The real answer is that he was never really in it. Down 8 to 1 to Jerry Brown in fundraising and 20 points behind in the polls, Newsom never had a chance. Citing family obligations in his decision to pull out, the only role these had in his decision to bail was that it was unlikely that even his family would vote for him. Newsom’s campaign strategy blessfully showed the limits of the impact of “campaigning 2.0″ on elections not to mention the ridiculous narrowness of his base (gays, progressives, and greens) beyond San Francisco’s city limits. Newsom’s team actually thought that by using Facebook, Twitter, and blogs that he’d be able to raise 50% more than the leading Democratic candidate did in the last election.

But the real problem was that there was nothing there for non-moonbat voters to sink their teeth into. He never did anything to demonstrate fitness for governor nor counter his well-deserved reputation for self-absorption.

The larger issue, which plays into some of the disillusionment of his staff, is that Newsom doesn’t have conversations – he lectures. The same guy who can speak smoothly at a town hall meeting never seems to shut down the informational fire hose and relate on a human level.

It might be fun for the lefties to believe that their viewpoints are the mainstream but if a politician doesn’t take the time to understand what the majority of voters really want then they are going to fail–numerous Twitter followers notwithstanding.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009 at 8:48 am by Insider and is filed under California Schemin'. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.