Dana Bash asked Gavin Newsom a simple question on Sunday: will you and Kamala Harris face off in a 2028 presidential primary?
Newsom’s answer: “Fate will determine that.”
Fate. Not “the voters will decide.” Not “we’ll see what happens.” Not “I have enormous respect for the Vice — ” wait, she’s not the vice president anymore. She’s not anything anymore. She’s a former candidate who lost, a former VP whose boss got pushed out, and a former frontrunner whose political future is now being discussed in the same breath as Pete Buttigieg’s and a congresswoman who can’t find Venezuela on a map.
And Gavin Newsom just told you — with one word — that he’s not stepping aside for her.
The Translation
Politicians speak in code. When Newsom says “fate will determine that,” he’s saying: I’m running regardless of what she does. When he says “I’ve never gotten in the way of her ambition ever,” he’s saying: her ambition is her problem, not mine. When he says “you only can control what you can control,” he’s saying: I’m controlling my campaign, and she can control hers.
None of this is deference. None of this is the language of a man who plans to yield. This is a man who’s already on a nationwide book tour — hitting Nashville, Atlanta, South Carolina, New York — in the exact sequence a presidential candidate follows when building name recognition and donor networks in early primary and general election states.
The book is called “Young Man in a Hurry.” The hurry is obvious. And Kamala Harris isn’t in his rearview mirror. She’s in his way.
The Harris Problem
Here’s Kamala Harris’s situation. She ran for president in 2024. She lost. Not narrowly. Not in a squeaker that could be blamed on bad luck or a late-breaking scandal. She lost decisively to a candidate the media had spent years telling the public was unelectable.
She’s now polling at 10% in New Hampshire — behind Buttigieg at the top, behind Newsom and AOC tied at 15%, and tied with Mark Kelly, who’s currently fighting federal charges. The woman who was the Democratic nominee fourteen months ago is in fourth place in the first primary state.
Her campaign team has relaunched her social media accounts as a “Gen-Z led progressive content hub” — which sounds like something an AI would generate if you asked it to create the least authentic political rebrand possible. She’s trying to reinvent herself for a base that already rejected her once, using a strategy designed for an audience that didn’t vote for her the first time.
Newsom sees this. Everyone sees this. The question isn’t whether Harris runs again. The question is whether anyone takes it seriously if she does. And Newsom’s “fate” answer — casual, unbothered, almost dismissive — tells you he doesn’t consider her a serious obstacle.
The Democratic Demolition Derby
The 2028 Democratic primary is shaping up to be one of the most brutal intra-party fights in modern political history. Not because the candidates are strong. Because they’re all weak — and they all know it.
Buttigieg leads in New Hampshire with the resume of a man who built eight EV charging stations for $7.5 billion and took paternity leave during a supply chain crisis. Newsom is tied for second with a gubernatorial record that includes importing gasoline through the Bahamas, a broken 911 system, and a book tour that draws a dozen people per stop. AOC is tied with Newsom after a Munich performance so bad that the VP laughed at her on national television. Harris is in fourth after losing the general election. Kelly is in fourth while facing potential prosecution.
Nobody in this field scares anyone. Nobody in this field has a clear path. And nobody in this field is willing to step aside because they all believe — with varying degrees of delusion — that they’re the one who can beat whoever the Republicans nominate in 2028.
That’s a recipe for a primary that doesn’t sharpen a nominee. It’s a recipe for a primary that destroys everyone involved.
The California Collision
The most interesting subplot is the California factor. Both Newsom and Harris built their careers in the same state. They know the same donors. They share the same political networks. They’ve operated in parallel for decades — which means a primary between them wouldn’t just be a political contest. It would be a civil war within the California Democratic establishment.
Newsom tried to laugh it off: “I’m San Francisco now. She’s Los Angeles. So there’s a little distance between the two of us.” But geographic distance isn’t political distance. A Newsom-Harris primary would force every California donor, every state party official, and every Democratic power broker in the country’s most important blue state to choose sides.
That’s the kind of fracture that doesn’t heal in time for a general election. And both of them know it — which is why Newsom’s answer was “fate” instead of “I’d be honored to compete alongside her.” He’s not planning a friendly competition. He’s planning a campaign. And if Harris gets in the way, fate — his version of it — will handle the rest.
The Book Tour Campaign
Newsom’s memoir tour isn’t about selling books. It’s about selling Gavin Newsom to a national audience that mostly knows him as the governor of a state they’re glad they don’t live in. Nashville. Atlanta. South Carolina. New York. Those aren’t book markets. Those are primary and general election states.
The Atlanta stop was a disaster — telling a Black audience “I’m like you, I can’t read” — but the tour continues because the purpose isn’t individual events. It’s accumulation. Name recognition. Donor meetings. Media hits. The infrastructure of a presidential campaign built one city at a time, under the cover of a book nobody’s reading.
Newsom isn’t waiting for fate. He’s manufacturing it. And the fact that he can’t even pretend to defer to Harris — a woman who was his party’s nominee barely a year ago — tells you everything about where Democrats think her political career stands.
Fate. That’s Newsom’s word for “she lost, and I’m next.”