How Gavin Newsom is Attacking the Mountain
We should not power wedge through the decline of American Democracy
When you grow up in rural North Dakota, you learn to love the cold - okay, maybe not love it, but at least begrudgingly enjoy parts of it. Embrace the cold or you will go mad. Blizzard? Perfect snowshoeing weather. Fresh layer of snow overnight? Excellent first tracks. Too cold for school? Perfect opportunity to finish that inside project.
Lucky for us, we have a tiny, humble winter park just a few miles from our house. I’ve skied there since I was old enough to drink out of garden hose. Being outside on skis keeps the winter blues away, even when it’s below zero.
I’ve taught a lot of kids to ski on our small but mighty North Dakota hill. Including my own kids. Nothing gets a new little skier stuck faster than overconfidence. A beginner thinks they’ve “got it,” points their rentals downhill, and suddenly realizes the hill is way too steep for their skill set. Instinct kicks in. They slam into a snowplow or as South Park calls it, “the pizza.” Legs shaking, eyes wide, thighs on fire, poles flailing. The universal defensive power wedge. No one can’t power wedge to victory. You can only power wedge your way to exhaustion and probably a little embarrassment.
That’s when a good ski instructor will stop and say, “what do you do when you’re in over your head?”
You attack the mountain.
Feels counterintuitive, right? The worst thing an in-over-their-head skier can do is crouch into defensive posture as though terrified of the hill. The hill doesn’t care about your fear. Instead, lean forward into the slope, press your shins into the front of your boots, cut across the hill. Commit. Traverse side to side. Now, instead of a terrified snowplow power wedge, you’re skiing with control, maybe even with style. Drifting down the hill like a falling leaf, turning side to side.
I don’t know if Gavin Newsom skis, but he’s giving us all a masterclass in attacking the mountain. Democrats, centrists, the self-styled “reasonable middle” have been in a defensive power wedge for years. They are in a pizza when they should french fry.
We all must stop hoping the courts, guardrails, or “adults in the room” will somehow flatten the hill and pull us out of the power wedge. The country has snowplowed themselves into rubber legs while Trump is halfway down the slope, livestreaming his ride with a MAGA hat, flames in the background, and a merch table at the bottom.
California was on fire this January. Trump hopped on Truth Social to declare that Gavin “Newscum” had personally refused to unleash phantom reservoirs to save burning neighborhoods. None of it was true. But Trump’s lie traveled as fast as a yard sale on a black diamond. Social media was clogged with additional nonsense about satanic rituals and the Hollywood sign ablaze.
To his credit, Newsom did not posture defensively and crouch into a power wedge, waiting for “responsible journalism” to correct the record. Instead, his office attacked the mountain. Newsom didn’t pause for consultants, redactions, or polite memos. Newsom’s office flooded the proverbial zone: TV, podcasts, Twitter, posts, clapbacks. Hard, fast, relentless. Newsome (or someone from his undeniably stellar social media team) wrote, “There is no such document as the water restoration declaration – that is pure fiction.” That’s not snowplowing or defensive posturing. That’s shifting both knees over his skis and attacking the mountain.
And it worked. Newsom’s momentum continues forward: trolling Trump with a “Newsom Was Right About Everything!” hat after Trump’s own “Trump Was Right About Everything!” stunt. It was cheeky. It was petty. And it broke through. George Conway said it best, “This is basically what the Democrats should have been doing to Trump for the past nine years.”
Yes, there was pearl clutching by some pundits. It’s not the answer, they say. We can’t just be anti-Trump. We must go high when they go low! But let us be honest in this moment, Trump sets fires, literal and political. If you don’t fight fire with fire, all your lofty plans are just ash.
Even David Axelrod, patron saint of reasonable Democrats, admits the democratic base is starving for someone like Newsom. For someone to finally attack the mountain. People are tired of a party whose best move is to power wedge and pray the slope ends. They want someone to lean forward and fight back, even if it’s messy. Because survival skiing is not skiing—it’s just surviving.
Newsom’s not Lindsey Vonn. He’s not smooth, perfect, or even universally beloved (Lindsey Vonn really is a lovely person and wonderful with kids). But he’s stopped snowplowing and moved us out of the power wedge. He’s attacking the mountain. And unless the rest of the left learns to do the same, we’ll all be stuck on the hill, thighs shaking, waiting for the crash.