Man, get a load of these jabronis

Gavin and Rahm on the campaign trail, and the false dichotomy of the "when they go low...." debate

Right now, somewhere in America, the most unnervingly ambitious men on the planet are jockeying to be the next President of the United States. There they are, in South Carolina, or New Hampshire, or on their own podcast, or pretending to enjoy fried fish in the vicinity of Iowans. Every week, like clockwork, new profiles of these men emerge in high profile publications. These essays will rarely be revelatory, because the only thing you can really say about these men is that they really want to be President, but there are always a few nuggets.

Here’s the sum total of new information I learned about Rahm Emmaunel this week, from one of those profiles.

• He eats his salad in a manner that definitely violates the Geneva Convention. There is so much aggressive shaking. The man goes to war with salad, and seems pleased with himself that he emerges victoriously. I know that this is just a punchy lede, included by Adam Wren from Politico as a metaphor for how presumptive Presidential candidate Emmanuel will “attack” the race, but I don’t know, man. I’m not that impressed. I’m a certified weakling. My hands are uncalloused in a way that would invite derision from actual infants. But if it were me in the octagon against a literal head of lettuce? I think even I would win that one.

And here’s the new information I learned about Gavin Newsom, a man who by all appearances has been running for President since conception.

• He likes to make jokes on social media about how his political opponents are gay.

I would prefer not to know either of these facts, thank you very much. And I would especially prefer that they not be harbingers of what is surely to come– two whole years of these guys doing their bighorn sheep in heat act all over the Democratic political ecosystem.

The Rahm Emmanuel salad expose was part of a piece about how the disgraced former mayor/Chief of Staff/congressman/ambassador is crisscrossing the initial 2028 primary states like a grumpy tank engine. You want to know who is a loser? Every other Democrat who isn’t Rahm Emmanuel, according to Rahm Emmanuel. They’re a bunch of pronoun-obsessed wimpy babies. They’re too scared, apparently, to do the one thing that literally every ambitious politician in my lifetime does all the time. Tell ‘em, Rahm.

“I’m not into Democrats sitting on the 30th floor of a Manhattan highrise in their Lululemon outfit with their Yeti cup, talking about, ‘We should go to places that we don’t go’ and then never go,” Emanuel told me before embarking on this trip. “So I don’t talk about it, and I’m just gonna go.”

Rahm, as a resident of the actual Rust Belt, I say this with tears in my eyes. Thank you. Finally, a multi-millionaire willing to take a picture with a non-plussed welder. We thought the others would come here, but they are too frightened of hard work and real Americans. If only you would come to our diners as well.

The primary piece of non-salad information I gleaned from that profile is that Rahm’s sole hope, after somebody meets him, is that they think he’s “neither weak nor woke.” Huh. When I meet somebody, my goal is to get to know them better, but I must be doing it wrong. I learned more from this piece, which documents watching the Democrats’ self-proclaimed working class whisperer drone on at extreme length about his buddies Bill and Barack while complaining that he’s late for an Eric Church concert. A classic rhetorical move, Rahm. “I’ve got better places to be than stuck here with you cretins, but I’m gonna make that your problem, at length.” Crowds love that.

The Newsom news wasn’t a full profile, but it fits neatly into the broader political identity he’s crafted for himself. He’s the attack dog, the only guy willing to muck it up in MAGA’s down and dirty sandbox. If you’re offended by his jokes, that’s your fault, loser.¹ And besides, they were written by gay staffers. So get off Gavin Newsom’s back, ok? Do you, the leftist scold, reject the God given rights of gay politicos to write homophobic social media posts in the voice of their straight boss? Well maybe YOU’RE the reason we lost the white working class, you “when they go low/we go high” scold.

There’s a lot to hate here. There’s the manosphere b-list brand of comedy. There’s the peacockish performance of masculine ultra-confidence. There’s the condescending Democratic consulting class obsession with appealing to “working class America,” not through taxing the rich and sticking it to corporations, but instead just by, I don’t know, bragging about going to country concerts and, um, also saying slurs?

