Do You Have to Hand It to Gavin Newsom?

The Democratic frontrunner has done a terrible job in California. For 2028, it might not matter.

Courtesy Michael M. Santiago/Getty.

To those of us who dislike him, it is irritating that Gavin Newsom keeps making us concede that he might be the most strategically adept Democrat in American politics.

By all accounts, he should be flailing. As Republican political consultant Luke Thompson explained in City Journal a few years ago, Newsom is not a misunderstood technocrat or a victim of circumstance. He is the product, and now the steward, of a political machine that has grown self-satisfied and increasingly detached from the demands of everyday governance.

This machine and its leader are failing their constituents. By most conventional measures—housing affordability, homelessness, energy reliability, regulatory competence, public trust, lawlessness, and disorder—Newsom’s governorship is a case study in liberal dysfunction.

If politics still worked the way it was supposed to work, this would be disqualifying. And yet the uncomfortable truth—one that has become harder to ignore amid whispers about 2028—is that Newsom may be better positioned than any other Democrat to take the White House.

This is true not despite his record, but because that record doesn’t matter in the way it once did. American politics is drifting away from accountability, becoming more performative and aesthetic. Voters increasingly judge politicians by what they seem to represent: strength or weakness, dominance or deference. That’s an environment for which Newsom was made, and on which he has relentlessly capitalized.

This is the insight leaking through in the recent spate of Newsom profiles. Jonathan Martin’s Politico treatment argued not that Newsom was beloved, or even broadly trusted, but that his combination of deep political network, digital fluency, and deliberate ideological ambiguity is what’s needed to win the nomination today. Helen Lewis’s long essay in the Atlantic, though more skeptical, shows Newsom as a politician who has internalized an old Clinton-era lesson Democrats once understood instinctively and later forgot: voters tend to prefer strong and wrong to weak and right. Both pieces imply that Newsom’s disastrous governing record just doesn’t matter against these facts.

The parallel here is obvious, but worth stating carefully. Donald Trump did not win the presidency in 2016 because voters concluded that he had an impeccable business record, but because they saw his business dealings as evidence that he understood how to fight, and how to dominate attention. His inconsistencies were not hidden; they were reframed as authenticity and street smarts. Even his long habit of donating to both political parties became evidence that he knew how the system functioned and how to bend it to his advantage.

Newsom is attempting something similar on the left, trying to retroactively recast California’s recent history into a success story. When confronted with failures, he does not concede error. Instead he reinterprets his time in office as evidence of pragmatism, learning, and responsiveness to changing conditions. He changes the story, a strategy uniquely suited to a media environment saturated with short clips, viral moments, and perpetual conflict.

Newsom mirrors Trump too in his relationship to masculinity, media, and cultural power. For years, Democrats have struggled to articulate a positive vision of masculinity, and in the process, alienated voters—particularly young men. But Newsom offers a solution to their problem. His approach is neither the feminized style favored by progressive nonprofits and HR departments, nor the trad-Catholic identity increasingly in vogue in right-wing corners of Washington. Instead, Newsom, who describes himself as more spiritual than religious, projects a masculinity that is aesthetic, performative, and unapologetic.

The strategy is working, even among some of the internet’s more unsavory subcultures. Within corners of the online right populated by “groypers” and “looksmaxxing” obsessives—many of whom harbor open hostility toward liberalism writ large—Newsom is seen as superior to figures like JD Vance. To them, Newsom comes across as confident, dominant, and unembarrassed by power. In the strange vernacular of that world, he is a “chad” who “mogs” Vance and others.

In post-Trump politics, masculinity could work for the left, too. Rather than a “return to normalcy,” many Democrats now want a Trump-like figure: someone willing to break rules, absorb scandal, and bare-knuckle brawl. As a result, attacking Newsom’s past controversies or California’s problems—as some of his intra-party critics have already begun to do—may well backfire, hardening his appeal instead of weakening it.

