Democrats longing for their party’s return to the White House continue to face an unfortunate (for them) fact: Their current brightest political prospects either embody or have embraced a leftism out of step with the national mood.

But some among them have lean and hungry looks enough to swallow their pride and indulge tergiversation. California Governor Gavin Newsom’s political appetite is unsurprising. Yet his willingness to call men’s participation in women’s sports “deeply unfair” is still striking. As David Zimmermann reports, “the governor has signed numerous bills into law advancing the transgender ideology in California, including legislation that bans school districts from requiring staff to notify parents in the event their child identifies as transgender.” There’s much reason to doubt the sincerity of Newsom’s belated conversion on this issue, but no reason to doubt the reality of his political — and likely, his presidential — ambitions.

The improbable yet enduring aspirations of Pete Buttigieg have proven great fodder. The former mayor of Indiana’s fourth-largest city and secretary of transportation under Biden naturally believes we are not done with him yet. Having unpersuasively adopted Michigan as his new home state, Buttigieg had considered a run for governor but now appears to be leaning more toward a Senate run. Politico reports that he met with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer last week to discuss it.

Buttigieg is not above some blatant political adjustment. Speaking on a University of Chicago Institute of Politics panel late last month, he mocked diversity training. Americans, he said, shouldn’t have to “sit through a training that looks like something out of Portlandia, which I have also experienced, and it is how Trump Republicans are made.” Buttigieg has a history of endorsing precisely this kind of thing throughout his political career, as the Washington Free Beacon notes.

But escaping the event horizon of the electorally poisonous leftism most Democrats now embrace requires a velocity born of shamelessness. Whatever their futures, Newsom and Buttigieg have plenty of that.