California dreaming: Newsom survives easily, as expected
Governor Newsom of California survives the recall with about two-thirds of the vote. So apparently most Californians like it there just the way it is, which is hard for outsiders to understand.
There may have been some voting fraud, but I really doubt any was needed in order for Newsom to win. The large population centers on the coast are tremendously blue, and they carry the state. In San Francisco County it was 86.7% against recall, and LA wasn’t far behind at 73.6%.
Other parts of California beg to differ. But they are small in population:
The largest margin in favor of the recall came in Lassen County, where 82.9% of voters opted to remove Newsom from office, with all precincts reporting. Lassen County has about 30,000 residents.
Other counties voting in favor of the recall were: Del Norte, Siskiyou, Modoc, Shasta, Tehama, Butte, Plumas, Sierra, Yuba, Sutter, Glenn, Colusa, El Dorado, Amador, Calaveras, Stanislaus, Tuolumne, Mariposa, Madera, Fresno, Kings, Tulare, Inyo and Kern.
There’s a handy map at the link, but I can’t reproduce it here because of copyright, so you’ll have to go there to see it. It shows the coastal strip versus the central part of California – two different worlds in one state.
Here’s an article from two and a half months ago by Michael Anton that explains some of this, even though it was written long before the vote:
…[O]ne must understand that when we say “California,” what we really mean is a thin, rarely more than 50 miles wide and mostly much narrower strip of land from just north of the Marin Headlands to just south of the Coronado Bridge, plus a few outposts such as Napa, Tahoe, and Palm Springs. The rest—the parts with all the ranches and farms, oil wells and rail junctions, warehouses and meth labs—may as well not exist.
But they do exist, and are integral to modern California, in the same way that galley slaves were integral to ancient triremes, yet best left unacknowledged and unseen.
How does the California economy work? Here’s how, according to Anton:
The implicit deal, which I’ve called the “San Francisco Compromise,” is that, first, the left does nothing that directly threatens oligarchic wealth or power. It can tax and spend all it wants, so long as those taxes are easily bearable—and, to the extent possible, legally avoidable—by California’s grandees. And so long as the other policies that increase oligarchic wealth are never questioned, so that at the end of the day it almost doesn’t matter what California tax rates are; whatever they are, the rulers can afford them. The lefties also agree to use their considerable rhetorical power to whitewash and lionize the oligarchs.
For their part, the oligarchs take their cues from leftists on matters of passionate conviction that don’t directly threaten said wealth or power and spend some of their lucre on lefty institutions and make-work jobs.
This works out tremendously well for the oligarchs who, like all elites, are outnumbered and need defenses and justifications for their privilege. And it works out very well for the lefties who are, for the most part, otherwise unemployable—certainly not in any profit-making industry that pays well enough to live in coastal California.
What about everybody else? Aye, there’s the rub. Most of them don’t have it so good. In my 2020 book The Stakes, I describe modern California as crowded, costly, congested, crumbling, incompetent, filthy, dangerous, rapacious, profligate, suffocating, prejudiced, theocratic, pathologically altruistic, balkanized, and feudal. Those interested in the details may peruse the first chapter, in which I attempt to demonstrate each of these claims.
If you’re very rich in California – and a lot of people are – it’s very nice. If you’re not very rich and are merely middle class, it’s not very nice and can in fact be extremely not-nice.
And as far as California elections go, it has become this way:
Formally, modern California is “democratic” in that people vote, but they always vote for the same things, or a for a series of interchangeable hacks who all believe and do the same things. Elections mean nothing in the sense that the real rulers can never lose. Voting simply provides the veneer of legitimacy…
All this is underwritten by the massive vote-banks that are California’s cities, which ensure one-party rule in Sacramento and in the judiciary, plus a lopsidedly leftist congressional delegation. Even today, after decades of middle-class exodus, millions of Californians still harbor Red State habits and political inclinations. But their preferences—like their votes—don’t matter because such people are demographically overwhelmed. Stay and pay, suffer and be ignored. Or leave. Either way, you’re not voting your way out of this. That’s the message Haute California hurls at dwindling Red California.
How is this accomplished? It’s the model for the entire US, if leftists have their way:
California’s real rulers don’t exercise their power in the manner of the oligarchs of old, nor even like machine bosses. It’s more using their complete control of all avenues of information—from grammar schools all the way up to prestige and social media—to tell only one cramped, constrained “story.”
