Gavin Newsom walked back his commitment to appear on Hasan Piker's show, now claiming he has no plans to go on and that Piker can't stand him anyway. The backtrack is thinner than tissue: "I'm not chasing him, quite the contrary. And he can't stand me, so he's no fan of mine." Basically, Newsom tried to reach left-leaning audiences, got pushback from his party's establishment, and is now spinning a narrative where he was never interested in the first place. It's the kind of cowardice that defines Democratic strategy right now: test the waters with progressives, retreat the second donors or leadership whisper concerns, then pretend it was all calculated.