Newsom can’t be defended, even by his defenders

Poor Ezra Klein.

The New York Times columnist known for his tedious love letters to progressivism has taken up the unenviable task of defending the indefensible: Gov. Gavin Newsom’s record.

Most defenses of Newsom, who is facing a recall, rely on branding the attempt to remove him from office as “Republican,” which is not only smart politics, but also spares anyone the agony of finding examples of what Newsom has improved.

Klein attempts the impossible task by highlighting one measly housing bill, a bunch of halfbaked environmental executive orders and a few modest expenditures, like an expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit, expanded paid family leave and boosts to child care.

Klein called the Newsom experiment “exciting,” but in the process avoids mentioning any number of persistent problems that have not improved under Newsom’s watch.

Perhaps Klein got his grievances out of his system in February when he wrote a column (which he now ignores almost entirely) titled: “California is making liberals squirm.”

While still squirming before all the excitement began, Klein wrote back then that “California talks a big game on climate change, but even with billions of dollars in federal funding, it couldn’t build high-speed rail between Los Angeles and San Francisco,” and “California has the highest poverty rate in the nation,” and “California is dominated by Democrats, but many of the people Democrats claim to care about most can’t afford to live there.”

In other words, he was calling the Democrat-dominated state government incompetent, ineffective and hypocritical.

Fast forward to today and high-speed rail is not any closer to being built and the poverty rate and cost of living both remain unreasonably high. It’s hard to believe this is the same Ezra Klein who thinks recalling Newsom would be “madness.”

Klein jumps through hoops to try to explain how change is coming on the housing front because he can feel it (“the state’s political actors have realized they need to find ways to build ... Even the politicians who oppose development have to pretend to favor it”) and wrote with wonderment about legislation that would be the “end of singlefamily zoning” and applauds one bill in particular allowing homeowners to divide their properties into two lots.

“It won’t solve the housing crisis, but it’s a start,” he wrote.