In all, no surprise.

He’s a state official. There is no need to strike stupid poses vis a vis federal officials.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/bryan-preston/2021/09/15/national-magazine-of-texas-marvels-that-hispanic-texans-are-voting-republican-n1478962

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.)

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.

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.

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

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.

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/

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.