Gavin Newsom has all the superficial, surface-level traits that Democrats love: He’s a (very) liberal governor from a (very) liberal state — and his hair is AMAZING. Other than having an affair with his best friend’s wife, his sexual peccadilloes are relatively minor (and look, we’re only human; that’s why pencils have erasers).
Furthermore, in the “politics makes for strange bedfellows” department, there’s his high-profile dalliance with ex-Fox News pundit Kimberly Guilfoyle, giving Newsom something in common with Don Trump Jr.
Why, Newsom and Trump are practically family!
So maybe, after getting crushed by MAGA in November and losing the popular vote, it’s time for the Left to fight fire with fire: Who better to lead the Democratic Party out of the political wilderness than Gavin Newsom — the man who’s so gosh-darn irresistible, he’s winning back the ladies… one bedroom at a time?
Gavin Newsom is simmering with presidential ambitions and would sell his grandma to the Cossacks for a shot at the White House. That’s as obvious as his well-coifed mane. But don’t dare dismiss his outward appearance as irrelevant: American politics is an emotionally-driven process, and voters will 100% judge a book by its cover.
Back in 1994 or 1995, I asked Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Tex.) off-the-record if he was planning to run for president. “I’d love to ‘cause I’ve got some great ideas,” he sighed, “but just between you and me? I think I’m too damn ugly.” (Gramm mentioned that the Weekly World News had just “outed” him as a space alien, and alas — with a face like his — lots of people were gonna believe it.)
Newsom, however, is unencumbered by the burden of ugliness. And not to be unkind to the (ahem) “unfortunate facial configurations” of Gov. JB Pritzker (D-Ill.), Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Cal.), Gov. Tim Walz (D-Min.), and Rahm Emanuel, but the visual presentation of Newsom standing on stage with those ragamuffins will be manna from Heaven: Every time the camera pans to a group shot, Newsom wins.
His problem, however, is that he can’t run on his record as governor.
Instead, the opposite is true: If his record as governor is the #1 issue, Newsom will go down in flames… just like most of downtown Los Angeles.
California is a complete and total disaster. From wildfires to crime to public defecation, nobody in Flyover Country wants their state to be California-ized. Nobody walks around their city and says, “Gee, if only we were more like California. Then everyone would be happy.”
Especially not in the states with an oversized importance in the Democratic primaries, such as Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina! In those places, “Turning us into California” is seen as an apocalyptic threat, not a Beach Boys-esque promise of good times, warm weather, and California Girls.
It put Newsom in a box: If he can’t run on his record, what could he run on?
His first attempt was to rebrand himself as the one Democrat who could go toe-to-toe with the top leaders of MAGA. So, he launched a podcast — and instead of booking liberal guests like Obamas, the Clintons, AOC, Bernie Sanders, or Stephen Colbert, he chatted with Charlie Kirk, Steve Bannon, Michael Savage, and Newt Gingrich.
It wasn’t necessarily a dumb move. If you can’t run on your record, you’ve gotta run on something — so why not run on electability? Everyone knows the Democrats lost record numbers of men, blue-collar workers, and minorities in 2024. If the Democratic Party’s fundamental challenge is, “How do Democrats win those voters back in 2028?” then Newsom’s pivot could’ve worked.
But he misread his base.
Democrats aren’t clamoring for electability. In the eyes of liberal activists, MAGA voters are a bunch of racist, bigoted, homophobic deplorables anyway, so who cares what they think?
If anything, interviewing and “platforming” those horrible, evil, un-American monsters (Curse you, Kirk and Bannon!) cost Newsom votes from liberals. It was almost certainly a net loser.
What liberals want is a Donald Trump of their own.
They won’t admit it, of course. Their cognitive dissonance is too great. But consider the traits and characteristics the Radical Left is clamoring for: A fighter! Someone who won’t back down! An avatar for our (many) grievances! A Machiavellian butt-kicker who’ll break thumbs and gouge eyeballs to get things done!
It’s kinda cute: The Democrats suffer from Trump-envy.