There is much much more in the essay about how California got the way it is, and I suggest you read the whole thing. Yes, it’s depressing, and it also may mostly contain things you already know. But it’s still well worth reading for passages such as this one:
[There] was the infusion of more than $4 trillion (on paper, at least) into Silicon Valley and San Francisco that created the world’s richest elite, who enjoy advocating psychologically pleasing bromides, certain that they can exempt themselves from the real-world ramifications which fall only on distant others. California can be a very traditional society for the very wealthy, who can and do wall themselves off from the dysfunction they cause, live in gated communities, and send their kids to private schools. Such families, of course, also all employ Hispanic help—gardeners, maids, cooks, nannies—and so have both pecuniary and conscience-salving reasons to advocate for illegal immigration: doing so is a public show of noblesse oblige that helps legitimize their privilege. This new wealth and the way its owners spend it thus only intensified the state’s hard-left turn as elites voted for—and, more to the point, financed—ever-more radical politicians and ballot initiatives.
Author Anton points out that many Republicans have fled the state over the years, but he also mentions something I hadn’t thought about before, which is that many moderate Democrats left too, and that they were the ones that had kept the Democratic Party in California in check to a certain degree. Their departure is part of what enabled the California Democratic Party to make its hard-left turn.
The interesting bit is that some parts of the Democrat machine resorted to vote fraud anyway. Perhaps it is just standard procedure. There was an election and cheating is what they do. Even when they don’t have to.
We’ve seen with the Clintons, Obama and Biden that they lie even when they don’t have to. They lie naturally, regularly and relentlessly. The same broken moral compass is involved when it comes to elections.
It’s who they are.
What really keeps CA funded is the IPO’s, RSU’s and other stock grants. When that stock is sold, capital gains taxes must be paid.
Also, Hollywood helps plenty.
I visited Napa before the software revolution. We ate the French Laundry. Then the wealth poured in from Tech.
The interesting bit is that some parts of the Democrat machine resorted to vote fraud anyway. Perhaps it is just standard procedure.
Stan:
You’ve got to keep your hand in!
It’ll be interesting to see what Gerard Van der Leun has to say about the results of the election. He lives in Butte County, which voted in favor of the recall.
My bet is that the vote fraud is much larger than what is visible. Soon the California Dems will approach Saddam/Kim levels in the “vote.” California is getting close to a violation of Article IV section 4 if they haven’t crossed that line already.
Some discordant notes from your narrative. See the breakdown by ethnic group in the poll at this article.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2021-recall-elections/california-governor-results
The blacks are still on the Democrat plantation voting 80+ percent against the recall. But what surprises me is that the Asians voted 62% against the recall. I guess you can attribute that to the left’s control of the schools and the news media but it is almost at hypnotic level. Hispanic voted 58% against. Why are the results in California so different among Hispanics than they are in Texas?
Another discordant note is the result of the ballot initiatives in 2020. If you look at the individual initiatives, the results were decidedly conservative. Yet on the same ballot they voted for the Democrats by a wide margin. The Republicans did pick up a few House seats but I think they also lost some seats in the state legislature.
But to your point of the oligarchs and their money, that is probably the reason for the results. There was an overwhelming barrage of advertisements against the recall. I did not see a pro-protocol ad until a couple of days before the election. And that was a pretty poor ad by Larry Elder where he introduced himself when he really needed to convince people to vote for the recall.
It’s interesting that California is gradually becoming a sort of medieval in it’s class stratification. With the hollowing out of the middle class, you have analogues of peasants and nobility of a feudal society. In another few decades the demography of the entire state could just be made up of a small contingent of hyper rich plutocrats (consiting of maybe 3-5% of the population) who’ll live fabulously extravagant lifestyles supported by a huge underclass of mostly brown people who will be their servents and serfs (assuming they’re not just replaced by robots and automation that is). The rest will just be a huge homeless population. The wealth gap will be as tremendous as it was in the middle ages with the top 3% controlling like 99.5% of the wealth.
Is it true that they not only had mail-in ballots but “print out a ballot at home” in this election?
