offers

SACRAMENTO — One takeaway from last week’s elections: The role model for California Gov. Gavin Newsom as he runs for president should be New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani.

Actually, Mamdani should be emulated not only by Newsom but by Democrats running for office anywhere.

Neither Newsom, of course, nor any candidate outside the most leftist burgs in America should wear the label “democratic socialist,” as Mamdani calls himself. That would frighten too many voters.

But what does appeal to voters — and always has in America — is a strong, positive message of hope. People like to think that a candidate understands their daily troubles and has a vision of how to make their lives better.

Mamdani is a 34-year-old Ugandan-born Muslim of Indian descent and a back-bench New York state assemblyman who the political experts would never figure to win a top-tier elective post such as New York mayor. But he has charisma, exudes authenticity and fills voters with hope.

OK, some of his campaign promises are undeliverable, even in liberal New York: free bus service, free child care and city-run grocery stores. But I suspect many voters didn’t take those pledges literally. It was the boldness and commitment to change for their betterment that drew people to him.

It’s a message framework that has been a winner throughout history.

Franklin D. Roosevelt promised “a new deal for the American people” and gave them hope with his radio fireside chats during the Great Depression.

John F. Kennedy offered a “new frontier.” Barack Obama chanted, “Yes we can” and ran on a slogan of “hope.”

They were all Democrats. But Republican founder Abraham Lincoln urged Americans to “vote yourself a farm and horses” and promised them homesteads on the western frontier.

Ronald Reagan declared: “Let’s make America great again.” Then Donald Trump stole the line and ruined it for any future candidate.

Newsom’s spiel has mostly been that Trump is lower than a worm. That has worked up until now. He has established himself as the Democrats’ most aggressive combatant against Trumpism — and the leader in early polling for the party’s 2028 presidential nomination.

Last week, his national party credentials were bolstered after orchestrating landslide voter approval of Proposition 50, aimed at countering Trump-coerced congressional redistricting in Texas and other red states.

Trump is desperate for the GOP to retain its narrow majority in the House of Representatives during next year’s midterm elections. But Proposition 50 gerrymandering could flip five California seats from Republican to Democrat — perhaps helping Democrats capture House control. Newsom becomes a party hero.

“He’s now a serious front-runner for the Democratic nomination,” says Bob Shrum, a former Democratic consultant who is director of the Center for the Political Future at USC.

Political strategist Mike Murphy, a former Republican turned independent, says “the Democratic presidential race in ‘25 has been won by Gavin Newsom. He made a bet [on Proposition 50] and it paid off.”

But Shrum, Murphy and other veteran politicos agree that Newsom at some point must change his script from predominantly anti-Trump to an appealing agenda for the future.

“He has to have an affordability message, for one,” Shrum says. “And he has to connect with voters. Voters just don’t go down a list of issues. FDR, JFK, Obama, they all were very connected with voters.”

Murphy: “He’s going to have to expand from fighting Trump to talking about his vision for helping the middle class. I’d say, ‘The era of Trump will soon be over. I have a way to bring back the American dream and here’s how I’m going to do it.’”

Easier said than done, especially if you’re the governor of troubled California.

“If it’s about a referendum on California, he has a vulnerability,” Murphy says. “He can’t run on ‘California is great.’”

Newsom consistently brags that California is a pacesetter for the nation. But lots of Americans want nothing to do with our pacesetting.

“You can’t have the highest unemployment, highest gas prices and the biggest homeless problem and tell Americans that everything in California is hunky-dory,” says Republican consultant Rob Stutzman. “Because voters don’t believe that.”

But Democratic consultant Bill Carrick, a South Carolina native, dismisses the effect of anti-California attitudes in Democratic presidential primaries.

“The notion that he can’t win in the South and border states, that’s nonsense,” Carrick says. “People who say that are Republicans. They don’t like Newsom or any other Democrat. People who vote in primaries are hardcore Democrats.”

But Carrick acknowledges that an anti-California bias could hurt Newsom in some states during a general election.

Here’s another takeaway from the elections: The Democratic Party is not in the toilet as far as it has been soul-searching since last November’s presidential election.

Last week, Democrats won everything from local commissioner to governor in much of the country. It confirmed my belief that the party’s chief problem in 2024 was a lousy presidential effort.

President Biden didn’t withdraw early enough for the party to hold primaries that would have allowed its nominee to build wide support. And Kamala Harris simply lacked appeal and didn’t inspire.

Democratic voter enthusiasm was contagious this time.

“There was one of the most exciting ground operations I’ve seen in a long time for 50,” says Democratic strategist Gale Kaufman. “Local party clubs, activists, union members all came together.”