By contrast, candidates with more sterling records often feel oddly inert. Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro is more competent than Newsom and oversees a state Democrats need to win in 2028. But Shapiro lacks what Newsom has: dominance, confidence, and a willingness to pick fights. He folds when confronted by progressive activists on school choice or energy policy, and strains to maintain cordial relations with the antisemites in his party who will never truly accept him.

The dynamic recalls the 2024 Republican presidential primary. Ron DeSantis was disciplined, competent, and nerdy. Trump was unpredictable, brazen, and singularly attuned to the psychology of his base. Trump won, because of the vibes. Newsom may well do the same to Shapiro, and candidates like him.

Or take another likely 2028 contender, Rahm Emanuel, who has framed the Democratic primary as a contest between resistance theatrics (Newsom) and policy pragmatism (himself). Emanuel’s recent forays into early-primary states, framed heavily around education reform and a willingness to challenge Democratic orthodoxies, are designed with that narrative in mind.

To anyone who isn’t a Marxist, it is an appealing story. But 2028 is unlikely to be a two-pole contest between center-left competence and liberal spectacle. Instead, we may see a strange inversion of the 2020 primary.

Then, most candidates raced left, while Joe Biden benefited from standing still. This time, as Democrats compete on pseudo-moderation and “electability,” someone like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez could benefit by refusing to budge.

Newsom, though, is positioned to survive both dynamics at once. He is neither a stylized centrist nor a militant progressive. He’s something more slippery.

Resistance liberals see a fighter eager to antagonize Trump. Tech-aligned moderates see an executive skeptical of heavy-handed regulation. Labor sees selective concessions. Woke culture warriors see symbolic validation. And Newsom, more aesthetic than substance, can’t be pinned down to any one group.

Part of the reason is that Newsom has gotten good at knowing when to play the moderate. His aggressive push for partisan redistricting was framed not as escalation but as proportional response—a necessary counter to Republican hardball elsewhere. He has also broken with Democrats on destructive proposals like a wealth tax, flirted with Abundance-style housing reforms, and leaned into relatively tech-friendly positioning on AI and autonomous vehicles.

None of this means a Newsom nomination is inevitable. Other figures—including the other Californian heavyweight who just ran on the Democratic national ticket in 2024—are being written off far too early. But it does suggest that the center of gravity in Democratic politics has shifted toward candidates in the new, Newsom mold.

At the same time, Newsom’s unabashed celebrity politics could outpace him. Unlike some potential dark horses—figures like Jon Stewart, Mark Cuban, or Stephen A. Smith—Newsom does not possess deep, long-running fame that extends beyond political notoriety. As Trump demonstrated, you can win with a more intimate form of familiarity that TV stars often command.

By the time he ran, voters had spent years with Trump, watching him judge, argue, bluster, and perform. That intimacy breeds a strange kind of trust—or at least tolerance—even among people who do not particularly like you.

Trump achieved that intimacy through The Apprentice. For the generation below the one that came to know Trump that way, similar bonds exist with Stewart from The Daily Show, Cuban from Shark Tank, or Smith from ESPN.

These are not universally beloved figures. In fact, they are actively polarizing. But they are known. In a country run on the attention economy, that kind of visibility confers a form of credibility that political insiders often underestimate.

Newsom, acutely aware of this dynamic, has been working to narrow that gap. His constant podcasting, his willingness to court controversy, and his decision to write a book aimed explicitly at young men are all of a piece.

As resistance politics becomes less woke and more masculine, Republicans should take notice and prepare accordingly. It is no longer sufficient to dismiss Gavin Newsom as a smug governor with a bad record. That critique, while accurate, risks misunderstanding the moment.

American politics increasingly rewards those who command attention, project confidence, and refuse to be pinned down by their own history. In that environment, the ability to narrate and perform often matters more than the ability to govern well—and Newsom has shown an unusually clear-eyed understanding of that reality.

You do not have to admire Gavin Newsom. You do not have to forgive his record. But you may, sooner than you would like, have to hand it to him. Because everyone is talking about him. And nowadays, that is half the battle.