Let’s not forget that one of the factors in the political feudalization of California is the utter fecklessness of the state Republican Party. It seems like the party machinery continues to be run by pre-Trump, pro-oligarch Republicans who just sort of flounder around until some charismatic figure comes along.
Mike
dargon,
Based on an article or two, my understanding is that yes you could print out a ballot at home. It was intended to be a very limited option for people currently living outside the state or country, but I have no idea how easily it could have been abused.
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Nice stats. Bob. Thanks.
“The wealth gap will be as tremendous as it was in the middle ages with the top 3% controlling like 99.5% of the wealth.”
That’s not sustainable in modern society. Just for example, how much internet wealth is based on amassing and selling people’s personal information? That data is valuable because it can be used to sell people things, but that only works when people have money to spend.
Mass market economics requires mass numbers of consumers and that requires mass numbers of people with disposable income.
Mike
MB. Read Childe’s “What Happened in History” decades ago. He made the same point. There could be not much middle class–producing things like cloth and crafts and weapons–when the only market was the temple and the palace. Which, it should go without saying, took care to mulct whatever they could from the potential middle class.
MBunge
I’m not convinced that such a scenario wouldn’t be sustainable for a time on a regional level, (especially when locality in general is becoming less of a factor in modern times). Think such a future version of California as sort of a massive gated community, a country within a country where many of the wealthiest people of the greater country live. The consumer base for the wealth generation could be mostly outside the state.
I wouldn’t want a Larry Hogan-type in my state, because we don’t need to run Larry Hogan-types in my state to win.
That said, I suspect a Larry Hogan-type Republican would have won or come much closer to winning than Elder. I also suspect that California would have benefited greatly from having a Larry Hogan-type governor. At least he or she would have paused some of the crazy until 2022.
If I lived in Maryland, I’d be very grateful for Larry Hogan just from looking over the border into Virginia and seeing the alternative.
“what surprises me is that the Asians voted 62% against the recall”
Of course, due to history, Vietnamese are pretty rock solid conservative.
There was a large contingent of very motivated Chinese involved in rallies, election observation and the like. The ones I talked to were foreign born, legal citizens and they talked about fear of something like the Cultural Revolution happening here. Besides the specific issues around our Gov, they were mobilized by moral issues like explicit gay propaganda and sex education for elementary school kids. Those are the 38% who voted YES.
Anecdotally, many American-born Asians, especially young seem to be Woke. Rebellion against their parents and also echoing Black culture (“fight racism!”). A large group of educated, prosperous, successful Asians are no different from well-educated, NY Times-reading, politically liberal affluent Whites.
That’s my guess for where the 62% NO comes from.
Is the 38% a gain from previous years?
So as living, working, and economic conditions–house prices, tax burdens, educational systems, crime, homelessness, drugs, bureaucratic overreach, crumbling infrastructure and roads–have gotten steadily worse, this has driven more and more conservatives and members of the middle class–who were able to–to flee California.
I’d imagine that a sizeable chunk of older conservatives were also killed off by COVID.
Now, we have the failure of the recall effort which will, no doubt, drive even more conservative-minded people and those in the middle class–who can–to move to other states.
One would think that, at some point, the tiny upper class will simply run out of the large number of peasants needed to support them.
“Anecdotally, many American-born Asians, especially young seem to be Woke. ”
Jim, that also surprises me given the explicitly anti-Asian policies of the left. The young Asians are the people who were discriminated against in college admissions. The Biden administration dropped the Trump support of the Asian students’ lawsuit against Yale. The leftist San Francisco school board changed the admission policy of their Lowell high school from competitive to a lottery because there were too many Asians admitted.
There may be some changes. Some claim that the reason Republicans were able to flip a couple of House seats in Orange county is that Asians were concerned about proposition 16, which would repeal the California equal rights amendment. But the recall vote shows the changes don’t seem to hold.
Well, they’ve made their bed and now have to sleep in it.
On the other coast, NY State just passed a law that, after 2035 no new gasoline powered cars will be allowed to be sold in the State.
There’s a certain level of willful stupidity that richly deserves its fate.
It’s interesting that California is gradually becoming a sort of medieval in it’s class stratification. …
The wealth gap will be as tremendous as it was in the middle ages with the top 3% controlling like 99.5% of the wealth. — Nonapod
Nonapod’s numbers are for the medieval period? Plus wealth is hard to get a handle on, because it’s not declared on tax returns. But income is.
