Gavin Newsom will be upsetting Democrats for 4 years, and that’s a good thing

Amid all the fallout from the Trump administration’s rollout of tariffs, government reduction and executive orders, Democrats have faced criticism for being missing in action or, worse, engaging in meaningless and performative behavior. Whether it be color coordinating for Trump’s address to Congress or making cringey TikTok videos, Democrats have their voters wondering if their elected representation is actually playing dead, as James Carville suggested they do.

One Democrat, however, decided to do something radical and controversial, at least to his fellow Democrats. California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) sat down to engage with and even agreed with a right-wing personality. In doing so, he is carving out a path for 2028 for Democrats (well really himself) to take the White House back.

Newsom’s statement that transgender athletes participation in women’s sports was “deeply unfair” enraged the Democratic establishment. But it also revealed Newsom’s strategy to beat the Republicans. There is no doubt that Republicans have created, campaigned on, and won elections off of the so-called “culture wars,” which includes everything from transgender athletes to the “War on Christmas” to the belief that diverse casting in Hollywood movies somehow equates to the American version of the fall of the Roman Empire. You may roll your eyes at the fake outrage of these culture wars, but there is a problem: Many Americans agree with them and many vote along those lines.

The Democrats should know that a vast majority of their own electorate agree with Republicans on the issue of transgender athletes, and many just don’t think it’s a serious issue. Compare that to the Democratic platform and you see the disconnect. Newsom, on his new podcast and in future appearances with right-wing media figures, will look to disarm the arguments that Republicans use. In doing so, he might just shift the focus of the country’s electorate from culture wars and populism to policy and results.

If Newsom is smart, and let’s be honest he is, he will not only have right-wing media personalities like Charlie Kirk on his show, but will also do a blitz of Fox News shows, podcasts, radio shows and TikToks, taking his view of America’s future right to right-wingers over the next three and a half years.

This has been a true failing of Democrats going back to the Obama administration. Fox News is the mainstream news it pretends to hate, and it’s not even close when it comes to viewership. Fourteen of the top 15 cable news shows are on Fox, with only “The Rachel Maddow Show” appearing at 14. I can go on, but the point is clear.

Joe Rogan’s podcast (although he claims it to be apolitical) is definitely massive in terms of audience and definitively political in nature. Right-wing media is mainstream, and Democrats are largely missing in action when taking their plan to the people.

In their post-mortem of the Kamala Harris campaign, Democrats realized that Donald Trump’s appearances on right-wing podcasts helped him win a sizable chunk of the younger vote while Harris’s absence hurt her. Did the Democrats learn from this? It looks like Newsom so far is the only one who has, because he knows how effective it is. In 2023, he went on Fox News and debated Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and told him that neither of them would be president in 2025.

He was right, and he clearly showed his chops when taking on a MAGA-lite candidate. He isn’t the only liberal to do this. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has taken his views there as well and was warmly received by a conservative audience. Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has consistently delivered master classes on policy to less-than-prepared interviewers.

But that isn’t enough, and Newsom knows that. His plan (whether he wants to admit it or not) will be to not only put himself on right-wing channels, but to defuse any and all culture war arguments that will be certain to rise up again in the midterms and in the 2028 election. His remark about transgender athletes put him in the doghouse (for now) with liberals, but it means conservatives cannot use that argument against him moving forward.

For those Democrats who still don’t understand, let’s talk football. I love football and watch a lot of it (sometimes too much). And in the run-up to the election, I was bombarded by Trump ads railing about the dangers of transgender Americans. I wasn’t swayed by the ads, but I realized that Trump did something that Republicans do very well. They tie a particular group or policy to the woes of the average American. We know there aren’t many transgender Americans, but Trump convinced people that that small group affected the lives of millions of Americans. Laugh all you want to, but it worked.

Newsom knows it worked, and he knows that culture wars are Kryptonite for any Democratic national candidate. So, he is going to go to the masses via right-wing media and defuse any and all culture war bombs the Republicans will use against him. In doing so, he will alleviate fears of middle America and force Republicans to attack him on his greatest strength, explaining Democratic policy.

Jos Joseph is a master’s candidate at the Harvard Extension School at Harvard University. He is a Marine veteran who served in Iraq and lives in Anaheim, Calif.