Today is the California recall vote…
…and I see no reason to be optimistic.
The polls indicate Newsom is not seriously threatened, and whether or not you believe polls are accurate, the truth is that California is a bluer-than-blue state. Yes, there are pockets of conservatives, and yes, Newsom has been an abominable governor, but if Californians don’t see it that way then it doesn’t matter.
What’s more, who has been leaving California lately? I’ve not seen any statistics on the politics of the leave-takers, but it stands to reason they would be predominantly the more conservative voters. Therefore California should become more blue, not less, as people leave. This just seems logical to me.
I don’t even think the issue of whether or not there is voting fraud needs to come into play. It’s certainly possible, and there are some reports indicating it may be happening. But I don’t think it’s necessary in order for Newsom to win.
Sorry to be such a downer, but that’s the way I see it.
ADDENDUM: By the way, I predict that if/when Newsom is retained, the vote will be framed by the left, the Democrats, and the MSM (but I repeat myself) as a great victory that represents a huge mandate for everything the Democrats want to do, rather than just California being predictably California.
Votes will continue to be counted until next Tuesday. Massive amounts of money have been donated from the “usual suspects” in the effort to ensure the victory of the worthless Newsom. Larry Elder has been, rather amusingly, dubbed the black face of white supremacy, and Democrats in California control everything. When one considers the fact that mail-in ballots have flooded the state and that ballot-harvesting is alive and well, why should one have the slightest optimism that the favored candidate of the ruling elite will (his obvious and destructive incompetence notwithstanding) suffer defeat?
I live in rural upstate NY and I’m constantly frustrated at how downstate voters seem incapable of connecting all the obvious failures in our state with the various elected Democrats at all levels. I don’t know if it’s habit, delusion, willingness to believe obvious nonsense, or what… but voters never really hold (D) politicians accountable. Democrats always seem immune from almost everything in NY, or at least all but the most extreme disasters (as with Cuomo, but even he wasn’t brought down for real evil he did, oestensibly anyway). It’s really remarkable.
I agree with you, it is still California. However the good news is I doubt that Newsom will ever be President. I disagree with you that it is a majority of conservatives who are the emigres from California, think Oregon, Washington, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, and Austin. The toxic California politics come from people who have fled California.
“I doubt that Newsom will ever be President”
He may follow Kamala and become VP for an obvious loon.
If you cannot get elected then inherit the job.
Is it really that much better news than the fact Biden is President right now?
Nonapod:
Cuomo was brought down because the Democrats in leadership positions decided to bring him down. I don’t know why they decided to do this – maybe he had just made too many of them into enemies – but if they hadn’t decided he had to go, he would still be there. It wouldn’t matter what the charges against him were, they would have suppressed them and the MSM would have cooperated.
Nonapod
I live in New York City and it is the same thing. People flee the city who voted for Bill de Blasio and Andrew Cuomo and they still vote for neo-Reds in their new places of residence. Classic cognitive dissonance.
Neo
They got rid of Cuomo because he was a horrible bully. The governorship was still going to remain in the hold of the Democratic Party.
Neo’s opinion is the most likely outcome.
Heck, we in CA now have a decade old “Fast Train to Nowhere”. Billions have gone into Dem-friendly pockets. The train was literally sold as “Republicans are against it.”
Biden was essentially correct when he said “If you Recall Newsom, you will get Trump”. The CA GOP did little to help the Recall. They are entirely focused on being anti-Trump. The Recall was done by grassroots organizers … whose businesses were destroyed by Newsom and whose kids were in “distance learning” for a year. Or lost farms because water was rationed. Or lost a home to wildfires.
Dems in tech jobs are immune to the above so they don’t care. Being told “Repubs are against it” is enough for them.
On the one hand, the grassroots did an amazing job. They showed grit and passion. But with no statewide leadership to help focus the effort we probably will come up short in the actual, you know, recall vote.
I still esteem them for the effort, even if it leads nowhere. Gallant.
“Sorry to be such a downer, but that’s the way I see it.”
If the people of California do this to themselves, why should you or we feel bad about it? As has been referenced, the problem with California you should be focused on is the moribund condition of the state’s GOP.
