Gavin Newsom says he’s on a book tour, but it looks a lot like a practice run for 2028. In Atlanta, standing before a mostly black audience, he tried to connect by saying he scored a 960 on the SAT and struggles to read, adding that he is “just like” them. Apparently, this is what passes for relatability on the soft launch circuit.

You could see it happen in real time. The line sounded rehearsed, but once he started explaining it, there was a flicker of nerves, like even he realized he might have stepped into something odd. He hesitated, then kept going. He leaned into it. He finished the thought anyway. It was uncomfortable and fascinating at the same time, the kind of political moment where you can almost hear the consultants holding their breath.

🚨: Gavin Newsom really stood in front of a Black audience and tried to bond by saying:

‘I’m one of y’all. I scored a 960 on the SAT and I can’t read.’

How did this clown make it this far in life? 🤡 @CAgovernor pic.twitter.com/3pAH2maQ1p

— Brandon Tatum (@TheOfficerTatum) February 23, 2026

What makes it so bizarre is the choice. No one demanded that example or steered him there. He could have talked about shared economic struggles, public safety, education, faith, or family. Instead, he reached for a low SAT score. The governor of California, a man with national ambitions, decided that lowering himself intellectually was the safest bridge to build.

That decision is what makes the optics hard to ignore.

And this was not a one-off.

Then You Ain’t Black

Democrats have a habit of trying to get “relatable” in ways that land strangely when the audience changes. Joe Biden once called Barack Obama “articulate and clean,” which was meant as praise but sounded like something else entirely. Later he told voters they “ain’t Black” if they did not vote for him. Those were not slips in private conversations. They were delivered into microphones with full confidence. Now Newsom has added his own entry to the archive, offering up academic mediocrity as proof that he understands the room.

The Democratic Cosplay Pattern

There is also a broader pattern here that is hard to ignore. When Democratic candidates step in front of certain audiences, a subtle transformation often follows. The cadence changes. The tone shifts. The persona adjusts. Hillary Clinton once rolled out a carefully timed Southern drawl on the campaign trail that seemed to appear and disappear depending on the zip code. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has been known to lean into a thicker accent when the setting calls for it, only for it to smooth out in other interviews. Kamala Harris has her own version of this, where the laugh, the phrasing, and the delivery morph depending on the room.

It’s not illegal. It’s just noticeable.

Gavin Newsom, Just Another Racist Democrat

And that is what made Newsom’s Atlanta moment land the way it did. It felt like another version of the same instinct. Adjust. Calibrate. Be less elite. Be more relatable. Lower the tone. Simplify the story. Hope it resonates.

That is the risk of turning relatability into a strategy instead of a personality trait. The audience can usually tell.

There is also something else happening here. For years, Democrats mocked Donald Trump as crude, unpolished, and unscripted. Yet since 2016, they have spent an extraordinary amount of time trying to bottle whatever it is that makes him feel authentic to his supporters. The problem is that authenticity cannot be reverse-engineered in a strategy session.

The 2028 Dress Rehearsal

Maybe this is what modern campaigning looks like, where candidates try on personas and hope something sticks. Maybe this is just a rehearsal phase before the official announcement. Either way, Atlanta offered a glimpse of the strategy in motion. A low SAT score is harmless as a memoir anecdote. As a bonding tactic in front of a specific audience, it carries more weight than the line seems to acknowledge.

When politicians insist they are “just like you,” the audience usually hears more than they intended. In this case, what was meant to sound humble came off as oddly revealing. If this is the version of Gavin Newsom being road-tested for 2028, the script may need another draft before the curtain rises.

Featured image original graphic by Darleen Click