Vibe check: 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 state, and carries far less baggage—will capture the Democratic nomination (and ultimately win, if I may) in 2028.

That said, you can't underestimate the power of being a familiar (and handsome) face, and also the fact that Democrats might just be burnt out enough on the silly woke/establishment bullshit of the past decade that they really do, slowly but surely, begin to grow fonder of the tall, handsome, white guy who was born for the stage and is now podcasting amongst the right wing pseudo-intelligentsia in an attempt to get some much-needed normie street cred.

FWIW if I'm a PR strategist working for Newsom I would absolutely tell him to keep doing the podcast and keep pumping out episodes at this pace. Use Bannon's own strategy and "flood the zone." Right now people are reacting to and criticizing the fact that he's started a podcast at all, but as with all things in this modern media culture, if he just keeps churning out content eventually the "I can't believe he's doing this!" talk will fade, the show "being a thing" will be normalized, and people will eventually be forced to react to the actual content and conversations themselves. From there, all publicity is good publicity.

However, Tim Dillon seeing through the smoke and already blowing his horn this loudly is not to be underestimated, as it could be a harbinger of future assaults on Gavy from the normal dude media sphere. If these critiques from Dillon et al became consistent it would be lethal.