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Thanks to Hillary Clintons unexpected defeat last fall, Democrats face a quandary they werent expecting until the next decade: what does their party embody in a post-Clinton universe?

One place to go seeking answers: California and an open gubernatorial seat in 2018 thats a window into modern-day progressivism or, at least, the Left Coast version of it.

One recent statewide poll has Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom well ahead of his Democratic rivals 28 percent overall support, to only 11 percent for former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, 8% for state Treasurer John Chiang and 3 percent for former state schools superintendent Delaine Eastin.

Among just Democrats, the numbers are more jarring. Newsom receives 40 percent of his partys vote, to only 15 percent for Villaraigosa (25 percent of Democrats were undecided).

So what does Newsom owe this to, aside from his dogged pursuit of a job that eluded him when he challenged Jerry Brown for it back in 2010?

Its more than good looks. Although, blessed with a striking Stanford-educated wife whos dabbled in films and four young children, the well coiffed, corporate-casual, 49-year-old Newsom is the embodiment of Marin County metrosexual chic.

Nor is it Newsoms Bill Clinton-like quest to convince voters of his passion for big ideas. One of Newsoms pet concepts: how automation driverless cars, robotic burger-flippers will scramble Californias job market.

What distinguishes Newsom in California circles and why his gubernatorial quest is worth studying for other Democrats trying to rebuild the blue wall that Donald Trump laid to waste across the Rust Belt is his ownership of four topics, all beginning with the letter g, that resonate with his partys faithful.

Those topics:

Gays. In 2004 and at the time the mayor of San Francisco, Newsom sparked a nationwide political and legal firestorm by issuing about 4,000 marriage licenses to same-sex couples. It put him eight and nine years ahead of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

It gives Newsom a big civil-rights talking point to market to Democrats both in California and nationwide should his ambitions take him beyond the Golden State (though same-sex marriage remains a tough sell to some black Protestants).

Guns. Newsom was a sponsor of 2016s Proposition 63, which outlawed the possession of high-capacity magazines and requires background checks for buying ammunition and outlaw magazines that hold more than 10 rounds.

Gun control is not a political third rail in deep-blue California (Prop 63 received a high percentage of votes than did Mrs. Clinton. However, it remains troublesome for Democrats in purple states (last October, the National Rifle Association spent heavily on broadcast networks in North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania three states that eluded Clintons grasp).

Grass. Guns werent Newsoms only involvement with last falls initiative slate. He also co-sponsored Proposition 64, which legalized recreational marijuana use for California adults 21-and-over.

Newsom hailed its passage as nothing less than a game changer regarding Americas war on drugs, although Prop 64 received almost 685,000 fewer votes than Prop 63 and one million fewer voters than another ballot measure that raised Californias tobacco tax.

A funny thing about legalized pot: of the eight states that have legalized recreational use, only one (Alaska) didnt vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016; two others (Colorado, Nevada) are battleground states. The remaining five California, Maine, Massachusetts, Oregon and Washington are the backbone of a Democratic electoral count (three blue wall states Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania have medicinal marijuana laws on the books).

As with his stance on same-marriage marriage, is Newsoms advocacy for legalized pot two or more campaign cycles ahead of the curve?

Government. More recently, Newsom added new timber to his gubernatorial platform: universal healthcare. What Newsom envisions is a statewide version of the Healthy San Francisco plan implemented while he ran that city, which provides coverage to over 50,000 uninsured city residents (without regard to income or immigration status).

A potential snag for any healthcare expansion in California, as summed up by the man Newsom hopes to succeed: Where do you get the extra money?

After an election in which Democrats found themselves on the defensive over Obamacares flawed promise, is the utopia of universal healthcare a winning message come 2020? Three years from, will voters in the same flyover states that lost touch with the national Democratic Party warm up to the progressive agenda underway in California?

An oddity of recent times is goliath Californias lack of relevance in presidential affairs. After having a favorite son on a national ticket in seven of the nine national elections from 1952 to 1984, Californias been out of the game for over three decades now. Given its heavy tilt to one party, the nation-state serves little purpose for presidential candidates other than chichi fundraisers and daytime drop-ins on Ellen DeGeneres couch.

Perhaps the next governor ends that drought. If so, it could be part of the next tectonic shift in California politics.

