Well damn

What

That?

Ostensibly, California’s governor will debate Thursday. Gavin Newsom, who is not running for president, and the governor of Florida. Ron DeSantis, which is, would be an exploration of the ideological differences between the two CEOs.

After all, one is the embodiment of progressive, blue state policy and a high-profile surrogate for President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. The other represents the younger, less orange face of Planet MAGA and, as became clear, cannot pronounce Kamala correctly.

However, twenty minutes later I got a headache. There was so much crosstalk and interruptions by both governors that it was impossible to hear what they were saying.

If there had been a third debater on stage, they almost certainly would have responded. Look folks, this is why those two shouldn’t be on this debate stage.

It was actually kind of funny that Sean Hannity, an unapologetic supporter of former President Trump who engineered this over-hyped meeting of ideological opposites, positioned himself as the adult in the room, the guy who wanted to take things on.

the temperature

a few steps back to get his loaded questions answered.

Let each other breathe, Hannity begged. I don’t want to be the hall monitor. Don’t worry, Sean, that wasn’t you. He prefaced one of his loaded questions this way: Joe Biden has experienced significant cognitive decline.

DeSantis performed better than I expected against the loquacious Newsom, who has two decades of political experience alongside DeSantis. In three previous Republican debates, DeSantis failed to distinguish himself and appeared almost limp next to the verbally muscular former governor of South Carolina. Nikki Haley, who has overtaken him in the polls. (Which probably explains why he agreed to debate Newsom after refusing to do so for most of the last year.) He took well-deserved hits on California’s notorious and widely recognized problems, especially homelessness.

The problem with this spectacle was that too many incompatible things were happening at once: the flailing DeSantis trying to reestablish himself as

athe

A viable alternative for the Republican party in the event that Trump’s felony charges ultimately make him unpalatable to Republican voters.

Newsom sought to raise his national political profile and defend the Biden-Harris record

And

claiming that California is a better place to live than Florida. (Which of course it is.)

Did Newsom have anything to lose? Not really.

Yes, we all know that California is expensive, and for the first time in a while, more people are leaving than coming in. Yes, there were lockdowns during the pandemic. This was the core of DeSantis’ argument that he is the better governor.

And yet, as Newsom noted, more Floridians have recently moved to California than Californians have moved to Florida.

Over there

is

“We have one thing in common,” Newsom said. Neither of us has been nominated for our party in 2024.

Oh no.

@robinkabcarian