Accessibility Is Everything
People often say winning the presidency comes down to which candidate you’d “want to have a beer with.” For decades, that phrase has been shorthand for charisma — the kind of warmth and relatability that makes a leader feel human.
But perhaps we’ve misunderstood it. Maybe what people actually crave in their leaders isn’t personality so much as trust born from accessibility.
I came to this realization watching California Governor Gavin Newsom’s recent surge in popularity. Newsom is hardly a new face and has never inspired a cult following. But as he’s leaned into podcasts, long-form interviews, and informal media appearances, he’s been rapidly gaining public trust — even among skeptics.
Newsom’s rise feels like déjà vu from Andrew Cuomo’s brief pandemic-era renaissance — another long-time centrist suddenly reframed as candid, grounded, and steady. Importantly, neither man reinvented themselves or shifted their ideology meaningfully; they were simply newly present.
Once you start looking for this pattern, it’s everywhere.
During the Great Depression, Franklin Roosevelt’s fireside chats reached anxious Americans in their living rooms. Informal and calm, they made the president feel near.
Barack Obama used social media to similar effect — sharing reading lists, dad jokes, and sports fandom to remind people he wasn’t running from an ivory tower.
Donald Trump’s mix of chaos, crudity, and constant off-script rallies gave his followers something they craved most: a break from the scripted caution of politicians who seemed to be hiding their true motives.
This understanding should be liberating for Democrats.
We’ve watched old incumbents cling to scripts while younger insurgents — AOC, Zohran Mamdani, and others — have built movements by appearing unproduced and spontaneous. Their fluency with social media is often acknowledged, but their success is still mostly attributed to their youth, charisma, and socialist ideology. Newsom’s resurgence suggests something simpler: that informal, unrelenting accessibility — even without the gloss of charisma, youth, or ideology — may matter more.
That realization offers Democrats a path forward. It’s a strategy that’s infinitely more replicable — and far timelier — than waiting for a dozen more AOCs or Mamdanis to appear. The fight for public trust is happening now, and the leaders they already have must meet it by showing up — candid, consistent, and in ways few currently dare.