comment: >
  
  Newsom is on the correct path. I see promise in his future, as long as he doesn’t swerve too far to the left.
context: California has flourished under Newsom and his predecessor, Jerry Brown. People in other parts of the country mostly don’t understand why California’s economy succeeds as well as it does. 
  Georgia has probably made the best attempt to copy the California game plan. >
  
  I didn’t know this about Georgia! What are they doing that makes you say this about them? >
  
  They have been taping a bunch of movies and shows in Georgia lately >
  
  I think that helped keep Herschel Walker out of office, going on and on about vampires and werewolves. Georgia is a zombie state. >
  
  I see what you did there and I approve... >
  
  He is a corporate Democrat through and through. Numbers don’t lie though, California has done well in most categories under his tenure.
  Unfortunately, the path to the White House goes through the rust belt these days, and he may have trouble connecting with voters there. I’m sure the conservative Super PACs have the French Laundry ads ready to go. >
  
  Yes, but he does look like a cartoon fighter pilot, so he’s got that going for him. >
  
  Nope. We like Newsome in CA. >
  
  What doesn't anger critics?
  Though success, such as Newsom's, angers them the most.
  Newsom is leading Democratic candidate for presidential nomination based on his good work in CA, the worlds sixth largest economy which has record high employment, high wages, leading environmental policies, leading educational polices.   CA is probably the best role model for how we want the US overall to look.
  2022 and Biden's excellent two year record of accomplishments and leadership, has made him the leading candidate if he decides to run.  
  But Newsom is the heir to Biden's moderate Democratic success if Biden decides to not run. >
  
  I'm a big Newsom fan but I'm pretty confused about why he isn't leaning more into single payer healthcare (which he campaigned on). If he can credibly run on both pragmatism and M4All, he will unite the Biden/Sanders factions almost immediately and I don't see how anyone stops him.
  Seems like he has abandoned the single payer efforts recently, which I find confusing since it would be a huge feather in his cap. >
  
  Except if any politician tried implementing single-payer healthcare by raising everyone’s tax rates equally, they’d either be way too brain dead to trust with implementing single-payer healthcare at best, or actively sabotaging it to see it fail at worst.
  It’d have to be accompanied by a progressive tax increase. Of course, tax brackets are determined by absolute income rather than how wealthy you are relative to other people, but let’s just assume they’re calculated so that the top x% pays a share equal to their share of the nation’s wealth.
  The top 1% have about 33% of the wealth so let’s say just for fun that the 1% pay for a third of it and the 99% are splitting the other two-thirds evenly. You’re already down to $2,525 per person in that case for the 99% and $125,000 per person for the 1%.
  But let’s go just a bit further. The top 10% own 76% of the wealth and the bottom 50% own 1% of the wealth. So let’s say the top 1% pay 33% between themselves, the next highest 9% pay 43%, the next highest 40% pay 23%, and the bottom 50% pay 1%.
  The price per person per income bracket (excluding those in higher brackets) becomes:
  Top 1%: $125,000/yr
  Top 10%: $17,917/yr
  Top 50%: $2,156/yr
  Bottom 50%: $75/yr
  Given that the cheapest possible annual cost of health insurance premiums in California is $2,004 per person, and the average cost of health insurance is $6,888 per person, most people would see their healthcare costs go down significantly just from doing this alone, even before you take into account the current costs after receiving healthcare. And this can be way more fine tuned to make the top 10%, 1% or even just 0.01% pay an even higher share, to the further reduction of costs for literally everyone else, given that the rich can afford to do so without impeding their quality of life in any way.
  I swear to god, if schools taught students what tax brackets are, we’d be having so much more productive conversations about these kinds of policies than we currently are. >
  
  Yep, absolutely. The top 0.1% can pay a lot more, and it wouldn’t affect their lifestyle at all. It’s a shame the price tag is always a problem for anything that benefits working class people, but for corporate welfare or the military it’s never an issue. >
  
  Lifelong California Resident here.
  It's capitalism with rainbows and a smiley face out here. 
  My tech friends are burdened under bosses who expect them to work incredible hours and not ask for much better than not discriminated against. 
  I have non tech friends who can barely afford to send half their check a month and take janky public transit that hasn't had radical investment to keep up with population growth in decades. 
  Sure the gun crime is lower and there's more rights for average worker, thanks to the pro union bedrock and socially conscious population. But we're far from a success story. 
  We can do so much better. Invest so much more. Promote more pro union/small business rights.
  Prevent monopolistic control of major cities. >
  
  Also a lifelong California resident here. 
  
  But we're far from a success story.
  
  Ok. Which state would be a success story then? >
  
  Newsom for the most part is great. Housing is still a disaster in this state though. I get very jealous when I see how much other states build. >
  
  Anecdotes like him texting corporate CEOs and saying we want big oil to make big profits are definitely troubling if you care about corruption or excesses of big business. I can see why vetoing the safe drug use sites bill would upset people too.
  However, he does represent the party and voters generally. Most Dems and voters generally are moderate and not progressive, even in California. It might be a blue state, but it has heavy conservative and moderate leanings too. He still seems to be effective at tackling climate change and keeping the economy churning at least. I would definitely classify him as neoliberal based on the description in this article but he's effective and represents his state's general leanings. >
  
  Newsome is emblematic of the failures of the Democratic Party. Their efforts go into symbolic campaigns about race, gender, and LGBTQ issues, while on economic issues they pursue a ruinous (for the middle class and poor) neoliberal, pro-corporate agenda. The left needs to find an effective way to fight for a more equitable society. >
  
  
  while on economic issues they pursue a ruinous (for the middle class and poor)
  
  i live in california and im poor. im gonna have to disagree. he's been a pretty good Governor. >
  
  Homeless people do crack in our subways.