photo source: https://www.flickr.com/people/126057486@N04, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons; Photo collage of Governor Newsom Press Office BlueSky account posts
By Nadir El-Azar Rae Gerber
“Live. Laugh. LOSE.”
So reads a post from California Governor Gavin Newsom’s Press Office following the victory of the Proposition 50 Yes campaign. The taunt is accompanied by a photoshopped image of the Oval Office, situating the text as wall decor.
This gleefully vindictive tone is typical of Newsom’s new social media presence and, in concert with the openly retributive Prop. 50, it may mark a turning point for Democrats as they shed the high mindedness of previous election cycles to join Republicans in the quagmire of spite.
Prop. 50, alternately known as The Election Rigging Response Act, arose as a countermeasure to Texas’ electoral redistricting. This initiative was taken partly at the behest of President Donald Trump. It aims to grant a partisan advantage to Republicans in the US Congress and shore up their control of the House of Representatives in which they presently hold 219 seats–only one over the 218 needed for the majority. Prop. 50 seeks to subvert this by eliminating as many Republican representatives from California as Texas’ remapping would add.
Commentators in opposition to Prop. 50 have decried it as enabling the very political abuses it seeks to rebuke. The California Republican Party filed suit immediately following its passage, alleging that the proposed changes constitute racially biased gerrymandering. Yet opposition to the measure is not a strictly partisan issue with some on the left expressing their unease with the uncompromising messaging of the Yes campaign. In listening to Governor Newsom’s endorsement of the measure, LeBron Antonio Hill, an opinion columnist for the Sacramento Bee who has previously criticized Newsom’s approach to AI regulation and reparations, writes that he experienced “the kind of anxiety and dread I felt at Trump rallies back in Nashville, Tennessee. At that moment, the chilling realization emerged: ‘We’re becoming just like them.’”
Newsom himself contends that in the face of an existential crisis for the future of American democracy, Democrats cannot afford to fight with their hands tied behind their backs–a willingness to embrace retributive actions should not be excluded through moral appeals to fair play. Citing President Donald Trump’s pressuring of the Florida and Ohio legislatures, among others, to follow the lead of Texas and develop electoral maps biased in favor of Republicans, Newsom stated, “[H]e’s rigging the game because he knows he’ll lose if all things are equal. He did not expect California to fight fire with fire.”
Newsom’s Press Office has taken to copying other stylistic flourishes of Republicans such as parodying Trump’s distinctive rhetorical style:
INSTEAD OF LOWERING PRICES LIKE ME, AMERICA’S FAVORITE GOVERNOR, [DOZY DON IS] BUILDING HIMSELF A ‘TEMU-VERSAILLES’ (GOLD PLATED BALLROOM)!…IT’S TIME TO RETURN THIS SAD, PARTY-CITY PUTIN PALACE AND THE DISCOUNT DICTATOR FOCUSED ON DECORATING. THROW DOLLAR STORE DON AND HIS FAKE GOLD OUT (DEMOCRACY!). THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER. -GCN [Gavin Christopher Newsom]
Challenged on whether posting such messages contribute to the normalization of petty abuses, Newsom pushed back by arguing that he is a counterweight putting “a mirror up to that madness.” This defense parallels that of Prop. 50 wherein the replication of Republican tactics is not evidence of stooping to their level but is a noble stand against them.
Pat Sabo, chair of the Sonoma County Democratic party, expressed this sentiment most overtly: “With the Republican Party redefining new lows every day…California Democrats [are not] going low — it’s fighting for our values and preserving our democracy…When they go low, we fight back.” Her concluding remark plays on the famous statement by former First Lady Michelle Obama: “When they go low, we go high.”
Newsom has similarly questioned the applicability of this adage while Michelle Obama herself has clarified that to go high is not necessarily an absolute moral position but a strategic one. Yet the rhetoric of Newsom’s office at times extends past frank, strategic pragmatism and into open mockery, divorced from clear political aims.
A number of posts have ridiculed Trump and his vice president JD Vance as being overweight. To his personal BlueSky account, Newsom has also posted content including an analog horror-style edit of Trump and far-right activist Laura Loomer. While lacking any incisive commentary, Newsom’s social media has introduced a space for aggrieved solidarity with his constituents. In short: it can be fun to make fun of someone you hate.
Newsom’s provocative approach has garnered him national attention and seen his name floated as a potential contender for the Democrats’ presidential nominee in 2028. California residents have likewise had a lot of positive things to say about him as of late–a marked contrast for a man who faced a recall vote back in 2021 after political opponents collected over two million signatures calling for his resignation. It’s certainly politically expedient to position oneself as a bulwark against an existential enemy and, if nothing else, Trump makes for a popular villain.
Even emergent as it is from spite, Democrats’ embrace of schadenfreude is not inherently a threat to democracy and civil society. Negative emotions are consistently better predictors of political engagement than positive ones, rendering anger an invaluable tool in the realization of political ends. Anger only consumes democracy when it loses coherency in its justification and misidentifies fault.
For now, California with Newsom at its helm can meaningfully safeguard democracy through spiteful retribution against a consolidated and authoritarian-inclined central government–so long as it does not lose sight of what is at stake and the productive steps that will need to be taken to render justice that is not only retributive but restorative. To do otherwise is to drift further toward a political future in which not only Trump but all Americans “LOSE.”
The Graduate Press - La Gazette de la Paix 
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