In 1966, Ronald Reagan led a conservative revolt against Democratic rule of Sacramento, running against the cultural drift of the times a crusade that eventually took him to the White House.

In 2003, Arnold Schwarzenegger led a less ideological, more populist uprising again, at the expense of Californias Democratic power structure.

Schwarzenegger wasnt constitutionally eligible to run for president. But one could argue that hints of his celebrity-driven populism could be found in Donald Trumps improbable campaign.

Were Gavin Newsom to succeed Jerry Brown, its neither a rebellion against nor a repudiation of Democratic policies. However, it would mark a pronounced shift in favor of progressive idealism (Brown, the nations oldest governor, opposes marijuana legalization, claims to be a fiscal conservative, and fashions himself as a pragmatic curb against the State Legislatures liberal excesses).

What Newsom is offering to California may sell in the Golden State a year from now. But gays, guns, grass and government as the cure to what ails the party out of power?

California dreaming until proved otherwise far away from the Left Coast.

Bill Whalen is a research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, where he analyzes California and national politics. He also blogs daily on the 2016 election at http://www.adayattheracesblog.com. Follow him on Twitter @hooverwhalen.

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What's a Democrat to run on these days? In California: gays, guns, grass and government - Fox News

By Bill Barrow and Kathleen Foody

Photo: Kevin D. Liles, For The Washington Post

Democrat Jon Ossoff attends a campaign event Friday in suburban Atlanta. He is leading polls in the race to replace Tom Price, now the secretary of Health and Human Services.

Democrat Jon Ossoff attends a campaign event Friday in suburban Atlanta. He is leading polls in the race to replace Tom Price, now the secretary of Health and Human Services.

Democrats look for upset in GOP turf

MARIETTA, Ga. Republicans in Georgias conservative 6th district dont agree on which of their partys 11 candidates should represent the area in Congress.

But theyre united on one thing: it cant be the Democrat trying for a major upset fueled by anti-Trump sentiment and millions of dollars from around the country.

I dont care what party youre from, said Marty Aftewicz, a 66-year-old GOP voter from Marietta. If the moneys coming from outside the district, its dirty.

Democrats in the area, though, see the flood of donations as a sign theyre not alone in opposing the president.

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It gives me some hope, even though Georgia is a heavily red state, said Barbara Oakley, a 65-year-old retired pharmacist. I think Democrats got surprised by Trump in November and theyre ready to work.

Approaching Tuesdays primary, Republicans are trying to prevent victory by a previously unknown former congressional staffer, 30-year-old Jon Ossoff. His bid to replace Health Secretary Tom Price in Congress carries implications beyond the northern suburbs of Atlanta as both major parties position themselves for the 2018 midterm elections.

Five Democrats will appear on the ballot, but Ossoff is considered the greatest threat to the GOP. Two independent candidates also are running.

The 18-candidate jungle primary comes a week after Republicans sweated out a single-digit special congressional victory in Kansas. Republican winner Ron Estes had previously coasted to easy statewide victories as state treasurer, but won a House seat in Wichita by just 7 percentage points, with little outside investment from national Democrats.

In Georgia, by contrast, both parties have dispatched paid field staffers, and a Republican political action committee backed by House Speaker Paul Ryan has spent more than $2 million pounding Ossoff. President Trump underperformed other Republicans in the suburban district, making it a soft target for Democrats.

Jon is being bankrolled by the most extreme liberals, said Republican candidate Karen Handel, referring to Ossoffs fundraising haul that exceeds $8 million, most of it from outside the district.

Republicans essentially concede Ossoff will lead the voting Tuesday. That leaves 11 Republican candidates hoping the investigative filmmaker fails to reach a majority. If he doesnt, Ossoff and the top GOP vote-getter would meet in a June 20 runoff.

Bill Barrow and Kathleen Foody are Associated Press writers.

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Democrats look for upset in GOP turf - SFGate

The Senate's inevitable approval of Neil Gorsuch to replace the late Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court suggests that rather than failing to successfully filibuster President Trump's nomination, Democrats might have done better to show him the respect Republicans denied to Merrick Garland, President Barack Obama's choice for the post. At least, that might have won Democrats points with the public for graciousness.