Mike
Neo
I agree that Cuomo wouldn’t have been removed if it weren’t in The Party’s interest to do so. But the Democrat Party wields great power due in no small part to a fairly submissive electorate majority buoyed by a servile media. In a more balanced state with a less docile electorate, the second the story of the nursing home deaths story broke it would have been the end of Cuomo.
Newsom will likely survive, but on the off chance he doesn’t, consider this an earthquake ten times the intensity of Trump in 2016. Expect a complete and total meltdown everywhere left of center. And expect that to be borne out in an orgy of violence…some of it occurring far from the Golden State
I made a small donation to Elder many weeks ago. I was looking for Elder ads, but haven’t seen a single one. I checked on Youtube, and apparently Elder ads do exist. They’re probably only aired on stuff I don’t watch. Some of the ad supported streaming video I watch was absolutely carpet bombed with pro Newsome ads.
Ackler,
I don’t a meltdown, I see widespread vindication. They’ll say to each other, “see we are right and just”.
Same old.
Nonapod:
But in a more balanced state, Cuomo would probably not have become governor in the first place.
MBunge:
But the state of the California GOP and the dominance of the Democrats there are linked, and it’s a chicken/egg question as to which came first because they affect each other. When a situation feels hopeless, a party doesn’t attract many good people.
What’s more, it’s not just California. California has gone the way of many states, and vice versa. California is a sign that even egregious incompetence like Newsom’s does not matter to an electorate so partisan. The bell tolls for all of us, potentially.
The vote fraud will serve to push this from a narrow win to a “solid mandate” proving that the people love their governor. Make no mistake, they are now busy processing and “harvesting” hundreds of thousands of fraudulent mail-in ballots (while eliminating as many they can for Elder) in order to make it look like an overwhelming win.
The recall gets framed as Newsom vs Elder. I consider this unfortunate.
Newsom is the devil Californians know, and a handsome devil at that. Elder is a political talk show host. Never mind his race, he doesn’t have impressive credentials to be governor. Nor is he handsome, famous or charismatic — unlike Schwarzenegger, who managed to win his recall.
There’s no question Newsom has been a dreadful governor. However, I don’t see much reason for California moderates to toss Newsom out and end up with an unknown quantity like Elder.
Colorado is not far behind. So far we do not have a Dem Gov as bad as Newsom. Our state legislature is on the other hand very bad.
States are the laboratories of democracy.
Problem is trying to figure out why nobody pays attention to the experimental results.
“I don’t see much reason for California moderates to toss Newsom out and end up with an unknown quantity like Elder.”
Nonetheless it’s amusing to watch BLM supporters drop Larry and support the rich, white, entitled guy.
Voting fraud is – hands down – the number one issue in America and nothing is being done about it.
I recall well one BRK meeting where a kid asked Warren Buffett about how could he trust a company’s numbers. Warren gave his usual brilliant answer and, if I recall correctly, it was based in the Rule of Law. The accountants will get nailed if they certify fraudulent numbers. And, of course, the US Attorney and SEC have roles too. It is a system of trust built, in part, upon penalties.
If we can’t trust mail-in voting and all the other stunts the Dems pull, then we are totally screwed.
A house in our North Carolina neighborhood was just sold, to a couple who will be refugees from California when they move next month. They told us they’re voting to recall Newsom on their way out.
Nonetheless, my native Californian brother-in-law told me months ago that there was no way Newsom would be recalled. He thinks the state is too far gone.
Considering wildly inaccurate polls the past several years, I wonder if some pollsters might be postmodernists who’ve ditched truth and accuracy in favor of a “higher calling”?
Polls that covertly anticipate fraudulent results help support the narrative.
“The toxic California politics come from people who have fled California.”
They came from other states before they came from California. And ruined it.
We’re just returning them back to you.
At the deepest of levels, even the willfully blind have to know that the leadership they’ve entrusted is, at best incompetent. Democracy underlies representative government. It places the responsibility for self-governance upon every adult. A refusal to hold accountable incompetent governance is at base, a rejection of self-governance.
It’s a rejection of responsibility for one’s own actions.