For California in 2018,
Top 5% in income – – – 23.2% of all income in the state
Top 20% – – – – – – – – 52%
4th Quintile – – – – – – -22.8%
3rd Quintile – – – – – – -14.1%
2nd Quintile – – – – – – 8.1%
1st Quintile – – – – – – -3.0%
Keep in mind that there is a vast gray or black market of cash under the table income. This allows people to file tax returns on declared income in the $10K to $40K range and collect Earned Income Tax Credit funds as fully refundable tax credits; even if their real income is much higher.
I used to get my tires mounted or rotated at a place that requested cash payment. Now I go down the street to the politically conservative wheel/tire/repair place.
https://statisticalatlas.com/state/California/Household-Income
I suspect a Larry Hogan-type Republican would have won or come much closer to winning than Elder.
Get back to us when you’ve learned the mechanics of a California recall.
The sensible center inspires no sensibility at all. In any case, they’d just have stuffed more ballots in the box.
Hogan, btw, panders to street-level Democrats.
California is getting close to a violation of Article IV section 4 if they haven’t crossed that line already.
Our appellate courts will be too busy manufacturing pretexts to invalidate duly enacted district maps to bother their pretty little heads about industrial scale vote fraud.
Snow on Pine —
They’ll never run out of peasants, to till the fields and sweep the floors and diaper the babies.
They will run out of technicians, to maintain the pipes and fill the potholes and fix the wires.
I’ve been reading Victor Davis Hanson for 20 years, and he’s been complaining about the terrible state of the California highways the whole time. It’s just going to keep getting worse.
The strip of California that saved Newsome is analogous to the institutions in the country that installed the Democrats in 2020, and who will keep them in power into the indefinable future. It’s as if the whole country has been reconfigured into a plantation society, with the owners located mostly in the major cities, on the coasts and in Silicon Valley, and the rest of us in fly-over land. The people who produce the food and the products we all need just to carry on in modern life, the people who support our basic needs, are in general the ones scorned and controlled by the plantation owners. The worlds of the owners and the workers are entirely separate, alien to one another, with the owners caring little about their underlings beyond keeping them placated so as not to threaten their control and securing their votes by whatever it takes.
Meanwhile, those who serve to keep the country functioning become increasingly, though slowly, more aware of the scorn, contempt and indifference (choose one or more) with which they are regarded, and that leads to rage. I can only guess at whether this is a purposeful provocation to justify increasing authoritarianism or utter cluelessness as to the possible consequences.
Bob: “The young Asians are the people who were discriminated against in college admissions. The Biden administration dropped the Trump support of the Asian students’ lawsuit against Yale. The leftist San Francisco school board changed the admission policy of their Lowell high school from competitive to a lottery because there were too many Asians admitted.”
Thanks for expanding my remarks. Yes, the Asian voting group is puzzling to me and, I assume, many. One way my Asian friends tend to differ from me is that their cultural norm is to be more private, and to follow rules … but be alert for loopholes and ways to go around the rule. Not to directly challenge the rule. Whereas I will post my views on social media, attend rallies, but feel more of a moral compulsion to follow the rules than they do.
It seems to me the Asian thought process goes
1) is there danger to me from publicly visible opposition?
2) can I still get by, do well, while ostensibly following the rules?
3) can I prosper by finding tricks and loopholes?
All three need to be “no” before open rebellion is considered.
Otherwise, acting as a parasite on the rule-making body is preferred, LOL.
How do you do good exit polling when much of the vote is mail-in? Do you call people and ask them if they voted by mail and how they voted? If so that would seem to have the same problem for the poll as mail-in voting does for the integrity of the vote.
The USSR had “They pretend to pay us and we pretend to work.” We seem headed for “They pretend to hold elections and we pretend to vote.”
Kyle Smith makes the same point I did. So, obviously he is right on the nose.
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Conservatives got high on our own supply out in California. We neglected to ask, “Compared to what?” It’s pretty easy to make the case that Gavin Newsom is terrible, but compared to what? A recall election that was a referendum on Newsom had a chance to succeed, but, not unreasonably, once the possibility of ejecting Newsom entered the imagination, voters started to wonder who might succeed him. Newsom sucks . . . compared to what?
