Top Democrats were watching closely as California Gov. Gavin Newsom sparred with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in last week’s unusual Fox News undercard debate, doing his best to appear a loyal soldier for President Joe Biden – and that this event was not just his latest way of running himself, or setting himself up to be turned to for the latest conspiracy scenario of the president dropping out ahead of next year’s convention.
“Thank you for noticing that,” Newsom told a reporter after the debate who mentioned he had spent part of the night defending Biden’s record.
“No,” he told another who asked if the event had been about laying the groundwork for 2028. “I was trying to make the case for Joe Biden.”
This is the delicate and sometimes uncomfortable dance the next generation of national Democratic leaders like Newsom find themselves doing in 2024. For the next 11 months, they are stuck being intriguing but not enticing, stoking flames but not fanning them. That task has been made more fraught when their very existence reminds voters – who have made consistently clear that they want another alternative to an 81-year-old president – about what could have been.
CNN’s conversations with two dozen people close to the speculated candidates and many of the Democrats themselves detailed what many of them say is the core struggle, in the words of an adviser to one of the people whose name often gets mentioned as presidential material, “how to sell Joe Biden better than Joe Biden is selling himself,” while also not selling themselves too hard – as several of Newsom’s potential future primary opponents privately gripe he is doing.
Biden aides are also keeping tabs and keeping score – with megadonor and Biden campaign co-chair Jeffrey Katzenberg chiding a number of the Democrats directly that the best way to get powerful…
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