But in the end, it was Gorsuch's "originalist" views of the Constitution - said by some legal scholars to be more extreme than those of Scalia or his acolyte, Justice Clarence Thomas - that led the minority party to dare Senate Republicans to execute the "nuclear option."

AP file photo

The Republicans obliged by ditching a Senate rule requiring at least 60 votes to end debate on a Supreme Court nomination. Ironically, Democrats set the precedent for being bombed when they lorded over the Senate and changed the rules in 2013 to allow a simple majority to end debate for all cabinet and judicial nominations except for the Supreme Court.

Invoking the nuclear option now makes it easier for Republicans to ignore Democrats when the next vacancy occurs. That could be soon, given the justices' ages: Ruth Bader Ginsburg is 84; Anthony Kennedy, 80; Stephen Breyer, 78; Clarence Thomas, 68; Samuel Alito, 67; John Roberts, 62; Sonia Sotomayor, 62; Elena Kagan, 56; and Gorsuch, 49.

Youth is usually associated with liberal views, but Gorsuch's age disturbs progressives who say it makes him more dangerous. Ian Milhiser, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, says Gorsuch, as did Scalia, believes in "originalism," meaning the only way to properly interpret the Constitution is by examining what its words meant when it was ratified. But while Scalia also stressed the need for judicial restraint, Gorsuch seems to lack such qualms.

Scalia's originalism, Milhiser said, "was rooted in an understanding that conservatives may not always control the Supreme Court, so judicial conservatives would do well to articulate lines that no judge, liberal or conservative, must ever cross." In contrast, Gorsuch, "who has spent his entire professional career watching the court grow more and more conservative," doesn't have Scalia's instinct for restraint. In that respect, Gorsuch may more closely resemble Thomas.

The possibility of another Thomas on the court was a better reason than mistreatment of Garland for Democrats to fight Gorsuch's appointment to the bitter end. After all, in the coming years the court may make crucial rulings on voting rights, gerrymandering, campaign finance, gender identification, affirmative action, and abortion. But the fight was lost months ago. Even if Garland had a hearing, the Senate's Republican majority wasn't about to confirm him.

For all the trouble they took to deny Gorsuch his seat, all the Democrats got is a chance to put the shoe on the other foot if they can retake the Senate. That's not good. This country is desperate for an end to the partisan warfare that has crippled Congress. But the fight over the Gorsuch nomination has taken the Senate farther down the wrong path to where the House is already muddled. Remember when filibuster was a bad word; it actually served a useful purpose.

Published: April 16, 2017 3:01 AM EDT The Philadelphia Inquirer

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Democrats have little to show for fight to keep Gorsuch off court - Philly.com

As he traveled the state last week, Gov. Bruce Rauner said the purpose of his two-day, campaign-funded tour was "about getting the message out to the people of Illinois."

Behind that message was the reminder that he's up for re-election next year, he's attempting to account for why his agenda is stalled and he thinks the goals he was first elected on in 2014 remain important to achieve.

Also on display was a trait that's frustrated Democrats and Republicans alike: Rauner portrays himself as flexible on his demands for striking a broad budget deal, but the specifics of what he'll settle for to end the historic impasse remain a moving target. At the Capitol, the details are what matter in getting a compromise done.

The idea behind the 10-city trip was to fill the political vacuum created when the General Assembly embarked on a two-week break. It allowed the Republican governor largely unfettered ability to speak without readily available Democratic critics in Springfield. The tour also unfolded during a massive statewide TV ad buy from an affiliate of the Republican Governors Association aimed at pushing Rauner's agenda out to voters.

Throughout, Rauner steadfastly maintained that his trip was not a re-election announcement. At times, he vacillated between whether the tour was political or not, although his talks consistently revisited themes he previously has discussed on the taxpayer dime.

"It was primarily a political trip. It was not paid for by taxpayers. We were specifically inviting Republican grass-roots activists and other leaders," Rauner said in summing up the tour Friday on WBEZ 91.5-FM. "This one was particularly political, although it's really fundamentally about getting the message out to the people of Illinois."

In state government circles, however, the trip was viewed as a soft rollout of the re-election campaign. Echoing the theme of the TV ad, in which he accuses career politicians of supporting "duct tape" solutions, Rauner aimed at affixing blame on Madigan and Democrats for blocking his budget prerequisites. During a stop in the small southwestern Illinois community of Bethalto, the governor harked back to the days when he wore a Carhartt hunting jacket in the 2014 campaign.

