Gavin Newsom Is Gross and Embarrassing and Will Never Be President

[Aurelius]

Forget all that, good luck in states that have real winters when you banned generators in California.

[Aurelius]

Meh. He's obviously a sleazebag and he almost certainly won't be President, but as far as his job as Governor goes, he's been signing some important legislation trying to remedy some of California's worst problem (while sadly remaining hamstrung by the absurd fiscal constraints we inherited from MUH TAX REVOLT). Now if he could please just sign the farmworkers unionization bill...

California is running a $100 billion surplus (thank you Jerry Brown!) and Newsom's party has super-ultra-mega-supermajority control of both houses of the legislature. No, they can't unilaterally repeal prop 13 (which is good, because prop 13 is a very good thing actually) but there's a giant pot of money sitting waiting for him to tap.

Oh, and if he actually cared about improving California rather than running for President he'd have repealed CEQA a long time ago.

[Aurelius]

He's certainly not my favorite.

Pritzker, despite being a billionaire, seems more relatable.

I'm wondering if being obese is becoming a political advantage as an increasing number of Americans suffer from the disease.

There's lots of evidence that political attractiveness is advantageous for candidates, and it's tough for me to imagine Pritzker winning the most televised election ever. That doesn't necessarily mean an obese candidate can't win -- lots of studies have suggested that, all else held equal, Americans are likelier to vote for women than men, yet we observe a majority-male political class. I kind of do agree on the point that obesity has gotten common enough that some politicians -- like Tester -- can sort of recast it as 'folksiness'.

I have a hard time accepting the premise that Pritzker's physical appearance would be a significant handicap towards his presidential ambitions, considering our previous president was an obese, orange-skinned, 70-year-old man with a weird haircut.

Pritzker is even fatter than Trump, and by a large margin.