlight for DeSantis as he tries to slay a liberal dragon could be the best chance he’ll have in this cycle to make a deep positive impression.

 

And if Trump wimps out of appearing at the first few GOP primary debates, the battle with Newsom will look that much better for the Floridian. “I’m taking on all comers, including the governor of California, and meanwhile Trump is too scared to face me. Debate me, bro,” DeSantis will say.

 

The American right demands a “fighter” to represent it and the governor is about to give them what they want. That alone won’t win the primary for him, but by accepting Newsom’s offer he took a step in the right direction. For once.