This week, Donald Trump posted a picture that portrayed him as Jesus Christ, before deleting it among a furious backlash from Christian conservatives. But his quest to discover which forms of idolatry they will and won’t put up with continues. This morning, he posted a meme portraying him being embraced by a Jared Leto-looking Jesus, which included the caption: “I was never a very religious man .. but doesn’t it seem , with all these satanic , demonic , child sacrificing monsters being exposed … that God might be playing his Trump card !”¹

“The Radical Left Lunatics might not like this,” Trump wrote, “but I think it is quite nice!!!” Happy Wednesday.

Golden State Clown Car

by Andrew Egger

Last month, I wrote in this newsletter that billionaire Tom Steyer’s campaign to become California governor was “one of the funnier ongoing subplots of this young election season”—another vanity campaign like his 2020 presidential bid that would set unholy heaps of Steyer’s own money on fire en route to another doomed finish. I should have known I was tempting fate.

Now, the sudden collapse of Rep. Eric Swalwell due to sexual misconduct accusations has left California Democrats in a deeply unpleasant spot. Swalwell wasn’t running away with the contest, but he had started to seem a little inevitable, which Democrats, on the whole, were basically fine with. With him gone, the field is suddenly looking astonishingly weak—and Steyer simply buying his way to victory is actually a genuine possibility.

After all, who would stop him? The other known quantity in the Democratic contest, former Rep. Katie Porter, is a staunch progressive with fervent fans. But she’s also developed a reputation for—well—instability: She has had inexplicable meltdowns during respectful press interviews, gone viral for shouting at staffers during Zoom calls, and in 2022 barred a young short-term staffer from returning to her office after accusing her of giving her COVID.

Some Democrats are trying to cobble together alternative possibilities. San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, a more centrist candidate and one with actual California executive experience, had been considered an afterthought in the race. But the Washington Post reports that wealthy donors have begun looking to him as their way out of the jam: a super PAC supporting him received $12 million in pledged donations just this past weekend.

Meanwhile, somebody out there is running a poll testing a different proposition: How would Kamala Harris fare in this primary if she were to suddenly enter the race as a write-in candidate?

It’s a measure of how bad the vibes are that the only really good piece of news on the contest for California Democrats lately came from Donald Trump. Two different candidates, former Fox host Steve Hilton and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, had been polling above ten percent—raising the age-old anxiety about a Republican lockout.² But then Trump endorsed Hilton, making the necessary near-even split between the two Republicans far less likely.

Still, doesn’t this all feel a little horrifyingly familiar? How can it possibly be that Democrats have yet again sleepwalked into yet another high-profile race for which they seem to have basically zero highly qualified and popular candidates? Is it too much to expect this party to figure out one primary field that looks inviting enough that nobody feels compelled to do write-in candidate hopium long after the filing deadlines have passed? Am I the only one for whom this nonsense is starting to get old?

Not to freak people out or anything, but the stakes are pretty high for the country right now. It’s not hard to imagine a world where the ongoing outrages of the Trump presidency galvanize Democrats to turf up more inspiring, more capable, more visionary candidates. Instead, Trump often has a flattening effect. As California Democratic strategist Brian Brokaw told the New York Times this week: “Trump himself occupies so much of the political conversation that the only way for anyone at the state or local level to break through that noise is to position themselves as an anti-Trump figure.”

But positioning yourself as an anti-Trump figure is so easy pretty much anybody can do it. Which means that it’s even more of an advantage than usual to be able to purchase a much bigger megaphone than your competitors. Which is why California may, remarkably, implausibly, find itself saddled with a Governor Steyer.

We can only hope Democrats will have these sorts of nominating kinks worked out by the time 2028 rolls around. That one’s going to be pretty important, too.