I’ll spare you the line about how Democrats always bring knives to a gunfight. It’s just sweet that – finally! – there’s a prominent Democrat who has the cojones and social media smarts to kick Trump’s sorry bum 24/7.

I grant you Gavin Newsom seems at times to be too slick by half, and one can certainly contend his six years as California governor have not been maximally stellar – lots of homelessness, struggling public schools, a housing shortage, lots of budgetary red ink. And many grassroots Democrats, in their usual pursuit of (nonexistent) perfection, are no doubt tempted to dismiss him as too “ambitious.” But unlike vocal MAGA critics Chris Murphy and Cory Booker, who are powerless in the Senate to actually do anything, Newsom has actual clout. He’s got muscle to buttress his mouth.

Trump’s poll numbers are already in the toilet – Pew pegs his current approval rating at 38 percent – so naturally his fallback plan is to rig the 2026 midterms in order to thwart a House Democratic takeover. It violates traditional American norms to redraw congressional seat boundaries in mid-decade, but the core tenet of Totalitarianism 101 is to seize and hold power by any means necessary, so thank God there’s someone like Newsom who’s willing to retaliate. He and his super-majority Democratic legislators are poised to neutralize Trump’s power grab via Texas by knocking out Republican House seats in California.

And Newsom’s online theatre – his relentless mimicking of Trump’s posts, exposing Der Leader’s pathological narcissism – has been strategically brilliant.

Finally we have a Democrat who’s fighting back at the tip of the spear, a Democrat who understands how important it is to dominate the social media space. His broader point: “(Trump) can’t win by playing by traditional sets of rules. He plays by no rules. I remind you all the time, it’s not the Rule of Law, it’s the Rule of Don – and we’re standing up to that,” by responding in kind.

MAGA is a five-alarm fire that can’t be extinguished with squirt guns. Michelle Obama’s credo – “When they go low, we go high” – is as obsolete as the videocassette. It’s tragically sad Trump has obliterated our norms and debased so much of what we held dear, but what Newsom is saying is the time for wringing our hands is long past. The only option we have left, and it won’t be pretty, is to win.

Will Stancil, a policy researcher and attorney, clearly gets it. On a recent podcast, he explained: “Liberals tend to be people who got where they are by following the rules and doing a good job and thinking things through and being detail-oriented. And they’re just temperamentally averse to an approach to politics in which you are winging it a lot and you are throwing things at the wall and you are being energetic and aggressive…That temperamental gap creates (a) rhetorical gap. And what we’re seeing now with Newsom is that he has closed a lot of that, to significant success.”

Granted, I know that mockery and retaliatory tactics aren’t enough to rescue democracy from the encroaching darkness. And I know, long term, the blue party can’t woo back disaffected voters without a resonant message; it’s not enough to say that Trump is horrible. But the journey back from the dead begins with bold marching steps, and Democrats could do worse than heed the leader of the world’s fourth largest economy, someone who at least understands that pugilism is better than pining for civility.

I also know that Newsom is not universally loved in his own state – a friend of mine, Los Angeles Times columnist Mark Z. Barabak, calls him “a grasping and nakedly calculating politician” – but is there anyone in high elective office who isn’t calculating? Some observers dismiss Newsom as an “imperfect” vehicle. You won’t find perfection in politics, not in this life.

Winston Churchill, until the moment he was named prime minister, was widely dismissed as a failed politician of bottomless ambition – but he galvanized the public by standing up to the Nazis. And, no, I’m not conflating Newsom with Churchill. I’m saying that people who yearn for anti-fascist leadership will forgive or ignore all kinds of flaws.

For now, it’s simply sufficient that Gavin Newsom has updated Michelle Obama:

When they go low, we kick them in the crotch.

Copyright 2025 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes the Subject to Change newsletter. Email him at [email protected]