Gavin Newsom went on CNN this week and said something that every Republican has been saying for years, that every moderate Democrat has been whispering behind closed doors, and that the American electorate demonstrated with unmistakable clarity in November 2024.
“There’s no doubt that the Democratic Party needs to be, dare I say, more culturally normal.”
Culturally normal. Those are Gavin Newsom’s words. The governor of California — the state that leads the nation in progressive policy experimentation, that banned gas cars before it could keep the lights on, that imports gasoline through the Bahamas, that spent $450 million on a 911 system that doesn’t work — is telling his party to be more normal.
The irony is so thick you could spread it on toast.
The Diagnosis
Newsom’s actual analysis isn’t wrong. He told Dana Bash that Democrats are “less prone to spending disproportionate amount of time on pronouns, identity politics” and should be “more focused on tabletop issues — things that really matter — the stacking of stress in terms of the electricity bills and childcare costs and health care and obviously housing costs.”
He’s right. Democrats have been hemorrhaging working-class voters for a decade because the party’s messaging has been consumed by identity politics, pronoun debates, and cultural issues that most Americans consider irrelevant to their daily lives. People trying to pay their electric bill don’t care about your preferred pronouns. Parents trying to afford childcare don’t want to hear about intersectionality. Workers watching their grocery budget shrink aren’t interested in a lecture about white privilege.
Newsom sees this. And he said it on national television, which takes a certain amount of courage — or desperation.
The problem is that Gavin Newsom is the last person on earth who should be delivering this message. Because Gavin Newsom is the embodiment of everything he’s diagnosing.
The Man Who Started It
Newsom acknowledged this himself, almost proudly. “Here I was, way out front on marriage equality, so I understand this from the receiving end of this and on the front end of this leading the pack.”
That’s an understatement. In 2004, as mayor of San Francisco, Newsom issued over 4,000 same-sex marriage licenses in defiance of state and federal law. The move was so far ahead of where the Democratic Party was at the time that Barack Obama — Barack Obama — publicly distanced himself from Newsom.
When the man who would become the most progressive president in American history thinks you’ve gone too far, you’ve gone too far. Newsom didn’t just participate in the cultural revolution that consumed the Democratic Party. He launched it. He lit the fuse. And now, twenty-two years later, he’s standing in the rubble saying the party needs to be “more culturally normal.”
You can’t be the arsonist and the fire chief.
The Trans Sports Concession
The most interesting moment in Newsom’s CNN interview was his comment about transgender athletes — the issue that has become the single most toxic cultural position the Democratic Party holds.
“If you can’t hold the line on competitive sports — again, sports, there’s some nuance in the larger conversation — but competitive, medal sports. If we can’t find that nuance, I think we’re gonna lose a lot of people.”
Translation: Democrats need to stop defending biological males competing in women’s sports. The polling is clear. The public is clear. Parents are clear. And Tuesday night’s State of the Union made it clearer than ever — when Trump asked the chamber to oppose secret gender transitions of children, every Democrat sat down.
Newsom is conceding the point. Quietly, with caveats and the word “nuance” deployed as a safety net, but conceding it nonetheless. He knows the trans sports issue is killing Democrats. He knows it’s the cultural wedge that splits their coalition between progressive activists who consider any compromise a betrayal and working-class voters who think it’s insane for a man to compete in women’s swimming.
But knowing the problem and fixing it are different things. Newsom can’t fix it because the activist base won’t let him. The same people who cheered when he issued those marriage licenses in 2004 are the people who now demand absolute adherence to gender ideology. They don’t want nuance. They want compliance. And any Democrat who deviates gets the same treatment the party gives to every heretic — excommunication.
The Atlanta Problem
Newsom’s cultural normality tour hit a speed bump in Atlanta, where he told a predominantly Black audience that he was “like them” because he scored 960 on his SATs and “can’t read a speech.” The comments drew accusations of racism from Ted Cruz, Sean Hannity, and Nicki Minaj — a coalition that doesn’t often agree on anything.
Newsom’s response was to attack Hannity on X, dropping F-bombs and accusing conservatives of “fake outrage.” Hannity fired back by noting Newsom’s alliance with Biden and Biden’s history with former Klansman Robert Byrd, then added: “How about you get homeowners building permits in the Pacific Palisades instead of making an ass out of yourself daily?”
This is the man telling Democrats to be “more culturally normal.” The man who can’t do a book tour stop without insulting his audience, can’t respond to criticism without profanity, and can’t govern his own state without importing gasoline from the Caribbean.
The Advice He Can’t Follow
Newsom’s diagnosis is correct: Democrats have lost touch with normal Americans by prioritizing identity politics over kitchen-table issues. His prescription is correct: focus on electricity bills, childcare, housing, and the daily stresses that actually affect voters’ lives.
But the prescription is worthless coming from a governor whose state has the highest electricity rates in the continental United States, whose childcare costs are among the nation’s most unaffordable, whose housing crisis is the worst in the country, and whose policies have driven more residents to leave California than any state in the union.
He’s telling Democrats to focus on the issues that his own governance has made catastrophically worse. He’s telling them to be culturally normal while running the least culturally normal state in America. He’s telling them to stop with the identity politics while campaigning on a book tour where he tells Black audiences he’s “like them” because he can’t read.
The message is right. The messenger is a disaster. And the party he’s trying to save doesn’t want to hear either one.