And it’s all led to the latest pivot for Gavin Newsom. He still can’t run on his record as governor, and that whole “electability” argument fell on deaf ears. So now he’s the leader of the anti-Trump war room, battling the MAGAverse on gerrymandering.
Because the Democrats are 100% convinced that Trump is a wannabe tyrant and an existential threat to democracy, EVERYTHING Trump says and does is seen through that prism. So, when Texas tries to redraw its congressional districts, there’s no sense of self-awareness by the Left — that gerrymandering has been a bipartisan boondoggle for a very long time: It’s named after Massachusetts Gov. Elbridge Gerry, who served in office from 1810 to 1812.
Say what you want about the horrors of gerrymandering, but it’s been part of American politics for over 210 years!
Which means, there will be no acknowledgement that Democratic states have already been gerrymandered into bizarre, twisted shapes for purely political reasons. No mea culpa that hey, 1.2 million Massachusetts voters pulled the lever for Trump, so maybe it’s a little weird that Massachusetts has ZERO Republicans in the House, or for Chicago’s districts to be drawn like this:
Illinois Democrats really take the cake when it comes to gerrymandering. pic.twitter.com/V5jYpIhZMt
— IL Republican Party (@ILGOP) July 29, 2025
None of that matters because politics is, was, and will forever be an emotional process. Thus, the Democrats are gonna choose their candidate based on how he or she makes them feel about themselves.
And finally, Newsom is offering Democrats something they actually want: He’s the shrewd tactician who can “out-Trump” Donald Trump, and he’ll prove it by out-gerrymandering Texas during the Great Gerrymander War of 2025.
Then, if the Democrats win the House in the midterms, Gov. Newsom can claim credit as the architect of the resistance. He’ll be like Loki in “Ragnarok”: “Your savior is here!”
(And even if the Dems crash and burn in the midterms, hey, at least he fought the good fight. If only more Democratic governors were as courageous as Newsom!)
It’s win-win. Might even be enough to make him the next president.
But it’ll be disastrous for the Democrats.
Three days ago, The Washington Post ran a story, “Democrats take off the gloves on redistricting — but could it backfire?” Instead of focusing on liberal anger and emotional outrage, the Post focused on something different:
Cold, hard math.
From the article:
But there’s another problem for Democrats if they engage in what has the potential to become a state-by-state war across the map: They would probably come out on the losing end.
And then there is the fact that Republicans have full legislative control of 23 states compared with only 15 for the Democrats — giving them more places to squeeze out a congressional seat here and there. Should there be a call to the barricades, Ohio is expected to quickly follow Texas’s lead, and so might Missouri and Florida, for starters.
Meanwhile, past gerrymandering has left Democrats with fewer opportunities left to counter those moves. “It’s not that Democrats haven’t been fighting this war. It’s that they are out of ammunition and targets,” says David Daley, a senior fellow at the reform organization FairVote and author of the provocatively titled book, “Ratf**ked: Why Your Vote Doesn’t Count.” [emphasis added]
That’s the stubborn, irrefutable math: Out of 50 states, the Democrats only control 15!
‘Tis the consequences of ignoring Flyover Country for so long. (And of that 15, the low-hanging fruit was eaten eons ago.)
There’s not much fruit left on the tree!
So, for political purposes, the MAGAverse will continue to push for redistricting in Texas. And also for political purposes, Gavin Newsom will lean all the way into the fight, exasperating tensions and driving the storyline.
Historical headwinds are difficult to overcome. Even with the GOP’s Lone Star gerrymandering, there’s an excellent chance the Dems will still take over the House. The Republican margin is so tenuous that it wouldn’t take much to flip control.
Remember, during the 2018 midterms, Republicans lost 40 seats. The current House margins are 219 Republicans, 212 Democrats (with three Democratic seats vacated via deaths). Not much wiggle room.
Naturally, if the Democrats win, Gavin Newsom — with his well-coiffed mane — will be there to take credit. And even if they don’t, Newsom will still sell himself as the hard-nosed fighter his party’s been searching for: “Your savior has arrived!”
Heads he wins; tails he wins. Even if his party loses!
Not a bad political play.
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