Who really lost the Newsom vs. DeSantis debate?

I accidentally got ready for Thursday night’s debate between Ron DeSantis and Gavin Newsom.

Driving around the Los Angeles suburbs on Wednesday afternoon, I turned on one of our news radio stations in time to hear an entire interview with the director of a downtown homeless shelter. You can listen to it here, and be sure to pay close attention to the exchange that happens around the 2:40 mark.

The reporter notes that Newsom has been bragging about how many homeless people California has managed to get off the streets, framing it as a policy win that makes his state more successful than Florida. The shelter director annihilates the premise as if from a great height: Florida’s largest homeless population is in Miami, he says, with around 3,800 people on the street, while Los Angeles has 70,000 homeless people.

Seventy thousand.

We treat political debates as a meaningful activity, or we’re supposed to. Sorry, I can’t do it. The Christian Bale character we have for a governor in the formerly Golden State is a quick, aggressive, and sociopathically shameless liar. But 3,800 to 70,000? Good night, and thanks for coming. The whole state has closer to 170,000 people on the streets, by the way, while Florida has a little over 27,000, with almost 15,000 of those in shelters. Go walk around San Francisco if these numbers are feeling too abstract.

The most important way we’re reducing California’s homeless population is through a miserable, ugly, constant march of deaths: “The mortality rate among homeless people in Los Angeles County has increased by 55% in recent years, according to the latest county public health report. In 2019, 1,289 people experiencing homelessness died. This number increased to 1,811 in 2020 and 2,201 in 2021.”

The real debate is written in the streets, in tents and bodies. It’s written in the tax codes, in the U-Haul rentals, and in the prices at the gas stations.

What's to debate? How important is it to get in some really deft zingers? Newsom has better timing, better delivery, better teeth, and a lot more death and misery in tents on the sidewalk. Congratulations.

Ron DeSantis isn’t a show pony, and it’s increasingly obvious that he can’t even play one on TV. He got in a great line, early in the debate, about Newsom's father-in-law fleeing California for Florida, and then he stepped on it. He rushed past the punch line, diving into his next sentence with a remarkable inability to find the pause that lets the other guy writhe on the hook for a moment.

One beat, two beats, audience gets the joke, audience starts to laugh, boom, next line to slam it home. DeSantis doesn’t have that. Ladies and gentlemen, I am sorry: DeSantis will never have that. It just isn’t in him.

Here's my full analysis of that moment, which perfectly demonstrates how poorly DeSantis performs the silly ritual of "debating": Who cares? Who could possibly care? Gavin Newsom’s father-in-law actually fled California for Florida. He did so because California is poorly governed and Florida is well governed. Reality goes on, no matter how anyone performs the lines their consultants scripted for them.

As a Californian, I “watched” the “debate” in the way I'm accustomed to watching my governor, which means that I hit pause a lot to shout obscenities at the screen, fast-forwarded through several waves of nausea, and paced around the living room trying to unclench my fists. Only Larry Flynt would publish a transcript of me responding to the sound of Gavin Newsom speaking, and Larry’s dead.

Most obviously, against a clear record of relentless and astonishing decline, Newsom smirked and performed loud acts of clumsy misdirection.

Yes, a massive number of people have fled the state, and here's the Public Policy Institute of California saying it:

California is in the midst of an unprecedented demographic period: the state’s population is declining for the first time since records have been kept. Between January 2020 and January 2023 California lost almost 800,000 residents, according to estimates by the state’s Department of Finance.

Newsom’s response is to shout that we dominate, we dominate! We have biotech! We have important universities! He answers any question but the one you asked him, because he’s Gavin Newsom.

In the Canadian House of Commons this week, opposition leader Pierre Poilievre asked Prime Minister Justin Trudeau about the astonishing increase in the cost of living for Canadians and the resulting insecurity in food and housing. Trudeau responded, in large part, by leaping to his feet and shouting in a state of performative rage that Canadian conservatives no longer stand with Ukraine. This style of “debate” …

Question: Why is food so expensive?

Answer: YOU LOVE PUTIN?!?!?!?

... is constantly, infuriatingly in evidence any time Gavin Newsom stands on a stage somewhere. Newsom and Trudeau, separated at birth.

The real debate is written in the streets, in tents and bodies. It’s written in the tax codes, in the U-Haul rentals, in the prices at the gas stations ($3.16 in Florida to $4.85 in California as I write this), in the faces of the families that moved to Florida during the pandemic because they could feel freedom there. The thing on television was the echo of the debate, not the thing itself. There are no mysteries about the identity of the winners and the losers.