This is CBS I on the world. Here's John Batchelor. This is CBSI on the world. I'm John Batchelor. Bill Whalen of the Hoover Institution. Policy and Politics is his podcast. Goodfellas is his podcast videocast with his colleagues

at Hoover. We're turning to a question that Bill has raised over these many weeks. Gavin Newsom

and the election of 2024 as governor looking to the future, and that would be the open White

House that is now guaranteed in

2008. Bill, a very good evening to you. Several important votes in California these last 48, 72 hours

tells me that Gavin Newsom understood which way the electorate was going. And he's got his eye on the future

pending the decision about who was going to be president. Now that's gone his way, an empty

White House, for 28. The decisions I recall that were critical were something called Proposition 36

and an election, a recall in Oakland, a mayor's race in San

Francisco, and a contested race for DA in L.A. Gavin Newsom saw all that and which way it was going to go.

How so, Bill. What did he see? I think he saw trouble ahead for his party, even in California,

John, which happened naturally for Democrats as well.

So, yes, he stayed out of Proposition 36, still literally hundreds of thousands of ballots still to be counted California, John.

But I checked it earlier today.

It's over 70 percent.

That is incredibly thin air for a ballot measure in California.

It just ran wild up and down the state. It was very strong in his own Bay Area. Newsom correctly understood that if he opposed that, which he did, but publicly went out and opposed it, he would get run over. So smart move number one. Second smart move, John, he did not really campaign hard for any ballot measures. He struggled with this in recent cycles where he's gone

out and tried in particular to get bond measures passed, and voters have not gone along with that.

So he avoided that kind of embarrassment in this cycle. He did not go out and campaign very hard or

actively for Democrats trying to unseat Republicans in California. Another one was John,

it was sort of like Gavin Newsom wanted to be involved in the election

outside of California.

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