Democrats can thank Trump.

“Voters really don’t trust Democrats but they‘re so angry with Trump it doesn’t matter,” says Dan Schnur, a political science instructor at USC and UC Berkeley.

Final takeaway: Trump has morphed into a Republican albatross.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: After outburst, Katie Porter’s support in the California governor’s race slips, new poll shows
The TK: Proposition 50 is a short-term victory against Trump. But at what cost?
The L.A. Times Special: Taking inspiration from Mamdani, democratic socialists look to expand their power in L.A.

Until next week,
George Skelton

—
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Nov. 7 (UPI) — Democrats are ready to end the federal government shutdown if Republicans agree to extend Affordable Care Act credits for another year, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer announced Friday afternoon.

Schumer, D-N.Y., said Senate Democrats favor passing a temporary funding measure and three other bills that would fund the federal government for one year, CNN reported.

“Democrats are offering a very simple compromise,” Schumer said on the Senate floor.

“Now, the ball is in the Republicans’ court,” he added. “We need Republicans to just say yes.”

Schumer’s announcement came after Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., earlier said the Senate will work through the weekend to negotiate reopening the federal government and possibly vote after a bipartisan effort failed Thursday.

Thune wanted to hold another vote on the House-approved continuing resolution to fund the federal government through Nov. 21, but Senate Democrats aren’t on board, he told media earlier Friday.

“Our members are going to be advised to be available if, in fact, there’s a need to vote,” he said.

“We will see what happens and whether or not, over the course of the next couple of days, the Democrats can find their way to re-engage again,” Thune added.

Thune earlier this week expressed optimism that a funding agreement would be made this week, but that ended after Senate Democrats met on Thursday.

“All I know is that the pep rally they had at lunch yesterday evidently changed some minds,” he said Friday.

“We had given them everything they wanted and had asked for,” Thune explained. “At some point, I was gonna say they have to take ‘yes’ for an answer, and they were trending in that direction.”

The impasse is due to Senate Democrats not trusting President Donald Trump to agree to extend Affordable Care Act tax credits that expire after December and to stop firing federal employees, The Hill reported.

Senate Democrats held a working lunch on Thursday, as referenced by Thune, during which they rejected a bipartisan proposal to reopen the government.

Sens. Gary Peters, D-Mich., Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., and Angus King, I-Maine, had worked out a deal with the GOP, which buoyed Thune’s hope of ending the government shutdown on its record 38th day.

Senate Democrats discussed the bipartisan proposal during their Thursday lunch and rejected it due to their distrust of the president.

The proposal would have included a short-term funding measure to reopen the government and a three-year appropriations bill that would have funded the Agriculture Department, Veterans Affairs, military construction and the legislative branch.

The USDA funding would have meant full funding for currently suspended Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits.

Lacking strong guarantees that the president would support extending Affordable Care Act credits that initially were enacted during the COVID-19 pandemic and that are scheduled to expire at the end of the year, the Senate Democrats said they won’t support the bipartisan plan to move forward.

Despite the continued opposition from Senate Democrats, Thune doesn’t expect the shutdown to continue into the Thanksgiving holiday weekend at the end of the month, he said while appearing on Fox News Friday.

Thune needs at least five more Senate Democrats to join with Democratic Party Sens. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada and King, who caucuses with Senate Democrats, to approve the continuing resolution.

Fetterman, Masto and King consistently have voted in favor of continuing the 2025 fiscal year budget while negotiating the budget for the 2026 fiscal year, which started on Oct. 1.

Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky is the only Republican senator to continually vote against the measure.

The House-approved continuing resolution consistently has received a majority of support in the Senate, but it has not received the 60 votes needed to overcome the Senate’s filibuster rule for passage.

For a historian who writes about war, Rick Atkinson is surprisingly optimistic. The Pulitzer Prize-winning author and former journalist — who recently released the second volume in a trilogy of books about the American Revolution — believes that the bedrock of American democracy is solid enough to withstand any assaults on its founding principles.

As the guest of honor at a Sunday night dinner sponsored by the Library Foundation of Los Angeles as part of its biennial Literary Feasts fundraiser, Atkinson was the most upbeat person at the event, which took place just before Election Day. Speaking to about 18 guests gathered around two circular tables carefully laid out on the back patio at the home of fellow writers and hosts Meenakshi and Liaquat Ahamed, Atkinson buoyed the flagging spirits of those certain that the country was currently dangling on the precipice of disaster at the hands of the Trump administration.