"You guys know it's a brutal battle," Rauner said, according to the Alton Telegraph. "The majority Democrats don't want to change anything. They're just hunkered in like ticks on a dog. You can't get them out. You can't get them off. But by the people coming together this isn't about Democrats versus Republicans it is about people coming together and standing up to a corrupt machine that's running the government for their own benefit."

Veteran Democratic Rep. Lou Lang countered that the "southern twang (Rauner) uses doesn't travel very far anymore. I think people are seeing through that."

Lang, a top deputy to Rauner nemesis House Speaker Michael Madigan, suggested Rauner felt pressure because the 2018 race for governor already has started. On Friday, for example, billionaire Chicago businessman J.B. Pritzker put $7 million of his own money into his Democratic bid.

"I think it's fair to say this is the beginning of the governor's campaign, that he sees Democratic candidates for governor traveling the state and wants to make sure that they don't get ahead of him in the public eye," said Lang, of Skokie. "And so (Rauner has) the opportunity to spend a little time doing a little traveling. He wants to insist this is a tour about how to improve Illinois, not about his re-election, but I think we all know better," Lang said.

Christopher Mooney, director of the Institute of Government and Public Affairs at the University of Illinois, said Rauner's message last week was to frame the re-election.

"They're trying to as they will establish their message that, as he says, 'Everything I can do by myself I'm getting it done, but the legislature's in the way,'" Mooney said. "So in some sense, he's setting up an excuse to countervail a 'do-nothing' governor attack from the others."

Rauner got positive coverage outside the glare of Chicago and Springfield, where reporters' questions about his actions and motives usually are more pointed and intense.

Even so, newspapers in Peoria and Quincy used terms such as "reiterated" and "repeated" to describe a Rauner message that largely has been unchanged for more than a year as he describes his conditions for resolving the impasse. The Rockford Register Star did not cover his visit there, saying the paper did not consider it "newsworthy."

The thrust of Rauner's tour was to push what he used to call his turnaround agenda, which he now refers to as "structural reforms." The governor is seeking term limits and a property tax freeze as well as changes in government pension benefits, workers' compensation and redistricting as a precondition to support a tax hike to help balance the state's out-of-whack budget.

Which of those items are on or off the table often varies, however. At various stops on the tour, Rauner declared that term limits and a property tax freeze didn't necessarily need to be part of a deal. It's a way for him to come across as flexible, but also makes it hard for him to be pinned down.

"There is no one or two structural changes that we need to have as a requirement. I've never said any one thing has to be there," Rauner said Friday during the radio interview. "But we need a package of changes, structural changes that materially move the needle."

Yet to move the needle to satisfy Rauner, the governor said "term limits definitely helps big with that."

"So far the Senate Democrats have proposed a term limit on Senate leaders through a rule change, just for the Senate leader would be term limited. Well what we need is term limits on everybody, on me, on everybody in the General Assembly. That's not on the table as of now," he said.

Such elusiveness has frustrated some lawmakers at the Capitol who are looking for clarity on what it will take to reach agreement. Democrats like Lang suggested Rauner isn't being up front when he's preaching flexibility.

"As you've seen the last few days, he's commented, 'Well, I don't really need this. I don't really need that. I just need everyone to come together.' But the truth is that's not what he wants," Lang said.

Mooney, the political scientist, questioned the continued effectiveness of Rauner's blame-Madigan excuses as the campaign for governor fully begins to take shape.

"Generally speaking, the governor is held responsible, the chief executive of a unit is held responsible, by the public. That's what we know about public opinion. It's a pretty simplistic view of the world. And as time goes on, he's got to take responsibility for that. Maybe he can effectively blame somebody else like Madigan or whoever, but that's not normally what works," Mooney said.

Pointing to Rauner's previous background as a private equity investor and deal cutter, Mooney said of the governor: "If he's a salesman, this is going to be the hardest sales job he's ever had to make."

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Twitter @rap30

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On state tour, Rauner reiterates his agenda as Democrats line up to ... - Chicago Tribune

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Trump Threatens Health Subsidies to Force Democrats to Bargain - New York Times