Once Larry Elder became the overwhelming front runner, Newsom was safe. A fire-breathing conservative was not going to win in California, except accidentally…
__________________________________________
Tangential, but such a great jazz cut:
–Les McCann & Eddie Harris, “Compared To What”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCDMQqDUtv4
huxley,
Not buying it. All the ads I saw were about stopping the evil Republican recall. Larry who? You make a good point about why John McCain’s and Mitt Romney’s campaigns were so successful. Oh, wait …
TommyJay:
Perhaps you are addressing someone else?
huxley,
Sorry, too snarky. But I would be heartened if I believed your point because it would mean that substantial numbers of Californians actually thought seriously about it.
The other disturbing thought for me is that I’m not convinced that Elder put in a serious effort. Did he husband his meager campaign funds for some future effort or deal? I have no facts, but I saw nothing from him other than a couple talk show appearances.
The NRO says a GOP candidate is too conservative? Say it ain’t so. Typical pablum for those guys. I recommend you don’t take it seriously.
“A fire-breathing conservative was not going to win in California, except accidentally”
Then the people of California, at least the majority of them, deserve what’s coming.
For whatever else you might like to believe about our current political situation, there is one absolute truth:
When Republican voters in 2016 were told they HAD to vote for Jeb Bush or they HAD to vote for Marco Rubio or they HAD to vote for Scott Walker, GOP voters responded “Hell, no!”
When Democratic voters in 2020 were told they HAD to vote for Joe Biden, a man most of them had already rejected, they said “Sure thing, boss! Whatever you say!”
Mike
From the article you quoted “ …galley slaves…ancient triremes…”
During at least part of the ancient Greek period, such as during the Greek vs Persian Wars and the Peloponnesian War, the Greeks primarily used the lower classes to row the triremes, not slaves. In a pinch, slaves might be promised freedom FOR rowing during a battle. The middle and upper classes were Infantry and likely officers and some of the upper classes, cavalry.
But various forms of galley ships, with slaves, were used up to modern times.
The worst may have been the open barge type, where the slaves never left the bench, night and day, for six months, with no protection from the elements and unable to lay down.
Think about that the next time you are stuck in a cushioned seat on an airline on the runway for maintenance….
Peloponnesian War: https://www.amazon.com/Peloponnesian-War-Donald-Kagan/dp/0142004375/ref=asc_df_0142004375?tag=bingshoppinga-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=80745437135190&hvnetw=o&hvqmt=e&hvbmt=be&hvdev=t&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=&hvtargid=pla-4584345029249481&psc=1
Battle of Salamis :
https://www.christianbook.com/battle-salamis-encounter-greece-western-civilization/barry-strauss/9780743244510/pd/3244516?en=bing-pla&event=SHOP&kw=ingram-0-20%7C3244516&p=1179517&dv=t&msclkid=099354bde9121bb3adb335ff4dba2ae9&utm_source=bing&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=Shopping%20Main&utm_term=4580909044321831&utm_content=s-ingram
TommyJay:
We’ll have to agree to disagree.
I’ll stick to the point that Larry Elder just wasn’t going to win the California recall. If one is concerned about winning, that matters. The question of whether voters should have voted for him is different.
I don’t know who would have done better, if any. But if Elder is the alternative, Newsom wins and he did.
huxley,
Your first statement is a tautology. He didn’t win because he couldn’t win?
My point is that Elder was a nonentity in the race. People didn’t know who he was and mostly didn’t care. I was never suggesting that voters “should” have voted for him. I’m saying he was irrelevant, thus his level of conservatism (Smith’s point) was also irrelevant.
Guys like Kyle Smith will sell you this crap about “too conservative” all day long. They have for my entire life. People need to outgrow that propaganda.
The California Democrat legislature used the same process to create home printed ballot availability to all Californians that Obama used to create Obamacare. They took an existing bill already in the legislative approval process, gutted the original language, then substituted new voting rules. Since that bill was already passed the review and debate phase, it was passed without public knowledge. It’s informally known as “gut-and-amend” legislation.
