Last night’s debate between Gavin Newsom and Ron DeSantis was supposed to be a heavyweight match up between the future of the two political parties.

Both sides need to deal with an absolute truth: this is the last presidential cycle that both Joe Biden and Donald Trump will be viable as a presidential candidate. With Biden being 81 years old, and Trump being 77 (he will turn 78 next June), time is not on their side. Whichever one of them wins a presidential election in 2024 will be automatically term-limited. The other will simply be too old to run again in four years. Both men are looking at the last run of their political careers – which means that both parties need to be considering what happens after these front-runners are no longer running.

Even if you have issues with the Republican Party and how these primary debates have been run, everyone can at least admit one thing – the Republicans have an entire slate of candidates that would be far better alternatives to Joe Biden. The Democrats, not so much. It’s common knowledge that the Democrat bench is so thin that the left is willing to keep visibly deteriorating Grandpa Joe in office because Kamala Harris is just THAT terrible. However, the Democrats were unconciously pinning their hopes on Gavin Newsom to bail them out if Joe Biden becomes so obviously incapacitated that not even Jill can hide it. And Newsom clearly wants the job – which is why Newsom challenged DeSantis to this debate in the first place. Don’t forget that part. NEWSOM is the one who asked for this debate. DeSantis merely agreed to it.

It was supposed to be a red state-blue state debate, moderated by Sean Hannity (who did not do a good job at keeping the candidates from cross-talking). It ended up being a knockout by Ron DeSantis. First of all, Gavin Newsom sounded rough. As in, the quality of his voice was rough, like he had eaten a carton of cigarettes or he was getting over a cold. I listened to a chunk of the debate over the radio and Newsom simply didn’t sound good. Second, Newsom failed to produce a “viral moment” in the debate. DeSantis absolutely laid him out flat with the infamous San Francisco “poop map.”

DeSantis used the poop map. He used the freaking poop map. pic.twitter.com/495u5aqQfm

— Bonchie (@bonchieredstate) December 1, 2023

Is Gavin Newsom coughing or laughing during that clip? Either way, the former mayor of San Francisco had no comeback for that. DeSantis had also kicked his butt earlier in the debate when he listed all the “freedoms” that Californians enjoy.

Ron DeSantis gave Gavin Newsom 'credit' for some of the 'freedoms' Californians enjoy, and it was both hilarious and epic. 🔥 pic.twitter.com/cOwQbcLeUc

— Scott Morefield (@SKMorefield) December 1, 2023

“Gavin Newsom, at one point tried to say that California was the freedom state,” DeSantis said during the Fox News debate. “I just kind of laugh like you’re locking people down you’re doing all this but then I thought about it, California does have freedoms.”

“California does have freedoms that some people don’t, that other states don’t,” he continued. “You have the freedom to defecate in public. In California, you have the freedom to pitch a tent on Sunset Boulevard. You have the freedom to create a homeless encampment under a freeway and even light it on fire. You have the freedom to have an open air drug market and use drugs. You have a freedom if you’re an illegal alien to get all these taxpayer benefits. So those are freedoms. They’re not the freedoms our founding fathers envisioned, but they have contributed to the destruction of the quality of life in California and the results speak for themselves.”

Many conservative big names on Twitter/X agreed that DeSantis had mopped the floor with Newsom – and not just because DeSantis performed so well, but that Newsom had done SO badly.

I was 100% wrong on this debate. I thought Gavin Newsom would be likable and intelligent. I was incorrect. This is a massacre. If this were a boxing match, Newsom’s corner would have thrown in the towel a long time ago. Complete and total win for DeSantis from open to close.

— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) December 1, 2023

Remember that Newsom had challenged DeSantis to this debate? His side is now whining that DeSantis “cheated” because he brought “props.”

Before Ron DeSantis could unveil his “poop map,” Gov. Gavin Newsom team’s frustration with Sean Hannity and his crew centered on his promises to them that he would be a fair moderator, only to repeatedly sandbag the governor and give the entire affair a 2-on-1 dynamic — as they saw it.

“The debate was rigged, and Newsom still won,” Newsom adviser Sean Clegg said.

Newsom himself told people as the debate ended that he’d had fun — sharing that feeling on X where he added that he could have kept going for longer.
But the grievances from Newsom’s team inside the venue were just the start of the mass finger-pointing that followed the 95-minute melee late Thursday in the suburbs of Atlanta. Other alleged violations — of rules both written and understood — involve Ron DeSantis, the Republican Florida governor.

A DeSantis aide said California first partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom was the one who stepped in and ended the debate on her husband’s behalf after Hannity invited the two governors to go deeper into overtime. A second person on the ground confirmed that.

“Gavin Newsom got beat so badly last night his wife literally had to throw in the towel for him. It was embarrassing,” DeSantis spokesperson Andrew Romeo said.

More distrust and accusations were spilling out from the event. Hannity told Newsom staffers that both sides agreed not to bring props or graphics with them on stage — just a pen and pad of paper, they said. DeSantis’ camp says that wasn’t their understanding of the network’s rules, and DeSantis brandished allegedly lewd content permissible in California in a segment about book bans at schools.

The other document DeSantis flashed to great fanfare was a map of Newsom’s hometown of San Francisco covered in brown splotches that the Florida governor said represented places where human feces were found on the city’s streets.

“He carried around porn and poop in his suit jacket,” the Newsom aide said.

A Fox News spokesperson said “the word ‘props’ was never discussed ahead of the debate, not one time. The final agreement simply stated that neither side (Newsom or DeSantis) can use multimedia production. That was an issue about whether each side wanted to do a short production on what makes their individual states great at the start of the debate.”

The unspoken rule of debates is that the first side to complain that the other side got advantages or cheated is the loser. Guess what? Newsom challenged DeSantis to the debate, his side agreed to the terms, and he got his ass beaten. He doesn’t get to complain about the rules and the props now. And whining about the “porn” that DeSantis showed? That was a copy of “Gender Queer,” and apparently it is ESSENTIAL that students have access to it in school libraries, but it’s “porn” if it’s shown during a debate to use against Gavin Newsom. Hmmmmm.

Gavin Newsom lost the debate, period. The viral moment was the “poop map,” and that was a knockout punch by Ron DeSantis. Complaining about the debate after the fact is just confirmation that the Newsom camp knows they took it on the chin last night – and that Team Newsom knows this will not bolster their chances of replacing Biden in an emergency. The Democrat field is wide open, and yet the bench is so thin that there is no competent alternative if Biden fails to make it up his next flight of stairs.

But don’t feel bad for Gavin Newsom. After all, he got exactly what he asked for.

Featured image: original Victory Girls art by Darleen Click