Former Rep. Katie Porter walked onto the stage at the California state Democratic convention on Saturday carrying a large sign with a message that read "F— Trump." No policy proposal. No governing vision. Just a two-word vulgarity held up like a campaign platform.
Porter, who is now running for governor of California, apparently believes this is what passes for political leadership in the Golden State. And she's not alone.
According to The Hill, Porter's stunt didn't happen in a vacuum. Earlier the same week, Illinois Lieutenant Governor Juliana Stratton released a campaign ad featuring several Illinois residents, including sitting U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth, all delivering the same phrase: "F— Trump."
A sitting United States senator. On camera. In a campaign ad. Saying that.
The phrase has reportedly gained traction among Democratic circles ahead of the midterm elections and the 2028 presidential race. What was once the province of anonymous social media accounts and sidewalk protesters has now become an official messaging strategy for elected officials and gubernatorial candidates. These aren't activists outside a rally. These are people who have held or currently hold public office, people who swore oaths, collected government salaries, and cast votes that shaped American law.
The shift tells you something important. When a party's most prominent figures compete to see who can shout the crudest slogan the loudest, it's not because they're brimming with ideas. It's because they've run out of them.
For those who've followed Porter's trajectory, the sign stunt fits a familiar mold. Last October, several videos surfaced that offered a less curated look at the former congresswoman. One showed a spat with a CBS News interviewer. Another captured her berating a staffer for the offense of stepping into her live shot.
Porter built her brand on a certain combativeness, the professor-turned-politician who brings a whiteboard to committee hearings. But there's a widening gap between "fiery questioner of bank executives" and "person who walks onstage at a political convention holding a profanity." The first suggests substance. The second suggests its absence.
She wants to govern California, a state with a housing crisis, an exodus of businesses, crumbling infrastructure, and a budget situation that would make an accountant weep. Her opening argument to voters: a sign she wouldn't be allowed to display on broadcast television.
Both Porter and Stratton are positioning themselves as fighters against Washington, elected officials willing to buck the hierarchy with strong opposition to the current administration. That's the framing, anyway. But opposition requires an alternative. "F— Trump" is not an alternative. It's not a health care plan. It's not an answer to inflation. It's not a border security proposal. It's not an education policy.
It is, however, a very effective way to get applause at a party convention where the audience already agrees with you. And that's precisely the problem. The Democratic Party's activist base has confused catharsis with strategy. Saying the crude thing out loud feels like courage when you're surrounded by people who already think it. It costs nothing. It persuades no one who isn't already persuaded.
Meanwhile, the voters who actually decide elections, the ones in competitive districts and swing states, watch a former congresswoman wave a vulgar sign and a sitting senator record herself saying it on camera, and they draw their own conclusions about which party is serious.
Imagine, for a moment, that a Republican gubernatorial candidate had walked onstage at a state convention holding a sign with an obscenity directed at a Democratic president. The coverage would be immediate and withering. Words like "dangerous," "dehumanizing," and "threat to democracy" would appear in every editorial page in America before sundown. Panels of commentators would connect it to broader patterns of right-wing incivility. Think pieces would follow for weeks.
Porter does it, and it's treated as spirited resistance. Stratton puts it in a campaign ad featuring a U.S. senator, and it barely registers as controversy. The asymmetry is so familiar it almost doesn't need stating. Almost.
The real story here isn't the profanity. Adults can handle coarse language. The real story is what the profanity replaces. When your opening pitch to voters is an expletive rather than an argument, you've conceded that you don't argue. You've told the electorate that your animating energy isn't a vision for the future but a fixation on one man.
California deserves a gubernatorial race fought over real stakes: water policy, energy costs, crime, and the regulatory environment that keeps driving employers to Texas and Florida. Porter could engage on any of those fronts. She chose a sign instead.
That choice tells California everything it needs to know.