In different ways, new podcast hosts Gavin Newsom and Michelle Obama are picking up where Kamala Harris left off
The current condition of the Democratic Party is nothing if not uncertain. Paralysing anxiety and insecurity are clearly its present state, but glimpses into its possible future are beginning to appear, albeit not from among the party’s troubled leadership in Congress.
Case in point, recent machinations from both former first lady Michelle Obama and California governor Gavin Newsom – each of whom has recently launched a podcast. The themes of their respective efforts – Newsom’s is politics-focused, Obama’s celebrity and lifestyle-themed – are almost inconsequential. What matters is the political and cultural fascination that both are managing to attract. True, Mrs Obama is the more iconic personality of the two. But she and Newsom are sending equally unignorable messages that they may be exploring respective runs for the White House.
America has been down this road before; barely a year ago, in fact – when Joe Biden’s frailty became impossible to ignore. Both Obama and Newsom were touted as possible successors, before the force-fields around Kamala Harris permanently closed. She, of course, secured the nomination but lost the nation – paving the way for the “who’s next?” conversations now arriving more quickly than perhaps expected.
What’s interesting about Obama and Newsom is how much they overlap. Both with Harris and each other. Newsom, like Kamala, is a child of Northern California and its insular, incestuous political machine. Obama and Harris, meanwhile, are both trained lawyers who have race and gender in common. In other words, Newsom and Mrs Obama could each pick up where Harris left off, albeit in different ways: the former in cosplaying as a progressive-turned-centrist, the latter as a candidate who has a legitimate chance of becoming America’s first black, female president.
Both also have something to prove. Newsom that he can adjust to America’s new political mood, which demanded that he suck up to Trump after the new president arrived to inspect wildfire damage. Weeks later, on his podcast debut, Newsom furthered his shift to the centre when he suggested to his guest, Right-wing activist Charlie Kirk, that he no longer supports trans athletes competing in female sports.
In Mrs Obama’s case, the former first lady needs to convince America that she can escape from her husband’s orbit. She needs distance from Barack – but calculated and finely-crafted distance. Sharing her podcast with her brother, Craig Robinson, was a clever bit of co-branding. Could even the revival of rumours about the state of the Obamas’ marriage be helpful in keeping her in voters’ minds?
Newsom’s behaviour is equally interesting. Armed with his own fortune and Ken-doll persona, Newsom must now realise that he’s the most presidential-looking of a decidedly sorry cast of viable Democratic notables. Compared to foul-mouthed Jasmine Crockett or a dour-yet-radical AOC, he is even beginning to look middle-of-the-road and old-fashioned, despite his liberal record in California. Rich, white, straight and male, he’s the antithesis of the diversity that progressives fought for decades to impose. But diversity – in both 2016 and eight years later – failed to convince the electorate.
Another failure was Kamala Harris’s avoidance of new media forms – particularly podcasts, which Trump cannily exploited during the election and which both Newsom and Obama are wise to explore now. Low-tech and low-obligation, they are the perfect platform for Democrats in recovery mode from November’s shellacking. Voters can “try on” candidates for an episode or three, with no demands for loyalty nor promises of commitment. This may also be why Newsom and, especially, Mrs Obama are tiptoeing into the spotlight via podcast; each can easily pull the plug, with minimal hits to either their legacies – or bottom lines.
Of course it may turn out that neither Gavin Newsom or Michelle Obama actually wants to run for president – but I’d be highly surprised if they don’t. Newsom has no higher office to which to aspire, while Obama may finally accept that, if she truly wants America to have a black female president, she’ll have to become it herself. After all, “becoming” is something Mrs Obama knows all too well. It was the name of the first book she wrote after leaving the White House.
