What the DeSantis and Newsom Debate Really Revealed
The best way to understand last week’s unusual debate between Governors Gavin Newsom of California and Ron DeSantis of Florida is to think of them less as representatives of different political parties than as ambassadors from different countries.
Thursday night’s debate on Fox News probably won’t much change the arc of either man’s career. DeSantis is still losing altitude in the 2024 GOP presidential race, and Newsom still faces years of auditioning before Democratic leaders and voters for a possible 2028 presidential-nomination run.
What the debate did reveal was how wide a chasm has opened between red and blue states. The governors spent the session wrangling over the relative merits of two utterly divergent models for organizing government and society. It was something like watching an argument over whether the liberal government in France or the conservative government in England produces better outcomes for its people.
“The way the debate will be heard is the nationals of each country cheering their guy on,” Michael Podhorzer, a progressive political strategist and a former political director for the AFL-CIO, told me.
The sharp disagreements between the governors pointed toward a future of widening separation between red and blue blocs whose differences are growing so profound that Podhorzer has argued the sections should be understood as fundamentally different nations.
, this accelerating separation marks a fundamental reversal from the generally centralizing trends
