Last week, we expressed our entirely justified cynicism about California Gov. Gavin Newsom's new claimed position on protecting the integrity and fairness of women's sports. After leading the Left's culture war fight on trans-related issues for years, including specifically in this realm, Newsom now says it's "unfair" to have biological females competing against biological males in athletic settings. He's governed from precisely the opposite perspective for years, but as we reasoned in our piece, he's reading the polls and feeling the vibe shift, and trying to position himself as a new type of Democrat ahead of his seemingly inevitable 2028 presidential run. This chameleon is shedding, at least for now, his 'wokest' skin, in favor of a new look, in which he purports to stand up to the sort of alienating excesses that he himself has long championed. It's transparently self-serving and phony, but he's clearly decided this is what he needs to do, in service of his hilariously unsubtle ambitions.
There's another layer of the phoniness to explore. For years, conservatives have ridiculed leftists for insisting on the descriptor 'Latinx' to describe Hispanic people. Latino and Latina was too gendered, you see, so their tyrannical language police had to construct a clumsy nonsense word to align with their bizarre orthodoxy. The result was 'Latinx,' which earned puzzlement, eyerolls and middle fingers from normal Latinos. No one outside of the precincts of hardcore activism, academia and woke corporate HR trainings (and journos, naturally) actually uses or likes the term:
In the long-running debates about which terms to use to describe the U.S. population with roots in Latin America and Spain, “Latinx” has emerged as a gender-neutral alternative to Hispanic and Latino, the two most popular pan-ethnic terms used today...After years of public use by celebrities, leaders, media, academics and others, awareness of Latinx has grown among U.S. Latinos.1 Nearly half (47%) say they have heard of Latinx, up from 23% who said the same in 2019. Notably, awareness of Latinx has grown across nearly all major demographic subgroups of U.S. Latinos. Still, about half of the population that Latinx is meant to describe has never heard of the term. While awareness of the term has grown, the share who use Latinx to describe themselves is statistically unchanged: 4% of Latino adults say they have used Latinx to describe themselves, little changed from the 3% who said the same in 2019...Latinx is broadly unpopular among Latino adults who have heard of it, according to the survey. 75% of Latinos who have heard of the term Latinx say it should not be used to describe the Hispanic or Latino population, up from 65% saying the same in 2019.
All it took was years of forceful rejection and increasing, super-majority unpopularity for the 'Latinx' enforcers to second guess themselves. Slowly and belatedly, some Democrats started to question the wisdom of employing a ridiculous term that virtually nobody liked. Very, very belatedly, Gavin Newsom finally joined the chorus. "Not one person in my office has ever used the word LatinX," he asserted in the same podcast interview where he abruptly changed direction on women's sports. Is that so, governor? People immediately started showing various social media posts and press releases, published either by the governor or his office, that proudly and unironically used the term 'Latinx.' Of course. His whole record and identity is steeped in this stuff. He even tweeted a video of himself railing against Republicans for attacking 'Latinx' (and lying about this) rather than banning guns. Very self-righteous. Now he's cutting the fake word loose and falsely saying his office ever used it. Can you feel the authenticity?
Incidentally, since Gavin Newsom has spent a lot of time trying to pick fights with Florida and Florida's governor in recent years, culminating in a memorable televised debate, let's compare and contrast governing results, shall we? A fresh batch of US News rankings were just released, which rated all 50 states across multiple criteria, and also overall. I'd likely question or object to some of the criteria, but based on their formula, Florida ranked in the top ten nationally (overall), the only large state to achieve that. And for all the bluster about Ron DeSantis' supposed ideological dismantling of education, Florida lands the top spot in the country in that category. It also finished number one on the economy, arguably the most important factor. To recap, Florida is ninth in general, first in education, first on the economy. Gavin Newsom's California? Thirty-seventh place overall, 23rd on education (despite spending a fortune per pupil), and 37th economically. California also finished dead last -- 50th -- on the "opportunity" spectrum.
Newsom's trash talk seems pretty hollow, doesn't it? Especially as he's suddenly pretending he sort of agrees with DeSantis and conservatives on the woke nonsense he aggressively led for so long. Let's see if voters are impressed.
