On the menu today: Someone chose to leak the private texts of Arizona Democratic Senator Ruben Gallego, revealing the potential 2028 presidential candidate laughing along with some mockery of Representative Rosa DeLauro’s appearance and lamenting, “We look like the not fun party. Always telling and correcting people. Not allowing men to be men. Women to be hot. We used to be the party of sec [sic] drugs and rock and roll. . . . Now Dem women look like Dem men and Dem men look like women.” At least one progressive is arguing that this makes Gallego unacceptable for his party, accusing him of using the “same kind of language we find from some of the worst anti-trans influencers” such as Candace Owens. My dear Democrats, as 2028 approaches, you’re going to have to make some hard decisions about what issues are worth your focus and attention. Read on.
The Least Far-Left Option in the Democratic Field
Given a choice between a centrist and rational Democratic Party, and a far left and unhinged Democratic Party, I would prefer the centrists. I want the left boundary of the Overton Window of the political mainstream pushed as far to the right as possible. I realize this may make Democrats harder for Republicans to beat in a general election, but it also reduces the bad consequences of Democrats winning elections.
And whether you like it or not, someday Democrats will win a lot of elections again, perhaps as soon as the 2026 midterms. I realize a lot of Republicans can talk themselves into believing that they’re never going to lose an election again, but I’ve lived through good years for Democrats in 1992, arguably 1996, 1998, 2006, 2008, 2012, 2018, 2020, arguably 2022, and for that matter, 2025.
Very few of the Democrats who are mentioned as presidential contenders in the 2028 cycle strike me as being good for much of anything. Most of them are running out of egomania and hubris, not out of a discernible and viable path to the nomination. But one of the exceptions is Senator Ruben Gallego of Arizona. In a bunch of important ways, he’s the anti-Biden — just 46 years old, Latino, a Marine who served in Iraq, representing one of the key swing states.
The guy who is currently standing out is former representative and new senator Ruben Gallego of Arizona. You’ll notice that he’s one of the few Democrats who A) won in a state that Donald Trump won, in a year Trump was on the ballot and B) appealed to demographics that Democrats had trouble with in 2024. (Gallego nearly split men, 48 percent to Kari Lake’s 49 percent, and was barely behind among voters without a college degree, 47 percent to 50 percent. He even won 15 percent of voters who disapproved of the job Joe Biden was doing.)
In a February interview with the New York Times, Gallego sounded distinctly different from most of his fellow Democrats, and he isn’t just lamenting that demographics like Latino men were growing more supportive of Republicans, he’s attempting to do something about it:
A lot of times we forget that we still need men to vote for us. That’s how we still win elections. But we don’t really talk about making the lives of men better, working to make sure that they have wages so they can support their families. I also think some of this is purely psychological — like we just can’t put our finger on it. During my campaign, I noticed when I was talking to men, especially Latino men, about the feeling of pride, bringing money home, being able to support your family, the feeling of bringing security — they wanted to hear that someone understood that need. And a lot of times we are so afraid of communicating that to men, because we think somehow we’re going to also diminish the status of women. That’s going to end up being a problem. The fact that we don’t talk this way to them makes them think we don’t really care about them, when in fact the Democrats on par are actually very good about the status of working-class men.
It was a joke, but I said a lot when I was talking to Latino men: “I’m going to make sure you get out of your mom’s house, get your troquita.” For English speakers, that means your truck. Every Latino man wants a big-ass truck, which, nothing wrong with that. “And you’re gonna go start your own job, and you’re gonna become rich, right?” These are the conversations that we should be having. We’re afraid of saying, like, “Hey, let’s help you get a job so you can become rich.” We use terms like “bring more economic stability.” These guys don’t want that. They don’t want “economic stability.” They want to really live the American dream.
Keep in mind, a decent number of Democrats do think there is something wrong with “a big-ass truck,” particularly if it’s not electric or if it’s a Tesla Cybertruck.
Gallego also stands out among Democrats by contending that illegal immigrant violent criminals who will not be accepted by their countries of origin should be shipped off to Guantanamo Bay: “For gang members? Criminals? Why would we want to keep gang members and criminals that don’t even have a legal right to be here, and Venezuela won’t take them back?”
Is Gallego a conservative’s dream? Heck no. His record in the U.S. House of Representatives, representing a D+13 district, was hard to the left; he only shifted to the center when he started running for the U.S. Senate.
But he’s probably the least far-left option in the Democratic field.
I mention this because Erin Reed, a journalist who covers “LGBTQ+ legislation, news, and life,” has decreed that Gallego is now persona non grata to Democrats for how he’s discussed men and women in his private text messages:
Now, newly leaked texts — published by a conservative source but publicly confirmed as accurate from Gallego himself — suggest Gallego’s shift may not be a mere political calculation but a reflection of deeper, toxic beliefs that have become far too common in American politics. In the messages, he laments what he sees as a decline of masculinity in the Democratic Party, complains that Democrats are not “allowing women to be hot,” and goes so far as to write that “Dem women look like dem men and dem men look like women.” This rhetoric mirrors the language used relentlessly by the far-right to lament about the appearance and prevalence of queer and trans people and reflects a worldview where the simple existence of gender diversity is treated as a threat to masculinity itself.