But most of all, there’s this zombiefied assumption, one obviously still lurching through left-of-center, MAGA-averse circles, that what we need to defeat Trumpism is an opponent ready to go get a little Trumpish himself. Wicked, for good, if you will. Lots to unpack there, and I’ve done some of it before, but there’s no need to get all philosophical. At its core, it’s not just a morally vacuous strategy, it’s bad politics. I just don’t buy that you can expunge the most outwardly malevolent political movement of our lifetime with malevolence-light.

Let’s play this out. Say, for instance, that Newsom wins the Democratic Primary because he didn’t kow-tow to humorless scolds like me. Or maybe Rahm comes from behind, thanks to his generational ability to assure a random machinist in Macomb County that trans people are, like, soooo annoying. These lifelong penthouse dwellers are now, in spite of themselves, the toast of the mythic American “working class” (apparently 0% of whom are women, gay, trans, or immigrants, because, as we all know, every single member of those groups are literal tenure-track Yale Law Professors).

Then what? The winner of that first race to the bottom now has to out-hatred JD Vance. Get out of here. J.D. was built for this. Throwing people under the bus is all he knows. He did it to his own family. And that was before he became fully evil! You know what they always say: Don’t bring an aggressively shaken salad to the “act disconcertingly like Hitler” fight.

I just don’t get it. And that’s even putting aside the fact that assuming the worst of a particular voting bloc is an awfully weird way you show to respect them (“You’re welcome, bigots! I came to your crappy town! I guess you want to hear some gay jokes, right?”).

Back to that “when they go low, we go high” rhetorical construction. I was never a massive fan, but I’m even less of a fan of the million of critiques and mockeries that have emerged in its wake. The whole debate presupposes two options– either we stay quiet and take it as our adversaries pummel us with vitriol, or we mimic their tone and style, either as a form of catharsis or praxis.

It’s a myth, that dichotomy. And it only benefits braggadocious, masculinity-performing dudes who both love the sound of their own voice and need the reassurance that they, alone, are the biggest, toughest guy.

There’s actually so many things you can do when your opponents go low…

… you can build

… you can organize

… you can throw a better party than they could ever hope to throw

… you can spend even more time loving and supporting people most in the crosshairs of that “going low” nonsense.

… you can form a line in the streets with thousands of your closest friends and stare down your adversaries with your collective righteousness and rage.

…you can engage in thousands of radical political experiments to topple the foundations of these brutal systems that grind us all down.

When they go low, we do a million goddamned things, because oh my god have you seen the world right now? How could it be possible that there be only two reductive courses of action?

I get that leftists and liberals alike are scared and want fighters. Hell, I want a fighter. I’d give anything for public figures who work harder for screwed over communities than their own careers. But come on. We can see through these two fakers, right? These guys aren’t the fighters we’re looking for. These are Temu populists. They rehearse their pseudo-folksy straight talk into gilded mirrors. They’re backed by the yacht and jet class. They don’t care about the white guy welder in Michigan any more than they care for Black and Latina nursing assistants in Stockton and the Southside.

I know it’s a long way to 2028, and we’ve got so many crises to navigate before we get there, but since these guys are already on the campaign trail, how about the rest of us preemptively plant our flags? No thank you, man. No thank you at all.

End notes:

1. I’m going to keep the end notes short, because I’m both on spring break with my kids AND sick, but I will say this: Do you value independent writing that tries to build a better world? Do you want writing not by AI but from an earnest-to-a-fualt dad whose kids are having a blast with grandma and grandpa right now but who still wishes he wasn’t sick? Well, then I’d love for you to consider a paid subscription. The perks are great, and my gratitude is deep.

2. Oh my God I’m so excited about this upcoming book and you should 100% preorder it (I have! I bought a few copies, because what better gift for friends, right?).

3. Big Interdependence Relay news (first four dates: Washington, Oregon, California, Hawaii) coming next week. But in the meantime, we’re looking for for our next bundle of states (ID, UT, NV, CO, AZ, NM), so get on that, pals!

1. Yeah, I know. There is a pattern of virulently homophobic Republican politicians eventually being outed. One of the arguments that Newsom’s staff members make in the piece is that they’re using humor to point out hypocrisy (see also: all the Byron Noem jokes this week). Here’s my question, as somebody who grew up in a place and time where I knew a whole lot of closeted folks who were deeply immersed in conservative, high control religions: What’s the joke here, exactly? I see multiple layers of tragedy, but nothing that strikes me as even remotely funny.