Former Rep. Katie Porter carried a large sign reading "F— Trump" on stage at the California state Democratic convention on Saturday, delivering what passes for political messaging in a party that has run out of ideas.

Porter, who has entered the California gubernatorial race, hoisted the sign as a supposed stand against the Trump administration. No policy argument. No alternative vision. Just two words and an obscenity.

She wasn't alone in the strategy. Earlier in the week, Illinois Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton released a campaign ad featuring several Prairie State residents, including Sen. Tammy Duckworth, all saying the same phrase on camera.

When profanity replaces platform

The phrase has apparently gained steam among social media users and protesters ahead of midterm elections and the 2028 presidential race. What's notable isn't the vulgarity itself. Politicians have cursed since the Republic was founded. What's notable is that the vulgarity is the entire message.

According to The Hill, there is no policy substrate underneath this. Porter didn't walk on stage with a sign about housing costs in California, or the state's collapsing insurance market, or the homeless encampments that define her state's largest cities. Stratton didn't cut an ad about what she'd actually do for Illinois residents who are watching their property taxes climb and their neighborhoods deteriorate. The sign is the platform. The expletive is the argument.

This is what a political movement looks like when it has nothing left to sell. You don't need a slogan when you have results. You need a slogan when you don't.

Porter's brand has always been performance

Porter has long cultivated an image as a fighter, but the fighting has increasingly looked like theater detached from substance. Last October, several videos surfaced that showcased her behavior, raising questions about temperament rather than toughness. In one clip, she had a spat with an interviewer from CBS News. In another, she berated a staffer for stepping in her live shot.

Both Stratton and Porter are campaigning as elected officials who seek to buck the hierarchy in Washington. But carrying a profane sign on stage at a friendly convention isn't bucking anything. It's performing rebellion for an audience that already agrees with you. There's no courage in telling a room full of California Democrats that you don't like the Republican president.

Real insurgents challenge their own side. They take positions that cost them something. Holding up a sign that guarantees applause at your own party's convention is the opposite of that.

The Democratic feedback loop

What's instructive here is the self-reinforcing nature of this kind of politics. Democratic voters reward the most aggressive anti-Trump posturing. Democratic candidates escalate to capture that energy. The escalation produces content that circulates among the already converted. And none of it moves a single persuadable voter or solves a single problem.

Consider the irony: Porter wants to be governor of a state where residents are fleeing due to cost of living, crime, and regulatory suffocation. California's problems are almost entirely the product of Democratic governance. Every major city, every state legislative chamber, every statewide office has been controlled by her party for years. The state doesn't need someone willing to curse at the president. It needs someone willing to explain why one-party Democratic rule has produced the results it has.

But that conversation would require introspection, and introspection doesn't fit on a sign.

Stratton's ad tells the same story

The Illinois ad deserves attention not because it's shocking but because of who participated. Sen. Tammy Duckworth, a sitting United States senator, appeared in a campaign advertisement whose sole content was a profanity directed at the president. This is a woman who serves in what is supposedly the world's greatest deliberative body. The deliberation, apparently, has been reduced to two words.

Stratton is running her own race in Illinois, and the ad is designed to generate exactly the kind of attention it received. Mission accomplished on that front. But attention is not governance, and virality is not a mandate. Illinois has its own litany of failures under Democratic leadership. None of them are addressed by telling voters you share their anger at someone in a different branch of government, in a different city, operating under a different party's agenda.

The question voters should ask

When a candidate's most visible public moment is holding up a profane sign, voters should ask a simple question: what are you for?

Porter hasn't answered that yet. Neither has Stratton. The sign got the click. The ad got the share. But California's problems will still be there on Monday morning, and no amount of obscenity will fix them.

The party that once prided itself on being the adults in the room is now competing to see who can shout the loudest in an empty one.