Still waiting for results
The Governor Newsom Press Office is amusing but not the campaign we need to see
Politico’s Playbook newsletter takes a dive into Gavin Newsom’s online parody—it is a magnificent parody—of Donald Trump’s social media posts.[1] It’s definitely worth a laugh.
I was especially delighted by one meme—with a watermark @PaulleyTicks—that was a take on the infamous photograph of Donald Trump after the assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, with Secret Service agents shielding the then-candidate and his fist in the air as blood streamed from his ear. In Newsom’s version, the agents are doubled over with laughter, Newsom is holding up a bottle of ketchup, some of which drips from his ear.
Very funny—and I don’t mean that facetiously. It’s still, at best one third of the campaign Democrats should be running. I’ll laugh at the bits of Newsom’s campaign that make their way onto the social networks I participate in, but what I really want to hear from the Democrats is how they’re going to make life livable for the working class, how they’re going to stop the genocide in Gaza, and how they’re going to address the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East. I want to hear how they’re going to rein in white supremacist gangsters (so-called “police”). I want to hear how they’re going to restore abortion and voting rights. I want to hear what they’re going to do about the student loan debt that I and so many others will never be able to repay. I want to hear what they’re going to do about the gig economy which increasingly doesn’t even cover drivers’ costs of operation.
And I want to hear how they’re actually going to do these things rather than get bogged down trying to please their donors and their so-called “moderates,” none of whom have actual ideas on how to address the multitude of existential crises facing the Amerikkkan people.
Sure, I’ll laugh and I encourage you to laugh. But I’ve been waiting for results since the dot-com crash in 2001. And a lot of working folks have been waiting since the collapse of manufacturing in the 1980s.
[1] Adam Wren with Dasha Burns, “How Gavin Newsom took over your X feed,” Politico, August 20, 2025, https://www.politico.com/newsletters/playbook/2025/08/20/how-gavin-newsom-took-over-your-x-feed-00515786