Vibe check: Gavin Newsom's new podcast
March 20th
•4 min read
Tim Dillon rants about Gavin Newsom's new podcast
Tim Dillon, Joe Rogan, Theo Von, Shane Gillis, etc. etc.
"Every day dude" podcasters are more in touch with actual every day normal people than traditional media etc. etc.
"Kamala Harris fucked up by not going on Rogan" etc. etc.
All true. TLDR: Love it or hate it, if you want to check the pulse of everyday dudes (who make up the lion's share of dudes in general and account for like 35% of all Americans) and understand their influences, and you are not aware of or in touch with this corner of the male podcaster world—which produces shareable social media clips faster than a CA wildfire spreads—then you are just not in the game and should go try to "understand" something else.
Look, everyone knows Gavin Newsom is a slick, oily snake who has been gunning for the White House since he was born. I don't think anyone who is not completely out of touch with reality would argue against this, left or right. The only question is if he is too much of a snake to win in 2028. In other words, we all know he is an overly-media-trained legacy Democrat and oozing with ambition, but when it comes down to it, how much will we really care?
Furthermore, is his blatantly slicked-back shtick actually, counterintuitively, meme-able enough that it could end up working in his favor? It is definitely a stretch and I don't think it's likely to happen, but imagine a coalition of center-left and center-right voters cheering for his Patrick Bateman-esque bullshit ironically, like some sort of collective corrective therapy, after years of being smothered by wokeness and cancel culture. They could justify it by believing it's not perfect but still for the greater good: beating JD Vance, or whichever MAGA cocksucker Republicans run in 2028.
I really don't know, and it's too early to tell. If I had to guess I'd say Newsom probably won't be able to overcome his perceived sliminess, and someone like Shapiro—who is just as good a communicator, is also the governor of a formidable-enough stat...