How a Party Offends Its Voters

Gavin Newsom won't be the Democrats' 2028 presidential nominee unless he wins a significant share of the African American vote.

So how's he courting it?

Promoting his new memoir to a largely black audience in Atlanta, the California governor decided to forge a connection by boasting about his poor SAT scores and difficulty reading.

"I'm like you," he said.

"You know, I'm a 960 SAT guy" and "you've never seen me read a speech. Because I cannot read a speech."

Newsom suffers from dyslexia, but he obviously wasn't assuming he was addressing a room full of voters with the same debility.

He just looked around and concluded this audience wouldn't have high academic aspirations.

"How insulting" was the response on X from Nina Turner, a former Democratic state senator in the battleground state Ohio and now a senior fellow with the Institute on Race, Power and Political Economy.

The outspoken rapper Nicki Minaj was just as direct: "His way of bonding with black ppl is to tell them how stupid he is & that he can't read," she posted.

Even a tactful Democratic consultant quoted in TheGrio said she was "disappointed" by Newsom:

"He's a great wordsmith, so I was kind of bothered by the way that he said it," Ameshia Cross told the outlet.

Luckily for Newsom, some of his rivals for the 2028 nomination have even less rapport with black voters. Polls often register Pete Buttigieg's African American support at zero percent.

The likes of Buttigieg are no threat to Newsom no matter how many gaffes he makes, but his fellow Californian Kamala Harris is another story.

It's true her 2020 campaign didn't even make it to the first primary — it imploded in December 2019.

But Harris failed upward, getting chosen as Joe Biden's running mate and then replacing him without a competition four years later.

Now she's Newsom's roadblock.

The '28 race isn't far away: In about a year, all the contenders on the Democrats' side will be clear — and maybe they already are.

Newsom and Harris have serious liabilities, not least the deteriorating condition of the blue state they both call home:

Does the whole country want to wind up like today's California?

Do businesses and families fleeing Newsom's state for the freedom and lower taxes of Texas and Florida want the governor's ruinous recipe attempted nationwide?

Yet Democrats looking for an alternative to the California scheme represented by Harris and Newsom have little to choose from.

Pennsylvania is the nation's most important battleground state, and culturally and economically similar enough to other battlegrounds like Ohio and Michigan that a successful Pennsylvania pol might have the right stuff to sweep the Electoral College.

But Josh Shapiro, the Keystone State's Democratic governor, has problems of his own with one of the party's key constituencies — critics of Israel.

Shapiro is Jewish, and nowadays that in itself is a problem for some in the Democratic base.

According to The Washington Post, Shapiro's forthcoming memoir reveals the Harris campaign pressed him about dual loyalties when vetting him as a vice-presidential possibility:

"Have you ever been an agent of the Israeli government?" he was asked. "Have you ever communicated with an undercover agent of Israel?"

"If they were undercover," Shapiro recalls replying, "how the hell would I know?"

Harris thought she could walk a fine line two years ago, hanging onto the votes of the anti-Israel left — then storming the streets and college campuses in protest against the war in Gaza — while maintaining the Democrats' longtime grip on the Jewish vote.

The Democratic National Committee's "autopsy" of her campaign concludes she failed. Progressive voters punished Harris because they didn't think she and Biden were hard enough on Israel.

The DNC isn't making the report public, but the word is out.

The party's at war with itself over Israel, as younger and more progressive Democrats turn increasingly anti-Zionist and at times openly anti-Semitic.

A generational shift is irreversible. This is the rising character of the Democratic Party, and the 2028 contenders will be forced to choose a side.

Can Newsom court Jewish voters any more deftly than blacks?

Democrats hope the Republicans' own infighting will save them.

President Donald Trump himself has reportedly asked Tucker Carlson to stop going after Israel — to no avail.

The online-influencer right isn't yet the force at the ballot box that the Democrats' young activists are, but it threatens to alienate one of the GOP's electoral mainstays, pro-Israel evangelical Christians.

Will the 2028 election come down to which party offends its own voters more?

The Democrats are off to an impressive start with Newsom's backhanded attempt at being "relatable" and the party's fear of releasing its own analysis of how it lost last time.

As rough as this year's midterms might be, Republicans are well positioned for 2028 — if only they avoid going to war with themselves.

(COMMENT, BELOW)

