California Governor Gavin Newsom is using a new “dark woke” approach to counter President Trump on social media that seems to be getting positive poll results.
Brad Pearce sums up Newsom’s tactics and labels him “America’s Alcibiades”:
Newsom is already doing what he can to raise his profile in advance of a widely anticipated Presidential run. Currently, one form this has taken is a podcast where he engages with people ranging from Charlie Kirk to Tim Walz about a variety of topics, most notably trying to strike a conciliatory note with the young male voters the Democrats have been bleeding. He also has his aids running a “Press Release” account where they try to emulate Trump’s language and behavior, a gimmick which has gotten mixed reviews. Most significantly, Gavin Newsom is backing an ambitious initiative to temporarily suspend California’s non-partisan Congressional districting commission in favor of partisan redistricting through 2030 which he claims would offset Texas’s mid-session redistricting scheme- this is seen as an enormous political gamble but that assumes someone who feels shame and is unable to win by losing.…Skeptics abound about if any of this work. They note the disastrous response to the LA wildfires at the beginning of this year. They say that no one wants to “Make America California” given its extreme cost of living, extraordinary rate of homelessness, unbelievable red tape, constant dysfunction, and that as such California liberals are toxic to national politics.…Others say that voters simply won’t go for a man who is so obviously sociopathic and clearly lacks core beliefs. These criticisms misunderstand both Gavin Newsom and electoral democracy itself. Most successful politicians may have some form of personality disorder, as half of their job is blowing smoke up your ass, but Newsom’s obvious sociopathy and genuine shamelessness are enormous political assets that cannot be taught. Newsom seems to live by the immortal words of George Costanza, “And remember, it’s not a lie if you believe it.”…Newsom has no baggage because he simply doesn’t care, he will just tell you that you are wrong with some rapidly produced semi-relevant key words or statistics. … Gavin Newsom thrives at a task which is arduous to any semi-normal person because he feeds off of selling people on himself all day while simultaneously having no emotional response to negative feedback. Here is a rare politician who enjoys the journey instead of just dreaming about the destination. I won’t belabor the comparison, but he really is an American Alcibiades– talented, good looking, self-aggrandizing, incapable of shame, and in it only for himself and the love of the game.
Pearce’s post also includes a handy pocket biography of Gavin Newsom for those who must know more about the man who would be POTUS.
All I ever needed to know about Gavin Newsom is covered in this 2018 LA Times piece about the “eight elite San Francisco families” who “funded Gavin Newsom’s political ascent.”
Gavin Newsom’s tactics seem to be serving him well in the preseason presidential primary polling by Emerson College:
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— Nat Wilson Turner (@natwilsonturner) September 1, 2025
And has him neck-and-neck with Vice-President J.D. Vance:
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— Nat Wilson Turner (@natwilsonturner) September 1, 2025
Some of Newsom’s growth since June seems to have come at the expense of hapless former Vice-President Kamala Harris, but most seems to have come from undecided voters.
Whatever the cause, Gavin Newsom is doing well enough that horse-race sportsbetters The Hill is ranking him #1 in the Dem primary:
Gavin Newsom has taken to trolling Trump on social media, often with postings that ape the president’s idiosyncratic and hyperbolic language.
In recent days, he has launched a line of merchandise in Trump’s signature red bearing slogans like “Newsom was right about everything” and declaring in all caps “Many people are saying this is the greatest merchandise ever made.”
Yet it’s not all fun and games. In a public conversation at a Politico forum late last week, he suggested Trump would run for an unconstitutional third term and called the president “simply the most destructive and damaging individual in my lifetime.”
The no-holds-barred approach appears to be paying off for Newsom.
The New York Times rewarded Gavin Newsom for his Trump parody merchandising with a breathless article, quoting multiple academics about what it all means:
The Patriot Shop is just the latest salvo in Mr. Newsom’s ongoing trolling of Trumpworld, which has also included using a feisty social media feed to taunt the president and his style of posting, complete with his use of ALL CAPS and idiosyncratic, sometimes perplexing, vernacular.
