He’s positioning himself as Fash-Lite, because that’s the kind of candidate the Democratic Party is interested in running.

Nailed it.

The Dems have clearly signaled that, in the face of a right-wing kleptocratic coup d’etat, they intend to keep doing exactly what they’ve been doing for decades - situationally register mild opposition but carefully manage to consistently fail to successfully oppose much of anything, then fundraise on “the Republicans have destroyed everything and we’re not the Republicans” and astroturf opposition to the inevitable observations that they’re only technically not the Republicans, and have just spent the last two/four years proving that they’re not really any sort of opposition either.

Oh yeah - and they’ll run some candidates too, but that’s really a secondary consideration. Fundraising is the important part. And to that end, the candidates they run will necessarily be corporate-friendly neoliberals with sufficient lack of integrity to be willing to position themselves just enough to the left of the current Republicans to barely manage to carry off the illusion of opposition.

And that last is the role Newsom is auditioning for.