Previously:
• 02/17/26: Why Are Anti-ICE Activists Building Borders?
• 02/10/26: A Japanese Lesson for Troubled Britain
• 02/03/26: The Trump Coalition Wins But the GOP Brand Doesn't
• 01/27/26: Canada Should Warm to Trump's Arctic Plans
• 01/20/26: From Rock to Tech, Talent Flees Taxes
• 01/13/26: Woman Who Weaponized Car Against I.C.E Endangered Her Life -- and Yours
• 01/06/26: Tim Walz Personifies Dems' Decline
• 12/30/25: Harvard Says Yes to Discrimination, No to Western Civ
• 12/23/25: JD Vance Gets America's Creed and Heritage Right
• 12/16/25: Trump's Inflation Trap
• 12/09/25: Biden's Immigration Debacle Is the Media's, Too
• 12/02/25: 'Iryna's Law' and the Bad Judges Who Make It Necessary
• 11/26/25: Marjorie Taylor Greene's Exit Is a Warning to Republicans
• 11/19/25: Trump Hasn't Lost Hispanics (Yet)
• 11/11/25: Trump's Tariffs on Trial
• 10/28/25: MAGA Makes Allies Great Again
• 10/21/25: How To Make the AmericaS Great Again
• 10/16/25: Columbus Day Celebrates Our Civilization
• 10/09/25: Why Sharpies Are Made in America Again
• 09/30/25: Assata Shakur and Other Parents of Political Violence
• 09/09/25: Who's Accountable for Autopen Pardons?
• 09/02/25: Gender dysphoria is a mental-illness, NOT an all-encompassing delusion
• 08/26/25: Trump's Industrial Policy Is Realism, Not Socialism
• 08/19/25: Is Gavin Newsom the Dems' Answer to Trump?
• 08/12/25: Just Say No to More Marijuana
• 08/05/25: Will the GOP Make Libs Generous Again?
• 07/30/25: Trump's Trade Lesson for Economists (and the World)
• 07/22/25: Whose Politics Canceled Stephen Colbert?
• 07/08/25: A Big Beautiful Test of GOP Principles and Discipline
• 07/01/25: Dems Need Populism, But Not Zohran's Sort
• 06/25/25: Secure Borders Win Wars Like This One
• 06/18/25: WEIRD Protesters Should Stay Home
• 06/17/25: WEIRD Protesters Should Stay Home
• 06/04/25: State that's long eluded GOP turns toward Trump
• 05/21/24: Trump's Sun Belt Hopes and Rust Belt Needs
• 05/14/24: What Trump Sees in Doug Burgum
• 05/07/24: The Vietnam Era Never Ended for Biden's Party
• 05/06/24: Nationalists of the World, Unite?
• 04/25/24: Foreign Policy Splits
• 04/16/24: How pro-lifers stand to lose everything gained in overturning Roe
• 04/02/24: PBS Misremembers William F. Buckley Jr.
• 04/02/24: Who Wants to Be House Speaker?
• 03/26/24: Trump Hunts for a VP Close to Home
• 03/19/24: Princess Kate and Democracy's Discontents
• 03/12/24: Can Biden Buy the Voters?
• 03/05/24: Veepstakes Give Trump an Edge
• 02/20/24: Do Americans Trust Either Party?
• 02/13/24: Vladimir Putin -- A Passive Aggressor
• 01/23/24: Will 'Lawfare' Take Trump Off the Ballot?
• 01/16/24: Will Africa Save America?
• 01/09/24:'The Sopranos' at 25: A new world tragedy
• 01/02/24: Trump, Biden and a Fight for the Heart
• 12/12/23: What Happened to Ron DeSantis?
• 12/12/23: Biden Looks Doomed -- But Is He?
• 12/05/23: A Test for Trump and His Rivals
• 11/21/23: When Inequality Is Fatal for Men
• 11/14/23: Nevermind, The Battle's Over
• 11/07/23: War in the Dem Party -- and at the Opera
• 10/24/23: Israel's Lesson for 2024: A Lib Crackup
• 10/17/23: Libs' Dilemma: Immigration or Israel?
• 10/10/23: Why Bidenflation Defines Bidenomics
• 10/03/23: Will Gavin Newsom Copy Trump?
• 09/26/23: Biden's a Loser -- but Dems Can't Ditch Him
• 09/19/23: Do Sex Scandals Matter?
• 09/12/23: Cornel West Spells Doom for Biden
• 09/05/23: What Trump Does for Democracy
• 08/2/23: Ramaswamy: A Trump Versus Trump?
• 08/22/23: Take 'Rich Men North of Richmond' Seriously
• 08/16/23: How America Kills Its Own
• 08/08/23: The Biden Pardon That Can Spare America
• 08/01/23: Harding, a consevative for the ages
• 07/25/23: Demography Destiny, for Us and China
• 07/18/23: The Frontrunner Who Looks Like a Loser Is Biden
• 07/11/23: Britain's Bad Example for American Conservatives
• 07/05/23: Could We Still Win a Revolutionary War?
• 06/27/23: Civilizations Clash -- in Ukraine and at Home
• 06/20/23: China Comes for the Caribbean
• 06/13/23: Fertility, Family and Bio-Socialism
• 06/06/23: From American Dream to Orwell's Nightmare
• 05/23/23: Ukraine war is an existential struggle --- for the West
• 05/23/23: Learn the Right Midterm Lessons -- or Lose in 2024
• 05/16/23: Feinstein Today Is Biden Tomorrow
• 05/09/23: Trump, DeSantis and Political Courtship
• 05/02/23: RFK Jr.'s Threat to Biden
• 04/25/23: Biden's Lost Generation
• 04/25/23: Who's In Charge of Clarence Thomas?
• 04/11/23: Beyond AI, Our Cyborg Future
• 04/04/23: 2024: 3 Leaders, 1 Way to Win
• 03/28/23: Climate Science Makes a Bad Religion
• 03/21/23: All the Conspiracy That's Fit to Print