People cannot be saved from themselves. Eyes wide shut as they’re marched toward the gallows. Democracy’s fatal flaw is that freedom permits mistakes by the majority impossible to recover from when the perpetrators have rejected reality.
They bring their fate upon themselves.
Wherein the real problem lies is in their flight from the results and consequences of their own prior votes. As they infect the politics of the remaining saner States to which they have fled.
At base, a progressivism based in the collective, rests upon a rejection of key aspects of both human nature and operative principles that govern the external reality within which we all exist.
That necessarily equates to rejection of nature’s creator.
And the blind are leading the blind into the ditch.
When thought and actions are divorced from reality, they evolve into a disassociative State, a metabolic dis-ease, an ideological cancer.
There’s only one way to deal with a metastasizing cancer.
A refusal to cut it out is a surrender to death.
We all saw the androgynous lunatics in Seattle and Portland proclaiming their satisfaction with the states of affairs in their cities in the midst of the chaos and uproar which they had enabled if not helped to spark.
What makes anyone think the California wokesters would be any different?
How do you propose to reason with an angry mentally ill transsexual and come to some agreement on what kind of social arrangements and aims, and distribution of public burdens are just and proper?
You might as well be trying to communicate with an alien species.
And in fact, inasmuch as progressives are by and large nominalists that do not believe an objective reality, nor that any prescriptive norms could be deduced from such fixed natures should they exist, there is nothing really to argue about with them. They eat, they defecate. They fight, they fornicate. They admire their own reflection and revere only the urges and impulses that per their own worldview randomly, and pointlessly well-up within them.
If a collapse of agriculture were to take place in California, I doubt that that would even be enough to change their minds. It is a “price” they would be willing to pay … or actually have others pay for them.
Perhaps the San Andreas Fault will unzip a little and those Naturally Conservative Hispanics of Lore and Legend will float up out of it kind of like Thetans and vote to Recall, ushering in the long-awaited Reign of the Magical Light-radiating Black Body?
I must go check if the local Tax On Fools (i.e. Lottery) has jackpotted enough to seem (only seem) to be worth a flutter this week.
For a more positive outlook you can listen to Larry Elder and more CA election news on the John and Ken podcast. They’re FYI Los Angeles drive time hosts.
Zaphod:
Hispanics are conservative when it comes to family and work. This doesn’t translate as much into voting Republican as we would like, but from 2012-2020 the Hispanic (or Latino to get technical and include Brazilian ancestry) vote for Republican Presidential candidates increased from 28-33%.
That’s not insignificant in numbers or slope. I don’t know why you pretend it’s a legend.
@huxley:
I stand corrected:
https://www.newsweek.com/texas-man-killed-prominent-lawyer-voted-joe-biden-police-1627904
Tacos for lunch today.
This portends to be enough for me to wish Lex Luthor got his beachfront property.
Neo: “By the way, I predict that if/when Newsom is retained, the vote will be framed by the left, the Democrats, and the MSM (but I repeat myself) as a great victory that represents a huge mandate for everything the Democrats want to do, rather than just California being predictably California.”
Yep, that’s the “prediction” that I see. By hook or crook Newsom will come out of this being able to stay in office and the Democrats will say something like “the people have spoken” and continue on with their merry way or go further unhinged.
Newsom winning will be trumpeted by the Democrats (and the MSM) as confirmation that they are on the path to total victory in 2022, 2024, and beyond. That the nation agrees with all that Biden/Pelosi/Schumer have done. They won’t double down they’ll quadruple down – go all in. The precious is in their grasp.
Newsom wins with 66% of current vote, 65% of precincts reporting.
Huxley, as per your last comment on the COVID thread and related to here. I believe we can count on “even crazier” now.
I never thought Newsom would lose, but the recall threw sand in the gears and kept him in check for while – no mask mandates, no shut ins recently, etc. He was very quiet versus his contemporary COVID nazis in Oregon and Australia.
That may go away now, but in my neck of SoCal no one has worn masks for some time and I don’t see that changing.
The question:
“If the people of California do this to themselves, why should you or we feel bad about it?”
The answer (or AN answer):
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/10/california_is_a_preview_of_the_democrats_dystopian_vision_for_america.html
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/california-plague-blue-locusts/
Polls that covertly anticipate fraudulent results help support the narrative.