The governor’s online efforts have drawn anger and sometimes bewildered reactions from the right — “We get the joke,” said Dana Perino, a Fox News host, adding, “It’s just not funny” — but heaps of praise from more liberal commentators, who say it’s a sign of life in a Democratic Party that has been mired in finger-pointing and infighting since Kamala Harris’s loss in November.
…Mr. Newsom admits the gag may eventually become tired, but he seems tickled by the prank, telling a crowd in Sacramento on Wednesday night that he would be rolling out even more products on the ballot campaign’s website, possibly including “a Trump corruption coin.”
“I’ve quite enjoyed myself,” Mr. Newsom said at an event sponsored by Politico, adding that his goal was “putting the mirror up to the absurdity of all of this.”
One advertised item seemingly giving the governor particular joy was a signed $100 Bible, which Mr. Newsom and his site said had already sold out, though the Campaign for Democracy — his PAC, which is running the merch site — declined to say exactly how many Bibles it had sold, if any. (Mr. Trump did, in fact, sell his own “God Bless the USA” Bibles last year.)
At the same time, the governor seems quite serious about the bigger mission to “wake up” the opposition to Mr. Trump.
“I’m sick and tired of Democrats being on the losing end in this country and our democracy being on the losing end,” he said. “We’ve got to fight fire with fire.”
Gavin Newsom has also benefitted from battling Trump’s deployment of military and National Guard to Los Angeles in the courts.
I updated on that legal battle a few weeks back, focusing on two words: Posse Comitatus.
Gavin Newsom has also positioned himself on the “Abundance” side of the homelessness issue:
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— Nat Wilson Turner (@natwilsonturner) September 1, 2025
As one would expect, this won plaudits from Abundance bro Derek Thompson:
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— Nat Wilson Turner (@natwilsonturner) September 1, 2025
Gavin Newsom’s adoption of rhetoric and policies advocated by the Abundance bunch has been rewarded with billionaire cash from Netflix’ Reed Hastings:
Netflix co-founder and Democratic megadonor Reed Hastings has given $2 million to help California redraw its House maps in the latest indication of the campaign’s outsize stakes.
Hastings is a stalwart supporter of Democratic causes and an ally of Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has championed the push to counter Texas’ GOP gerrymander with a new map designed to oust California Republicans. He also spent $3 million to help Newsom beat back a recall attempt in 2021.
Presumably as part of his Donald Trump impression, Governor Gavin Newsom tacked hard to the right in his approach to homelessness this spring:
Mr. Newsom’s administration has raised and spent tens of billions of dollars on programs to bring homeless people into housing and to emphasize treatment. But his move on Monday marks a tougher approach to one of the more visible aspects of the homelessness crisis. The governor has created a template for a local ordinance that municipalities can adopt to outlaw encampments and clear existing ones.
California is home to about half of the nation’s unsheltered homeless population, a visible byproduct of the temperate climate and the state’s brutal housing crisis. Last year, a record 187,000 people were homeless in the state…
Mr. Newsom cannot force cities to pass his model ban, but its issuance coincides with the release of more than $3 billion in state-controlled housing funds that local officials can use to put his template in place. And though it’s not a mandate, the call to outlaw encampments statewide by one of the best-known Democrats in the country suggests a shift in the party’s approach to homelessness.…The Newsom administration seized on the Supreme Court ruling swiftly, ordering state agencies to begin humanely clearing encampments from state parks and freeway underpasses, and urging cities to do the same in local jurisdictions.
Some did, addressing encampments with varying degrees of compassion and aggression.…“There are no more excuses,” Governor Newsom said in a statement accompanying the ordinance. “Local leaders asked for resources — we delivered the largest state investment in history. They asked for legal clarity — the courts delivered. Now, we’re giving them a model they can put to work immediately, with urgency and humanity, to resolve encampments and connect people to shelter, housing and care.”