The original purpose of the home printed ballot was for disabled voters who could obtain a ballot and vote in no other way. I cannot imagine such a scenario, though. Because it was for the disabled, no feeling person could or would object, even though the method opens the door to unlimited, untraceable, and unauditable ballots and votes. The Sec of State never answered questions about the voting holes big enough the drive the entire California Democratic elite though.
My state is done. Even my formerly reliably Conservative Placer County voted to keep Emperor Newsom. Some of my former friends I’ve known since childhood cannot understand why I can no longer associate with them. It’s similar to growing up and playing with best friend little Joey Mengele. Then meeting 30 or 40 years later, only to find little Joey is THAT Dr. Josef Mengele of Angel of Death fame. It’s just not possible to associate with destroyers. My conscience will not allow it.
https://californiaglobe.com/articles/legislature-authorized-opening-californias-print-your-own-ballot-from-home-program-to-everyone/
@JimNorCal—I’m also in NorCal-actually in an área with a ton of Viet Namese and also Hmong; and do not know a single Viet Namese who is not a democrat or apolitical. This is a shock to me since I thought with their history they would follow that of Cubans. Hmong are a different story, and many are not democrats. Almost all other Asians here are majority democrats-especially those who have graduate degrees.
I don’t know why so many of Mexican or Central American background here are democrats compared to Texas-perhaps more illegals over the last 40+ years with more citizens by virtue of children of illegals here c/w Texas?
In regards to the election, I have no doubt that Newsom won, however, it is hard for me to fathom the election results %. I would swallow 55-60% for no recall, but based on people I know the “actual” numbers seem inflated and make me wonder if this was purposeful.
Tina:
The Vietnamese you know – I assume they were born here. What about their parents or grandparents – are they Democrats, too?
Most were not born here but instead came as children or teens, mainly in the ‘70’s but some in the ‘80’s. These are my contemporaries. One friend in particular, very successful, tells of a harrowing escape and subsequent internment in a camp and underwent horrible privation before eventually coming here. He is totally apolitical, in spite of saying he is glad they left and live here. His sisters are democrats. He has gone back to Viet Nam to visit family many times over the years; doesn’t think twice about it. Has taken his kids to do volunteer work there. I do not know if their older parents are democrats. I should add that there is a shining light in the SE Asian community, and that is Elizabeth Heng. She is currently running for Senate and is actively pro-freedom and GOP.
For their part, the oligarchs take their cues from leftists on matters of passionate conviction that don’t directly threaten said wealth or power and spend some of their lucre on lefty institutions and make-work jobs.
This is how humans live in troops. Apes give subordinates a beat-down. Humans propagandize. That makes us more civilized, having learned better to exploit potential dissenters and rebels.
The history of the last hundred years gives lie to the ‘enlightened electorate’ and ‘enlightened self-interest’ theories of the 18th century and falsify its political theories.
All this is underwritten by the massive vote-banks that are California’s cities, which ensure one-party rule in Sacramento and in the judiciary, plus a lopsidedly leftist congressional delegation.
The mistake of universal suffrage. For some reason, Americans past believed an education could create a responsible, enlightened citizen that would vote other than in the citizen’s own self-interest and self-deceptions (the latter being the most important, as the propaganda Anton mentions flatters citizens while the state robs them).
that many moderate Democrats left too, and that they were the ones that had kept the Democratic Party in California in check to a certain degree. Their departure is part of what enabled the California Democratic Party to make its hard-left turn
The “purple” voters who are certain, now that they’re in Tennessee, Colorado, Texas, Idaho… that this time the same voting will produce a different outcome.
The Newsom victory is now seen as total victory for Democrats to do whatever they want since only a sick, perverted, 1/3 of the country oppose them. The quadruple down begins.
David Plouffe speaking to Joy Reid;
“I think these governors, legislative leaders who have stood in the way of vaccinations, who belittled COVID, who don’t want masks in school — here’s the thing, we’re basically two-thirds of the country in support of mask mandates in schools. So again, they’re speaking to their sick, perverted one-third of the country, you know that gets injected by Fox News and Sinclair and Breitbart, all the stuff. Listen, I believe today, Joy, the only country that has a worse COVID outbreak than the United States is Mongolia. So if you can’t make something of that politically as tragic as that is, maybe you don’t deserve to be in politics. I think one thing, Newsom made this campaign about COVID.”
https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2021/09/15/plouffe-republicans-speaking-to-their-sick-perverted-one-third-of-the-country-injected-by-fox-news-breitbart/
Art Deco – Hogan caters to street level Democrats because he runs in Maryland, for pity’s sake. If he doesn’t win votes from street level Democrats, he doesn’t win. If he doesn’t win, Marylanders get whatever uber-woke idealogue the Ds put up.
