Trash talk.
Your party's activists love it
It's a way to communicate toughness and willingness to fight for your team.
It's no secret that Gavin Newsom is angling to be elected president. He is governor of California, he is term-limited, tall, good-looking, and wealthy. So of course he is running for president.
I am not sure he is electable nationally. Americans have a love-hate relationship with California. It creates billionaires and is by far the greatest wealth-growing environment in the world, but it also represents what a majority of Americans resent. California comes across as too woke, too expensive, too progressive, and so environmentally conscious that California environmentalists can't build environmental projects in California because they might hurt the California environment.
People in California understand Newsom to be a moderating force in California politics, but the rest of the country doesn't realize that yet. His national brand is still "California," not "Gavin Newsom, the can-do, left-center leader of a state where fortunes are created."
Newsom called Stephen Miller a "fascist cuck." Criticizing Miller is good politics for a Democrat. On Friday, July 11, Miller posted on X, calling an LA judge a "communist judge" following her ruling that blocks ICE from making arrests at Home Depots and car washes. Newsom's official State of California press office responded with this:
On Saturday, July 12, JD Vance visited Disneyland in Anaheim, California, with his family, and that, too, was an opportunity. Newsom tweeted on X at 1:44 p.m.
Tired: trashing California for political purposes
Wired: visiting & vacationing in California more than hour home state this year.
That wasn't quite enough, so at 3:03 he added:
"Hope you enjoy your family time, @JDVance. The families you're tearing apart certainly won't."
On Monday, July 14, Newsom called Donald Trump a "son of a bitch" in an appearance on the Shawn Ryan Show. Appearing there is part of the general trend of male politicians to "man up." (Pete Buttigieg, JD Vance, and Ted Cruz have grown beards; Josh Hawley wrote a book on masculinity.) Shawn Ryan, a former CIA contractor who sells tactical training and fighting gear, has a podcast and online show. Newsom repeated the phrase he has been using, "It's weakness masquerading as strength." That is Newsom doing brand judo on Trump. When Trump does something "strong," the public should re-interpret it as weakness performed by an overcompensating phony.
Newsom added, "That's what I don't like about the son of a bitch."
I am not a big fan of Newsom adopting the Trump tactic of trolling and name-calling. There is a me-too quality to it. But my instincts here may be out of date for this media environment. Maybe trolling the other party needs to be everybody's brand in a world where people get news via social media. Policy discussion bores most people. Many people think they want serious political discussion of the issues, but people at the margin who decide elections respond to quick shots that position a politician in the political universe. One defines oneself by one’s fights. A brand is built with a half-dozen mentally-sticky impressions, not with a legislative record. Newsom is becoming less "California pretty-boy progressive with big hair" and more "Mr. Tough Guy." He's the guy who defends his state, who "talks shit," who stands up to presidents.
Over the course of three days, Newsom picked fights with the Big Three of Democratic contempt, Miller, Vance, and Trump. He is projecting a simple body-language message: He shares your contempt for them, and he is willing to take them on.
5 comments:
Newsom is missing a key tactic. Let others do the trash talk and concentrate 100% on telling victim's stories and coming to their aid. But above all be dignified and presidential.
Narcissists love the insults. It's a confirmation of their importance.
John Adams was called a "hideous hermaphroditical character.” Alexander Hamilton was referred to as "the bastard brat of a Scotch peddler.”
Democracy is messy. Bring it.
I remember when CNN cancelled its long-running "Crossfire" series in the early 2000s. Supposedly the era of hyper-personal confrontation and insult in political discourse was over. Maybe Twitter/X changed it back again, along with Trump's mind-numbing schoolyard tactics in 2016? Whether or not Newsom's tack proves effective, it's certainly a far cry from Michelle Obama's then-iconic, "They go low, we go high".
The French Laundry and Kimberly Guilfoyle doom Gavin Newsom to the footnotes. Only our President can get away with calling people names like "cuck", whatever that means (and I'm a native speaker of English who knows a lot of slang). Put it this way: Gavin Newsom is no "sigma" (the word you should know, that's been around for a year or so at the local middle schools).
A cuckold is defined as a man whose wife has been unfaithful, and is often seen as an object of derision.
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