that s congressman adam schiff. he s also running for the same senate seat. the lead prosecutor in donald trump s first impeachment trial, backed by former house speaker nancy pelosi. finally gave me some very good advice, which is focus on the things you can control, not the things you can t. so, i m focused on running my race. and i do think that ultimately voters want to decide this race. and they want that choice to make. and i think they will have that choice. reporter: congresswoman katie porter, beloved by the progressive base, is also running for the senate seat. how much does that tip the scales if he selects representative lee? i assume that governor newsom will keep his promise. but i can t speak for him or what he s speaking about. for me, this campaign is not about the past. it s about the future. it s not about the next six months. it s about the next six years, the next 60 years for california. reporter: a newsom adviser tells cnn this is a politically
women should have the right to make our own decisions about our health care or when it comes to gun safety, i don t think people will agree permitless carry is a good idea. nor will they think that a governor who decided to take his own personal grievance and grudge match against disney and cost the state millions of jobs and revenue is that really the same? we know donald trump is that kind of leader, that personalistic leader. do we really need another one of them? i don t think so. i think people will reject it. what do you think, doug? karen has laid out every reason that ron desantis can t be elected president and she can probably lay out every reason every other republican can t be but the reality is most likely they re running against joe biden and every poll number we see of his is low. lower than donald trump s numbers were which is something i wouldn t have thought and as we approach this election we also think there is an r word that may pop up called recession which
can beat joe biden and probably any other republican possibly can. doesn t mean they will but can and the other thing i think is interesting of what desantis said which sort of gets lost in the shuffle of defeat leftism and the wokism and all of that, he says he can serve two terms so what is he doing there? he s saying that donald trump is too old to serve as president and he s also saying that donald trump won t be able to serve two terms. he s telling the base, i m in this for the long haul and that s a potentially convincing argument, again, going after donald trump directly. he does it sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly. i m going to talk about the age thing. go ahead, karen. i was going to say, again, i think the core issue here that desantis represents that maybe some of the others don t where there could be a little more of a give and take, again, the extremism of many of his policies which are so unpopular with vast majorities of the american public. 8 in 10 american
is this a wise move on desantis part to attack trump right out of the gate? you know, i ll be honest, i don t know if it s the wise move or not but it s the necessary move. what we ve seen as people try to draw comparisons between 2016 and 2024 and talk about there are too many candidates in all of this. the reality is it s a different race. donald trump starts as the favorite and what that means is you re not going to win the republican nomination by going around donald trump. you ve got to take him on directly. it may or may not be successful but if you don t do that, you re guaranteed to fail so desantis coming out of the gate after absorbing blows from trump for a long time when desantis wasn t yet a candidate starting in this posture is the necessary posture. no one is smart enough to tell you whether or not it s going to be successful. what we ve learned is a lot of the political gravity how we define things don t apply to donald trump but desantis is doing the necessary thing
everyone knows if i m the nominee, i will beat biden and i will serve two terms and i will be able to destroy leftism in this country and leave woke ideology on the dust bin laden of history. hmm. what do you make of him saying he s running for president to, quote, destroy leftism? you know, look, he is trying to be a carbon copy of donald trump in that his campaign and his candidacy is based on grievance politics, divisiveness and extreme policies and i think the reality is the american people have already soundly rejected that both in 2020 and 2022. that s the strategy he s decided is going to be effective in the general election. however, some of that very same extremism is not going to play well in a general election context, not just because of the issues, but core american values, i think, where people will just disagree, for example,