Some of the polls are psyops I do not doubt. The thing is, with the collapse of the landline network, you cannot produce probability samples through random-digit dialing. So what you have are a mess of convenience samples pollsters massage through models. AFAICT, polling as it was understood 30 years ago does not exist anymore.
The margins I’m hearing about lead me to believe this may be the most fraudulent statewide election in the post-war period. The problem, of course, is that street-level Democrats are fine with that.
Yes, expect new levels of “losing patience” for anyone not falling in line with the Dem world view. A new impetus for vaxx mandates for sure.
(Please, if you donate money for politics, consider donating to lawfare groups like Judicial Watch, Center for American Liberty, Pacific Legal Foundation, True the Vote, Election Integrity Project and others. Repubs are not resisting, on balance they’re cooperating).
“The bell tolls for all of us, potentially“
I hate to break it to you, Neo, but that die has already been cast. Trump was the last chance to avoid disaster and we blew it.
Not that Trump could fix everything himself but if our elites and institutions had responded appropriately to him, we might have been able to change our national direction with the least possible pain and disruption. They didn’t and so we can’t.
Some sort of crash is coming, so we all need to stop fretting over those hastening the impact and focus on securing our local and immediate security. For example, if you live in a blue state or a major urban area…get out. Those of us in flyover country aren’t going to be impervious but the collapse won’t start here and will exhaust a lot of its destructive force before it gets to us.
Mike
In Los Angeles all the loose objects in the country were collected, as if America had been tilted and everything that wasn’t tightly screwed down had slid into Southern California.
–Saul Bellow
Here is a potpourri of the sorts of policies one sees in deep blue areas. Like mine in California. Watch for them sprouting up in your area. Push back if you can.
1) dense housing replacing more spacious single family homes
2) the zone designation “SFR” (single family residence) frozen, no more allowed
3) housing projects built with intentionally too few parking spaces (eg: 90 units, 70 parking spaces)
4) transition from free roads to toll roads
5) all new appliances must be electric. no gas cooktops, water heaters, …
6) no new gas stations (over time replace with electric charging stations)
7) low income/section-8 housing placed in prosperous areas
8) subsidies for electric car purchase, tax benefits for employers providing charging equipment on company property for employees
Well, I could think of more but basically:
Chip away at private gasoline car ownership, making housing dense so that mass transit can be credibly claimed as a replacement. Take away carbon emitting appliances too, not just cars. Dilute free independent communities with voters dependent on gov’t support.
“1) dense housing replacing more spacious single family homes
2) the zone designation “SFR” (single family residence) frozen, no more allowed
3) housing projects built with intentionally too few parking spaces (eg: 90 units, 70 parking spaces)” JimNorCal
And here is the proof that these Leftist ideologues do not believe any of what they are legislating, mandating, selling. Climate change indeed! How many new toilets, sinks etc etc are in our immediate area with these Agenda 21 rectangular visual obscenities that further erode the infrastructure that long-ago ceased to support the populace? And filling the abodes with people that do not share our values and likely do not honor proper recycling and hazardous refuse requirements. At least this is what one concludes by driving along and seeing the trash, furniture and so on thrown out on the public curb. As the saying goes, pay no attention to the words, look at the actions.
In point of fact, as you yourself know, “we” did no such thing.
There is no affinity “we” in the country, and there has not been one for a very long time, if ever.
It was instead ‘your’ crazy proud sister-in-law who blew it – she’s the same one you recall who smirkingly proclaimed her willingness to blow it when Clinton and Obama ran. It is your cuck cousin, who you feel sorry for because he never was much of a man, but it’s not his fault somehow. It was the mainline Protestant churches, the nest of pederast vipers known as the American Catholic bishops, and every drug addled social floater who is “Not into politics, man”.
Well … maybe “we” did blow it, if you stop to think that these insane pieces of work deserved a figurative fist in the face, rather than the tolerance and forbearance which allowed them to open the sea-cocks on the ship and sink us all; when we knew damn well that it was going to happen all along.
MBunge:
You’re not breaking a thing to me. I happen to think the die was cast long before Trump. The deck was stacked against him because of that, and he could not effect real change.