Let me know what you mean about the mechanics of the CA recall. It looked to me as though Newsome was in trouble early when the primary issue was a referendum on his performance, and then ended up winning the state by the same margin as Biden once people realized it was becoming a binary choice between Newsome and Elder.
I understand that there wasn’t a primary so there wasn’t a great way for the party to pick candidates. For a state with jungle primaries, like CA, that’s just how it is though. The R team needs to find a way to get it’s best candidates before the electorate one way or another.
“The Newsom victory is now seen as total victory for Democrats to do whatever they want since only a sick, perverted, 1/3 of the country oppose them.”
Thus hastening the inevitable backlash. For all the attention the crazy Leftist stuff gets, what ultimately matters is that the “mainstream” of the Democratic party is held prisoner by economic and foreign policy thinking that is not just wrong but literally disconnected from reality.
Mike
Art Deco – Hogan caters to street level Democrats because he runs in Maryland, for pity’s sake. If he doesn’t win votes from street level Democrats, he doesn’t win. If he doesn’t win, Marylanders get whatever uber-woke idealogue the Ds put up.
Robert Ehrlich managed to function as Governor without making himself an antagonist of the Republican president. As for uber-woke ideologues, the Maryland Democratic Party has nominated precisely one, who won the primary on a plurality vote after another candidate died of a heart attack in mid-campaign.
Let me know what you mean about the mechanics of the CA recall.
It’s a conjoined referendum and competitive contest. The contestants are the aspirant replacements, not Newsom, who is subject to the referendum only.
Art Deco:
Are you assuming that in their minds people separate the recall vote from the vote for someone to replace? Although you are technically correct that the two are separate, they take place in the same election and I believe that one influences the other. In other words, if people are attracted to one of the replacement candidates, they are more likely to vote to get rid of Newsom, and then vote for the replacement candidate they prefer. If they don’t like any of the replacements, they are probably more likely to keep Newsom in place.
Art Deco – I doubt seriously that anyone not offended by Trump’s behavior had a snowball’s chance in hades of winning a general election in Maryland. If you’d prefer a Democrat to Hogan, it’s tough for you to criticize Republicans who couldn’t stomach voting for Trump.
To neo’s point, she’s right. Newsome’s campaign was aimed at Elder. I even suspect that was the reason for Erwin Chemerinsky’s silly argument that the recall was unconstitutional. The argument was ridiculous, but it did serve to remind people that the consequence of “yes” winning the recall would be Governor Elder.
(FWIW – I don’t have anything against Elder, I just don’t think he’s a great candidate for CA.)
In answer to a couple of comments, many Texas Hispanics (those descended from early Mexican residents of Tejas) are very different from the current majority of California Hispanics (imported relatively recently as peons). There are some old-time Hispanics in California, and recent imports in Texas, but I think the proportions are different.
At any rate, the two groups to some extent do not consider each other to be simpatico. Bottom line is that the head-lock the Democrats used to have on this demographic is being broken, because the Hispanics are sane and the Democrats increasingly are not.
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/bryan-preston/2021/09/15/national-magazine-of-texas-marvels-that-hispanic-texans-are-voting-republican-n1478962
I doubt seriously that anyone not offended by Trump’s behavior had a snowball’s chance in hades of winning a general election in Maryland.
He’s a state official. There is no need to strike stupid poses vis a vis federal officials.
A couple of comments from CA:
– I never thought the election would succeed but knew it would throw sand in the gears, which it did. No lockdowns, and mask mandates only by local officials in the left big cities only. Everyone else pretty much left alone for half a year
– I am very conservative and well informed, but never heard of Elder before the election. I liked what he said but felt he lacked video charisma.
– National Republican Party stayed away from it, and recall candidates were limited on fund raising while Newsom was not.
– On the Asian vote the numbers against the recall were because of race, not politics. There are several elected republican Asians in local, county, and in the house in SoCal, and growing in number each election.
In all, no surprise.