He is jostling for attention and position far too early in what promises to be a marathon campaign, to the point of exhausting his welcome.

A brief note. It seems you can’t safely read the news these days without encountering undeclared presidential candidate and part-time governor of California Gavin Newsom, omnipresent in his counter-messaging attempts against President Donald Trump and the Republican Party. He has designated himself the official voice of the Democratic opposition and is extremely eager for you to notice just how opposed he is to everything Donald Trump says, does, or is.

One moment he’s out promising that he will coax California voters into tossing out their independent redistricting commission for a new Democratic gerrymander of the state; the next he’s sass-talking on social media in a witless attempt to imitate Donald Trump’s social media style. Newsom’s team has let it be known that his new “hip” tweeting style is actually the product of two highly paid political staffers, which strikes me as the sort of admission one makes not to share credit but rather to avoid blame. (Also, the idea that Newsom must employ two professional communicators to workshop and write material in imitation of what the president dashes off for free in regular, furiously unmediated intervals is a hilarious comment on how psychologically straitjacketed Democrats truly are.)

But Newsom wants you to know he is there for you. He’s the man in the arena, fighting with perfect coiffure in ever-so-manly ways to preserve the California dream and bring it to America. Here he is last Thursday, speaking alongside fellow Democratic sex symbol Adam Schiff about his gerrymandering plan, boiling over with outrage about the elemental threat facing the nation:

Wake up America, wake up! You will not have a country if he rigs this election. You will have a president who will be running for a third term, mark my word. I wasn’t lying when I said I received in the mail a “Trump 2028” ad, from one of his biggest supporters. These guys are not screwing around!

None of this tiresome hysteria makes even the slightest lick of sense — Donald Trump is more likely to captain SpaceX’s inaugural trip to Mars than he is to run for a third term as president — but of course that’s not the point. The point is that Newsom has employed his power as governor to elbow himself into the center of the frame, to be talked about by the media in recent weeks as some kind of Democratic front-runner for the 2028 presidential nomination. As my colleague Dan McLaughlin aptly put it to me the other day, Newsom may not be the best candidate — but he is certainly the “most” candidate, for now at least.

Even more fascinating is the palpable discomfort among media liberals and progressives alike with the idea of Newsom as their avatar. He has money, looks, a network of powerful friends, and has filled out most of the cursus honorum in the Democratic Party’s single most important state. He can certainly talk a good game, in a way that the Democrats’ last two nominees for the position notably could not.

But nobody loves him. Progressives, of course, dislike Newsom for the same reason they dislike almost everyone: for not being radical enough. (If Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez runs, she claims nearly every one of these voters.) My more hardheaded Democratic operative friends defend him primarily in realist terms, pointing out that few are better positioned to mount a truly national campaign than Newsom, given his telegenic presentation and fundraising abilities. (“He checks the most important boxes — and that matters a lot more than people think in a Democratic primary. Remember Joe Biden?”)

But does he? I myself have a very simple heuristic I apply to the post-Obama Democratic presidential primary: Tell me who wins South Carolina, and I’ll tell you who the Democrats are going to nominate at the convention. That’s another way of saying that the votes of African-Americans — black women, in particular — are going to be decisive in 2028. I evaluate every potential Democratic candidate by asking myself, “Can I see this person not humiliating themselves in a black church swaying to gospel music?” (This is why I am so eager to see Chris Murphy make a serious run — imagine the comedy bonanza.) Will Gavin Newsom connect with black voters the way Joe Biden — Barack Obama’s wingman for eight years — did? I suppose it’s possible — he has a certain oleaginous Clinton-like charm.

Gavin Newsom is not the front-runner, for the race has not yet properly begun. Once it does begin, however, do not be surprised if a Democratic electorate treats him the way they did the candidacy of another California politician who looked great on paper and was even easier on the eyes in person: Kamala Harris. Newsom has better retail political skills and personal presentation than either her or the likes of JB Pritzker (whose overinflated ego aptly reflects his most notable physical quality). But he is jostling for attention and position far too early in what promises to be a marathon campaign, to the point of exhausting his welcome. Gavin Newsom is going to mount a serious, well-funded presidential campaign. But as Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush both demonstrated in different ways during their primaries, “money” is not a voter constituency. Sometimes the dogs just won’t eat the dog food, no matter how cleverly marketed it is.