California’s Gov. Gavin Newsom is the new front runner in the race for the Democratic nomination for president. Behind a social media campaign that mocks the style and demeanor of President Donald Trump, Newsom’s charges have worked wonders for his national profile and elevated what appears to be an all-but-certain presidential campaign in 2028.
New polling from Emerson suggests the 57-year-old former mayor of San Francisco is heads and shoulders above his Democratic peers who each possess a fatal flaw that will likely prevent them from warding off the coming era of Newsom. Emerson queried 387 active registered Democrats and found that Newsom has the support of 25 percent, a jump of more than 12 points since June, when Newsom found himself locked in a tight, three-way race with former vice president Kamala Harris and former transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg.
In June, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez posted double digits leading to speculation that she might seize the progressive momentum and upset the entire field. AOC was coming off a star turn with Sen. Bernie Sanders as the two barnstormed the Mountain West and Midwest, selling out massive arenas as part of their “Fight the Oligarchy” tour. AOC’s team was posting its best fundraising numbers ever, and the wave of progressive upstarts showing well in New York City, Minneapolis, and Maine seemed to signal that there was a lane to victory for someone outside the Dem establishment.
Though the progressive moment in the Democratic Party may still be lurking, Newsom’s recent ascendancy cannot be ignored. The two-time governor of California has turned the tables on MAGA this summer, reanimating their own online tactics to cajole and mock and lambast Trump and his merry band of trolls. For a party that has spent the better part of a decade crying foul, Newsom decided to try the one thing none of them appeared willing to do — attack in the style of Trump. And it worked.
No greater example of the success of Newsom’s online blitz can be seen than on Fox News, where the governor’s tricks single-handedly turned some of Trump’s great defenders into the new scolds. First up was Dana Perino who was livid that Newsom had suddenly employed Trump’s tried and true tactics against the president. “You have to stop it with the Twitter thing,” Perino fumed. “If I were his wife, I would say, ‘You are making a fool of yourself! Stop it!’”
Anyone with two functioning neurons left in this mess of a country we call America could see clearly what was going on here. Perino, who nary says an ill-word about the ALL CAPS ranting and raving of Trump on Truth Social, was complaining, hopelessly, that Newsom finally just shoved it all back in their faces. “DANA ‘DING DONG’ PERINO (NEVER HEARD OF HER UNTIL TODAY!) IS MELTING DOWN BECAUSE OF ME, GAVIN C. NEWSOM!” Read a statement from an X account associated with Newsom. “FOX HATES THAT I AM AMERICA’S MOST FAVORITE GOVERNOR (‘RATINGS KING’) SAVING AMERICA.” That post received more than 150,000 likes on Elon Musk’s platform, where it was viewed more than 5 million times. The candidate that everyone was waiting for had found his sea legs.
And the mockery did not stop there. The Governor Newsom Press Office account on X, which is likely being run by a Gen Z employee, has gone on a meme rampage, doctoring photos of Tucker Carlson, Kid Rock, Hulk Hogan to show support for Newsom. It’s been an all-out memetic war that is showing early signs of victory in some strange but troublesome places for Trump and the anointed son of MAGA, Vice President J.D. Vance. In the same poll from Emerson released on Friday, Newsom finds himself within only 1 point of Vance in a hypothetical 2028 presidential matchup.
Vance, who is dominating the 2028 Republican field in early polling, hit back at Newsom during an exclusive interview with Fox News on Thursday. Vance laughed off Newsom’s strategy of mocking Trump. “You can’t mimic the king,” Vance said with a chuckle. There was a strange admittance in this counter. For Vance, who will be tasked with taking over the MAGA mantle should Trump not seek another term, much of the campaign will likely be just that; an imitation of Trump, the most successful outsider politician of the modern age. Finding his own particular voice and brand inside a MAGA machine that venerates Trump will be a difficult task and one that could lead to cracks in the base if Vance cannot find the right tone.
Before accepting the 2028 Democratic nomination for president, Newsom will have to clear the field. It’s a task that, upon inspection, looks rather forgone. Let’s start with Kamala. Harris has never performed well on the campaign trail. When she tried to go out on her own in 2020, she quit the race before the Iowa caucuses after failing to find enthusiasm or raise the funds needed to push on. There were times in the lead up to those caucuses when the national media attempted to assert her favorability but it never materialized on the ground, a fact that would come to ring true again in 2024 when her cobbled-together, last-minute campaign failed to topple Trump.
Buttigieg is in an even-worse position than Harris. Black voters don’t particularly care for Buttigieg, a point that was made abundantly clear in Emerson’s June poll, which found that Buttigieg is currently polling at 0 percent with the group. That’s right: Black voters, who carry sizable influence in the Democratic primary, simply do not support the former mayor of South Bend. Buttigieg, who has privately made clear his intentions to run in 2028, won’t be getting anywhere close to the nomination without black voters, and there’s no reason for the demographic to suddenly support a man whose pitch they have heard many times before.
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AOC is the dark horse in the race, owing to the fact that there most certainly is a progressive moment occurring inside the Democratic ranks. Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist who bucks the establishment in more ways than one, is likely to become the next mayor of New York City. In Minneapolis, the Democratic elites are doing their best to quell the momentum of progressive upstart Omar Fateh, who promises to shake the party to its core. And in Maine, an oyster farmer named Graham Platner appears ready to ride the populist lane to his party’s nomination for Senate. These trends, coupled with the impressive attendance at Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders’ joint multi-city tour of America this spring, explain why some think the 35-year-old Bronx congresswoman could contend as the field narrows.
But as of today, AOC possesses neither the profile nor the donor base to mount a serious challenge against Newsom, a man who governs one of the largest economies in the world and who has seriously trained for his opportunity to lead the Democrats and perhaps the country. Newsom’s impressive numbers in the recent Emerson poll show that Democrats, who were on the backfoot in ’24 and are eager to latch onto their next figure, may have little choice but to nominate a candidate who has been badgered by criticisms of his governance.
Those criticisms may not matter much when the field really begins to take shape over the next few years. As it stands, none of Newsom’s challengers have the money or the charisma that Newsom exudes in front of the press and in the online arena, where today’s politics are gamed out. Whether Newsom can galvanize the all-important independents to pull the lever for him in a matchup against Vance will likely be the deciding factor in a matchup that looks set to test the merits of MAGA without Trump at the helm.
