If this Clickhole article is to be believed (it shouldn’t be), California’s governor is looking to get a job in comedy.
The reality is a bit less appealing: Gavin Newsom wants to be president of the U S. His office has ramped up social media attacks on Donald Trump, his policies, and, predictably, his bugnuts tweeting. I have witnessed the rise of Gavin Newsom firsthand: from his tenure as mayor of San Francisco to the governorship of my state to this deeply embarrassing photo with a future resident of Mar-a-Lago. At last, the world can finally see the Gavin Newsom I have come to vehemently tolerate – a man with a tendency to stumble into doing the right thing in the most annoying way possible.
Newsom is the kind of politician who will seize the moment – legalizing same-sex marriage in San Francisco back in 2004, most significantly – as long as the moment is somewhere near a camera and an operating microphone. We are in one of those dreaded “moments” right now, as Texas gerrymanders itself to rig the midterms in the favor of Republicans. Newsom is taking full advantage, pushing to gerrymander California in response and turning over one of his office’s social media accounts to run a comic offensive against the White House. In the process, he is doing the thing I hate the most: weaponizing nostalgia.
Nostalgia is a powerful thing, like a rank body odor or a French cheese. Don’t we all love turning back the hands of time and pretending like we still have all our hair, we can stand for more than 30 minutes of an Oasis concert and Twitter is a thing that matters to normal people? Remember 2017? That was a fun year. The Women’s March, the release of the original Nintendo Switch, and Montenegro joining Nato (ugh, finally). It was certainly a year, was it not? Definitely one of the years. Back then, not a minute would go by without a Krassenstein brother telling you that the indictments were imminent, that Donald Trump was a lame duck and the pee tape was just an Amazon Prime delivery away. Robert Mueller was practically Elvis gyrating on the Ed Sullivan Show, he was so beloved by neurotic liberals trying their best to white-knuckle through the first Trump administration. Sometimes, I’ll put on the music video for Despacito and just vibe on the 2017 of it all. You probably don’t even remember that song exists, but I assure you, it was popular once.
Back in those days, we all thought we could mock Trump into oblivion. I certainly tried. I definitely failed. But thinking we could tease the man into appeasement was an amusing fantasy. Our first go-round with the Don was something of a satire boom – the Daily Show, the Late Show with Stephen Colbert, digital outlets like Crooked Media. Surely all we’d need to do is make fun of his tan and he’d go away, like a schoolyard bully with a weird birthmark. Despite the best efforts of various Ivy League educated wits, Trump won out with crueler insults, more banal observations and performative intimidation tactics that energized his base. We are now almost a decade into the Trump era and no one on the left has been able to figure out how to cause lasting damage to the Maga mystique that doesn’t involve the Jeffrey Epstein files. So, when I witness the numbing onslaught of Newsom’s @GovPressOffice account, I can’t help but be caught in a reverie that warps me back to the halcyon days of something resembling optimism – when “the resistance” was a hashtag that seemed to have actual meaning.
@GovPressOffice is a glorious throwback to 2017. Also, 2018. And 2019. And 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024. Kamala Harris even tried this same tactic, trolling Trump on social media as often as possible. In the minds of the most die-hard political junkies, platforms like X are the ultimate battleground, where hearts and minds can be won over with a bit of sarcasm or a meme of JD Vance as a baby. At most, that meme might get you deported, but I’m still not convinced it can sway an election. Nevertheless, they persisted. It seems like any Democrat with a shred of national recognition immediately goes into full 2017 “resistance” mode, hoping to trigger the right into some mythical unforced error of political gamesmanship. Please indulge me as I copy/paste an actual tweet from @GovPressOffice. Decide for yourself if you think this is going to sway a voter to move to the left:
WOW!!! MY MAPS (THE BEST MAPS EVER MADE) WILL SOON PASS IN THE GREATEST LEGISLATURE ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD (NOT JUST AMERICA). AMERICA CAN THANK ME (GAVIN C. NEWSOM) AND TWO VERY SPECIAL PEOPLE – MAGIC MIKE & RAINMAKER ROBERT, WHO LEAD THE LEGISLATURE – TOTAL LEGENDS!!! THESE ARE “PERFECT, BEAUTIFUL” MAPS. BETTER THAN COLUMBUS, BETTER THAN GOOGLE MAPS, BETTER THAN APPLE MAPS (SORRY TIM, NO GOLD BAR FOR ME, BUT I STILL LOVE YOU!). PEOPLE ARE ALREADY SCREAMING “MAMA! MAMA!” AND I SAY, “NO, I AM YOUR DADDY!!!” THE GOLDEN ERA BEGINS IN THE GOLDEN STATE, ALL BECAUSE OF ME, THE PEOPLE’S GOVERNOR, THE CARTOGRAPHER-IN-CHIEF, WHO WILL NOW LET THE PEOPLE VOTE!!! THANK YOU, USA!!! – GCN
If I might go full r/PeterExplainsTheJoke here, the bit above revolves around the Newsom account mimicking Trump’s tendency to post witless threats and self-aggrandizements in all-caps. Meanwhile, the actual Trump, on his own social media platform, posts strictly within his own version of reality, where deploying the military in Washington DC magically stopped crime, Democrats are twirling their mustaches while plotting to rig elections and the Governor of California is named “Gavin Newscum.” Not even a clever nickname. He foolishly left “Goofy Gavin”, “Blabbin Gavin”, and “Gavin Nonuts” on the table, but no one in the Maga base cares if he’s actually funny, if he has anything witty to say. They like Trump because he’s authentically Trump. He is a fully realized cartoon man impervious to South Park episodes, name-calling and garden variety teasing. Half of the Harris 2024 social media strategy revolved around JD Vance making love to a sofa, but that didn’t translate into actual votes. I guess I can have a mild chuckle in between huffs of misery fumes at the depression factory that is 2025 America.
This is not to say that Newsom is a worthless twit who has succeeded because of (and in some ways despite) his beautiful head of hair. No, he’s not worthless. The redistricting plan he’s enacted here in California is the only reasonable response to the escalation coming from the right. But what is gained from parody? What does mimicry do for the Democrats? It’s just another instance of the other side reinforcing the notion that Trump dictates the terms of engagement. There is a middle ground between “when they go low, we go high” capitulation and “lol I called myself the ‘CARTOGRAPHER IN CHIEF.’” In order to claw back authority and respectability, the Democrats have to stop trying to be Trump and start trying to be something else. Something coherent. Something relatable. Needling Trump is a great way to get engagement, to guarantee clicks and attention. Believe me, I know. But I’m not the governor of California. I’m basically a less successful, long-lost Krassenstein brother hoping to cash in on #resistance. Until the left figures out how to be something other than a pale shadow of their opponent, we’ll keep wishing it was still 2017.
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