Book lovers attend a Literary Feast dinner featuring Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Rick Atkinson at the home of writers Meenakshi and Liaquat Ahamed.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

“We’re the beneficiaries of an enlightened political heritage handed down to us from that founding generation, and it includes strictures on how to divide power and keep it from concentrating in the hands of authoritarians who think primarily of themselves,” Atkinson said with the cheery aplomb of a man who has spent the bulk of his time burrowing deep inside archives filled with harrowing stories of the darkest days the world has ever seen. “We can’t let that slip away. We can’t allow it to be taken away, and we can’t allow ourselves to forget the hundreds of thousands who’ve given their lives to affirm and sustain it over the past 250 years.”

The questions and conversation that followed Atkinson’s rousing speech about the history of the Revolution — including riveting details about key players like George Washington who Atkinson noted had “remarkably dead eyes” in order to not give away a scintilla of his inner life to curious onlookers — was what the evening’s book-loving guests had come for.

“We’re the beneficiaries of an enlightened political heritage handed down to us from that founding generation,” said Rick Atkinson.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

A total of 40 authors are hosted at salon-style events at 40 houses with more than 750 guests over the course of a single evening, raising more than $2 million for the Library Foundation, which is a separate entity from the public library. Founded in 1992 in the wake of the devastating 1986 fire at downtown’s Central Library, which destroyed more than 400,000 books, the foundation seeks to continue the community-driven mission of the library when funding runs short, including supporting adult education, early literacy programs for children, and services for immigrants and the unhoused.

“I often describe it as the dream-fueling work, the life-changing work,” said Stacy Lieberman, the Library Foundation’s president and chief executive. “Because it’s a lot of the one-on-one support that people will get.”

The Foundation typically raises about $7 million to $8 million a year, with an operating budget of nearly $11 million, so money raised through the Literary Feasts is a significant slice of the funding pie. The feasts began in 1997 and have continued apace every other year since then, featuring a who’s who of literary accomplishment across every genre. Writers past and present include Sue Grafton, Jane Fonda, Ann Patchett, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Abraham Verghese, Scott Turow and Michael Connelly.

Dinner hosts fund the events themselves — no small outlay considering the lavish offerings.

Guests were served steak with roasted carrots, turnips and potatoes.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

The Ahameds delighted guests with a tangy grapefruit and greens salad, followed by tender steak with roasted carrots, turnips and potatoes; a dessert of hot apple tart à la mode drizzled with caramel sauce; and plenty of crisp red and white wine. Both hosts are literary luminaries in their own right: Liaquat, a former investment manager, won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for history for his book “Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World” and Meenakshi recently published “Indian Genius: The Meteoric Rise of Indians in America.”

The couple travels in bookish circles and enjoys hosting salons at their home, including one earlier this year in support of New Yorker political columnist Susan Glasser and her husband, New York Times chief White House correspondent Peter Baker. As friends of Atkinson, the Ahameds did their part to introduce him, and later tried their best to entice him to stop taking questions and eat his dinner.

The guest of honor could not be persuaded. There was too much to say. “The Fate of the Day,” which explores the bloody middle years of the Revolution from 1777 to 1780, was released in April, and Atkinson has spent the past eight months touring and speaking on panels with documentarian Ken Burns to promote Burns’ six-part documentary series “The American Revolution,” which premieres Nov. 16 on PBS.

Atkinson is a featured speaker in the series and has been involved with it for about four years.

The dinner featuring Rick Atkinson was one of 40 taking place across town that evening. The events raised $2 million for the Library Foundation of Los Angeles.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

The week before the Literary Feast, Atkinson and Burns spoke to members of Congress in Washington, D.C., and also screened a 40-minute clip at Mount Vernon where Atkinson discussed Washington’s unique talents as a general.

“I’ve seen the whole thing several times and it’s fantastic,” Atkinson said of the 12-hour film. “It’s as you would expect: beautifully filmed, wonderfully told, great narrative.”

The country is now more than four months into its semiquincentennial, which Atkinson joked “sounds like a medical procedure,” but is actually the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States. It’s well known that Trump is planning a splashy party, with festivities and commemorations intensifying over the next eight months, culminating in a grand celebration in Washington, D.C., on July 4, 2026.

Rick Atkinson’s book “The Fate of the Day,” which explores the bloody middle years of the Revolution from 1777 to 1780, was released in April.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

“My hope is that as a country, we use the opportunity to reflect on those basic questions of who we are, where we came from, what our forebears believed and what they were willing to die for,” said Atkinson. “I’m optimistic because I’m a historian, because I know our history. No matter how grim things seem in 2025, we have faced grimmer times in the past, existential threats of the first order, starting with the Revolution.”

The politically deflated might also consider World War II — the subject of Atkinson’s Liberation Trilogy — the second volume of which won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for history. The writer knows his stuff. Guests — and readers — take heart.