California Gov. Gavin Newsom wants the Democratic Party to stop worrying about socialist candidates and start embracing them. During a YouTube livestream on Sunday, Newsom rejected the idea that DSA-backed primary winners pose any kind of threat to the party, framing their rise as grassroots energy that Democrats should celebrate rather than resist.
The comments come after a string of Democratic Socialists of America, endorsed candidates defeated incumbent Democrats in New York primary elections, a development that has split the party between those who see a leftward lurch and those, like Newsom, who insist the tent needs to get bigger.
Newsom's pitch is simple: addition over subtraction. But for a party already struggling with accusations of elitism and ideological rigidity, welcoming avowed socialists into the mainstream raises a question Democratic leaders seem unwilling to answer, what, exactly, does the party stand for anymore?
Appearing on a livestream hosted by Jack Cocchiarella on his YouTube channel, Newsom compared the current moment to "purity tests" he faced when running for mayor of San Francisco in 2003. As Fox News Digital reported, the governor was direct in dismissing concerns about the party's leftward shift.
"This is all familiar, and it's very healthy. I don't think it's unhealthy. So, I completely reject this notion. And, look, I'm for addition, not subtraction."
He went further, casting the socialist surge as essential to Democratic recovery.
"The Democratic Party needs to be in the addition business if we're going to get back into the majority. Yeah, we need to get our base out there. We got to turn out.... I'm not offended by this notion of a big tent."
Newsom acknowledged that not everyone inside the party shares his enthusiasm. He said "folks on this side" don't want "folks on that" side, but urged Democrats to focus on "the things that bind us together, the things we have in common."
That Newsom is positioning himself as the party's coalition-builder is notable, given the growing scrutiny he faces on other fronts. A recent poll found more than a quarter of Democrats support a federal probe into the governor, a sign that his standing even within his own party is not as secure as his confident public persona suggests.
The backdrop for Newsom's comments is a wave of DSA-backed primary victories in New York. Among the winners: Darializa Avila Chevalier and Claire Valdez, both of whom defeated incumbent Democratic candidates. The exact number of DSA-endorsed winners and the specific races involved remain unclear from available reporting, but the results were significant enough to trigger a party-wide conversation about the direction of the Democratic coalition.
Newsom is not alone in welcoming the newcomers. Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland told Fox News Digital last month that the party's identity is already settled on this point.
"We have a big tent party, that's what it says. This is a democracy. You're going to have lots of perspectives. It's up to the voters to decide, and they did."
Rep. Jamie Raskin, also a Maryland Democrat, told the outlet he was "all about new leadership" when asked about DSA-backed candidates toppling incumbents. And Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, herself a DSA member, warned her incumbent colleagues against prejudging the new arrivals.
"I actually think the more important advice that I would give would be to my incumbent colleagues, which is you will create a self-fulfilling prophecy by deciding who these young women are before you've met them."
The message from Democratic leadership, in other words, is nearly unanimous: don't fight the socialists. Welcome them.
This isn't the first time senior Democrats have bent to the party's socialist wing. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries endorsed democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani for New York City mayor after months of resistance, citing party unity against what he called an "existential" threat from President Trump. As Breitbart reported, the NRCC seized on the endorsement, with spokesman Mike Marinella saying Jeffries had "officially surrendered to Zohran Mamdani and the socialist mob now running the Democrat Party."
The numbers back up the trend. A Gallup poll from August found that 66% of Democrats viewed socialism favorably, compared to only 42% who favored capitalism. An October Axios survey found just 24 of 113 Democratic House hopefuls confirmed support for Jeffries as party leader, with 20 explicitly opposing him.
So when Newsom talks about a "big tent," the tent appears to have a very specific shape, one that stretches far to the left while leaving little room for dissent in other directions.
Consider the contrast with how Democrats have treated other internal disagreements. DNC Chair Tom Perez once declared that pro-life Democrats were not welcome in the party, a stance that Nebraska Democratic Party chair Jane Kleeb blamed for costing the party a mayoral race in Omaha. As the Washington Free Beacon reported, Kleeb said it was "astounding that our party chairman would say pro-life Democrats are not welcome." Socialists, apparently, get a warmer reception than pro-lifers.
Newsom's comments are impossible to separate from his political ambitions. The Washington Examiner identified Newsom as one of several potential 2028 Democratic presidential contenders, alongside Ocasio-Cortez, Gretchen Whitmer, Josh Shapiro, Wes Moore, and Pete Buttigieg. Embracing the socialist wing could be a calculated play for the progressive base that will dominate early primary states.
But the strategy carries risks that Newsom seems determined to ignore. Former Sen. Doug Jones, an Alabama Democrat, captured the party's deeper problem in post-2024 reflections. As National Review noted, Jones said Democrats have long carried a "We know better than you, you are voting against your interest" mindset, and voters have punished them for it.
"Who the h*** are you to say what their interest is? And it may be that their religious beliefs or their moral beliefs or whatever, have a certain priority over even an economic sacrifice that they might make."
That kind of condescension is precisely what drove working-class voters away from the Democratic Party in 2024, when Republicans won full control of the White House, Senate, and House. Kamala Harris failed to convince voters her presidency would differ from Biden's, who held an average 43% job approval rating.
Newsom's own record in California hardly strengthens his case as a coalition-builder. A recent exposé alleged the state lost up to $280 billion to fraud under his watch, and questions about his personal finances continue to mount.
His wine and hospitality empire quietly netted at least $410,000 while he governed California, raising conflict-of-interest questions that the governor has largely sidestepped.
Meanwhile, a guilty plea from Dana Williamson, a figure in Newsom's inner circle, has cast a shadow over the governor's political future, one that no amount of "big tent" rhetoric can fully obscure.
Newsom closed his livestream remarks by declaring the socialist energy coursing through the party "a healthy d*** thing." He said he expected "purity tests" to get "tougher and tougher in the next few years" but remained "enthusiastic about the success and the energy and the vibrancy that's happening at the grassroots."
The question he didn't address, and that no one in Democratic leadership seems willing to confront, is what happens when the grassroots energy runs directly counter to the views of the working-class voters the party claims it wants to win back. A party where 66% of members view socialism favorably and pro-life Democrats are told they're unwelcome is not a big tent. It's a narrow one that happens to be very loud.
Democrats lost the White House, the Senate, and the House. Their response, led by figures like Newsom, is to move further left and call it growth. Voters tried to tell them something in 2024. The party's answer, apparently, is to stop listening even harder.