(A reminder: The current secretary of the Treasury is gay and no one cares.)
Gallego’s friend then shared an insulting meme, writing, “This is how the world views many [Democrats]. . . .” The meme featured a photo of Democratic Rep. Rosa DeLauro from Connecticut, reading, “If erectile dysfunction had a face.”
“They aren’t wrong!” Gallego replied.
In follow-up messages, he elaborated: “We look like the not fun party. Always telling and correcting people. Not allowing men to be men. Women to be hot. We used to be the party of sec [sic] drugs and rock and roll.”
Gallego also wrote, “Now Dem women look like Dem men and Dem men look like women.”
In an interview with local Phoenix outlet ABC15, Gallego did not deny the authenticity of the messages. . . .
Despite the insulting manner of his texts, he doubled down on the message, saying the private conversation was “a reflection of what I’ve been saying the whole time.”
“I’ve been very clear about where I think the party needs to be. I do think we have to be an open and bigger tent party. So this is just a reflection of what I think I’ve said,” he said, adding that the party was “not as inclusive as it should be.”
Now, as you read Gallego’s comments, I suspect that broadly there are two types of reactions to those assertions.
The first, broadly on the left, is to bellow an outraged “How dare you?!” worthy of little Greta Thunberg herself. How dare Gallego judge women based upon their attractiveness and how dare he suggest that Democratic women look like men, and Democratic men look like women, and how dare he suggest that there’s a way women ought to look and that men ought to look.
The second, broadly on the right, is to nod in agreement, and perhaps to add, “duh.”
It’s a free country. You can dress how you like and appear how you like. Different communities are going to have different expectations about how you dress and appear. In some communities, wearing clothing that is too revealing or even out of place — bright neon colors, for example — will get you a lot of stares, and maybe some comments. In Times Square in New York City, people walk by the Naked Cowboy without a second glance. However you want to appear, there’s a place in America where you can find a home.
If you’re a male, and choose to appear feminine, or vice versa, some people are going to give you some awkward stares and perhaps give you a hard time about it. I’m not saying anyone deserves to be mistreated or harassed. I’m just pointing out the hard facts of life. You can swim against the stream, or with the current, but just make sure you know what you’re getting yourself into when you make that choice.
It would be very nice if human beings did not judge people by their appearances or at least didn’t judge people so quickly. And many of us know that judging people by their appearances can steer us wrong. Alas, evolution has trained us to evaluate other people through visual information, and our culture creates and reinforces perceptions of what sorts of physical traits are associated with non-physical traits.
You can fight against this and argue that all of society should change its perspective of what a man ought to look like or what a woman ought to look like. Or you can accept that you will always be judged by your appearance to some degree and try to make the best of what you’ve got.
You can contend that it’s a “toxic belief” to think that men ought to look like men and women ought to look like women, but that doesn’t make that belief any less widespread. You can call the belief that women “should be allowed to be hot” misogyny, but you’re going to have a hard time persuading a lot of men, and for that matter, a significant percentage of women, of what you see as the noble cause of anti-hotness. (A whole lot of women enjoy the “male gaze” and have figured out how to make it work for them.)
By the way, it’s rude and snide for Gallego to laugh at Representative Rosa DeLauro’s appearance, and I suspect he won’t look so hot when he’s 82 years old, either. But let’s point out that in a world where the current president goes on Truth Social and calls White House correspondents “ugly inside and out,” a political figure who only mocks other people’s appearances privately is a step in the right direction. (The friend’s decision to leak the text messages is a topic worth discussion, but that will have to wait for another day.)
Reed complains, “Gallego is not being inclusive when he derides people he doesn’t find ‘hot,’ or when he reduces gender expression to a test of conventional masculinity.” There’s your new litmus test for Democrats: Are you “inclusive” in your off-the-cuff texting with a friend?
The Democratic Party is going to have to choose its battles as it prepares for the 2028 presidential cycle. They are going to have to make a case against the Trump record on economics, immigration, foreign policy, and social policy.
And yet amidst all this, some Democrats want their party to continue their battle against traditional gender roles that are deeply embedded in American culture, particularly outside the deep-blue cities on the coasts. They want the party to keep its image of “women who look like men and men who look like women,” and its perceived hostility to “hotness,” and everything Gallego summarized as the “not fun party. Always telling and correcting people.”
Three times in nine years, the Democrats have gone toe to toe with a Republican candidate who they thought was an absolute buffoon, a rambling moron, and the world’s most epic hypocrite. And yet, despite Trump’s obvious flaws . . . the Democrats lost two out of three times.
If Democrats want to run the same failed playbook again in 2028 . . . good luck with that.
ADDENDA: Today is Giving Tuesday; I’m sure the good folks at the National Review Institute would appreciate your attention.
Over in that other Washington publication, I write about Minnesota Governor Tim Walz’s terrible year, and how if he was ever in the 2028 Democratic presidential campaign mix, he is now out because of the continuing cavalcade of fraud scandals in the state government, and his hapless excuses.