Gavin Newsom new approach to social media and his ations the issues drew criticism from the left:
Really the most important thing about Newsom to me is that he personally robbed and displaced homeless people for a photo op https://t.co/YdG0EpHdrT pic.twitter.com/iYeSrppOQ6
— Bryce Greene (@TheGreeneBJ) August 20, 2025
The World Socialist Web Site had a more specific critique:
Newsom insisted the strategy represented a “California-led” approach, one that avoids Trump’s federal militarization of urban policing. Yet this distinction is entirely cosmetic. Rather than rejecting the deployment of armed forces against working-class neighborhoods, Newsom has preemptively normalized it at the state level. “We’re working with local law enforcement, not overriding them,” he declared.
The reality is that this represents a major expansion of policing powers, redirecting state resources into paramilitary-style operations. Despite boasting about “falling crime rates” across California, Newsom is doubling down on “law-and-order” policies—a transparent attempt to preempt Trump’s propaganda and deflect Republican attacks. The message to the ruling class is unmistakable: California Democrats are prepared to be just as “serious on safety” as the fascistic Trump administration in Washington.
On Friday, Newsom unveiled the State Action for Facilitation on Encampments (SAFE) Task Force, a multi-agency initiative to dismantle homeless encampments across California’s ten largest cities, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Oakland, and Fresno.
The task force represents a significant escalation of Newsom’s campaign of criminalization and repression against the poor. It builds directly on his signature policy of violent sweeps, infamously showcased last year when Newsom personally staged a publicity stunt, when he was filmed assisting police as they tore down encampments and destroyed the belongings of homeless residents.
David Sirota’s Lever News has documented many other times when Gavin Newsom worked for the big money.
Like the driverless vehicle tech lobby:
After autonomous vehicle interests spent at least a quarter of a million dollars on lobbying and treated two senior gubernatorial aides to a bougie dinner, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) vetoed a bill Friday night that would have banned self-driving trucks from operating in the state without a safety operator aboard.
The veto delivered a massive win to Big Tech and a major blow to labor unions and road safety advocates, since backers of the bill say the rapid rise of driverless trucks may jeopardize trucking jobs and make public roadways more dangerous.
Newsom’s veto is the latest successful lobbying effort for the growing autonomous vehicle industry in the influential, Democratic-led state.
Like the crypto “industry”:
California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) vetoed a bill that overwhelmingly passed both chambers of the California legislature and would have delivered rules and transparency to the state’s burgeoning and largely unregulated cryptocurrency industry.
The move came after the crypto industry spent more than $400,000 on lobbying efforts and representatives from the Bay Area tech giant Salesforce lobbied Newsom directly on blockchain technology and other industry matters and treated him to a swanky dinner, according to lobbying disclosures.
Gavin Newsom also played Hamlet, or should I say Barack Obama, by publicly supporting single payer healthcare, then waffling on it at a critical time which ensured the California legislature never passed single payer legislation.
Gavin Newsom is currently claiming he has reached a deal that will enable Uber and Lyft drivers to unionize, but forgive me if I wait to see the fine print.
Time will tell if Gavin Newsom becomes the Democratic presidential nominee and if his blend of cosmetic “Dark Woke” social media trolling, Centrist policies, and mirroring of Trump’s authoritarianism even as he decries it will be a palatable mix in on the national stage.
Readers can make up their own mind about Gavin Newsom, but my views of the man were set many years ago by the above-referenced 2018 LA Times profile of the man and his moneyed backers:
San Francisco society’s “first families” — whose names grace museum galleries, charity ball invitations and hospital wards — settled on Newsom, 50, as their favored candidate two decades ago, said Willie Brown, former state Assembly speaker and former mayor of the city.
“He came from their world, and that’s why they embraced him without hesitancy and over and above everybody else,” said Brown, who is a mentor to Newsom. “They didn’t need to interview him. They knew what he stood for.”
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— Nat Wilson Turner (@natwilsonturner) September 1, 2025
Those numbers have gone way up since 2018, and Gavin Newsom may have made superficial stylistic and policy changes, but cats don’t change their stripes, and like any honest politician, Gavin Newsom stays bought.
