In the end, it wasn’t even remotely close. California voters rejected a GOP-led recall of Governor Gavin Newsom by a landslide margin of 64-36 — a 28-point shellacking.
Yes, this is what we should have expected from such a heavily Democratic state, but it might have been (much) closer if the vote had been a straight up-or-down referendum on Newsom himself. Instead, it became a referendum on “the abyss.”
The abyss, of course, was Trumpism.
...The California fiasco will probably not be enough to prompt the sort of introspection that Republicans so desperately need. But as 2024 looms, it provides one more reason for Republicans to ask themselves: Do they really want to do this again?
...As Clay Risen noted yesterday “Newsom and the Democrats seem to have persuasively argued that he was running not on his record or against a particular candidate, but against Trumpism. . . .”
“In a vacuum, there was a lot of discontentment with Newsom and ambivalence with him among Democrats,” said Rob Stutzman, a Republican political consultant in California.
That started to change once “the abyss” got a name.
The election also represented the ascendancy (and vulnerability) of the entertainment wing of the GOP. As Risen noted:
Mr. Elder isn’t a serious politician; he’s running not to win, but to raise his media profile. But that very fact says something about today’s Republican Party. Many of its highest-profile figures blur the line between politician and celebrity, and act accordingly, even if their success as the latter undermines what we expect out of the former. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Madison Cawthorn — and, yes, Larry Elder — are only nominally politicians. In substance, they’re entertainers.
They also put Donald Trump on the ballot. As Perry Bacon Jr. notes this morning: “The rise of [Larry] Elder, whom Democrats cast as a California Donald Trump, was ‘perfect,’ [Newsom senior adviser Addisu] Demissie said. ‘Couldn’t have been better. He made no effort to appeal to anyone outside of his base.’”
“Newsom’s victory,” writes Bacon, “suggests that running as the anti-Trumpism party still has real political value, even with Trump no longer in the White House.”
BONUS: The California results were a repudiation of anti-mask, anti-vax politics — a clear sign that Republican opposition to precautions against the pandemic is a colossal miscalculation. As the AP notes this morning: “The Republicans running to replace Newsom opposed mask and vaccine mandates, and the California governor was happy to highlight that. Newsom aired an ad calling the recall ‘a matter of life and death’ and accusing the top Republican candidate, talk radio host Larry Elder, of ‘peddling deadly conspiracy theories.’”
Delayed due to technical difficulties. Jack's initial narration and Larry's cinematic reinterpretation.
If you’re looking for the best metaphor for how the California Republican Party blew the recall attempt against Gov. Gavin Newsom, look no further than the sight of mixed-martial-arts legend Tito Ortiz knocked out by Anderson Silva in the first round of a boxing match held on 9/11.
This time last year, Ortiz was a rising star for the GOP, the latest celebrity to make a political run as he campaigned for a seat on the Huntington Beach City Council. He ended up getting the most votes of any candidate in city history by espousing the MAGA school of politics — ridicule the libs, proclaim skepticism to coronavirus shutdowns and the pandemic itself and offer vague promises of freedom with little in actual, tangible plans.
But once it came time to actually duke it out in the octagon of democracy? Ortiz went down like a tree meeting a lumberjack. 9Instead of building a career as Surf City’s Trump-by-the-Sea, he left office in June after barely half a year, basically claiming the public was too mean to him and his family. Just three months later, Ortiz lay before Silva in the boxing ring, flatter than a tortilla. Why, even Trump was there to witness his acolyte’s demise.
Way to impress Papi Trump, Tito!
...For the last quarter-century, state Republicans have acted like the Black Knight in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” that poor soul who insisted on fighting even after all his limbs were cut off, describing the amputations as mere flesh wounds, and then left bragging that he earned a draw against King Arthur as His Royal Highness left the squawking stump by the side of the road.
Nearly every big move that the state GOP has done to wrest power from Democrats — term limits, bigoted propositions, selling its soul to Trump — has spectacularly blown up in their face. Back in April, I wrote: “I’ll wager a roll of pesos that the ultimate loser will, again, be the Republican Party. The house — in this case, history — is on my side.”
The attempted Newsom coup was the worst laugher yet — because it had the best chance of the many Hail Marys that California conservatives have thrown to actually work.
… When you put two and two together
You figure out love's got four letters
I shoulda known that when I met her
But she had to spell it out for me
We avoided external religious motifs topside (or signs of any kind) and only had an 8x11 paper sign on our stairwell door. The stairs allowed access after-hours. Otherwise, we walked from the basement post office to the hallway door that entered the stairwell.
The impact of the 1970 Asbury College Revival (Wilmore, Kentucky) spread westward while the California version of the Jesus Revolution spread eastward. Socorro was an isolated community that became an experimental closed-system to allow God’s Holy Spirit to mix multiple backgrounds without interference by external organizations.
The resulting crucible of standing for faith in a hostile academic environment spun off some graduates as pastors, Christian school principals, and persistent lay leaders.
Victor J. Saracini was born on August 29, 1950 in Atlantic City, New Jersey to parents Anne and Victor Saracini. He attended local grammar schools, Atlantic City High School, and was a graduate of the New Mexico School of Mining and Technology with a major in biology. He joined the United States Navy's Aviation Officer Candidate School, was commissioned as an ensign, and in 1976, received his Naval Flight Officer wings in Pensacola, FL. Victor attended graduate school at Louisiana Tech University.
Victor served in the Naval Reserve at Willow Grove, PA from 1980 to 1985 and was awarded the National Defense Service Medal, the Navy "E" Ribbon, and the Expert Marksmanship ribbon. Victor worked as a corporate pilot for Trenton based Johnson & Johnson, and Pennsylvania based Penn Commuter and the former Wings Airways. He joined United Airlines and was the pilot of the United Airlines Flight 175 when it was hijacked and flown into the World Trade Center in New York City on September 11, 2001.
We were willing to debate the efficacy of masks.
We agreed there should be balance between lockdown measures and economic interests.
We patiently accumulated evidence that COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective.
We kept our cool through every quack remedy and grifter treatment.
We offered guidance to the confused and correctives to the misinformed.
We forbore ignorant assertions that the coronavirus was a hoax, bratty defiance of public health orders, puerile abuse of “freedom," looney vaccine conspiracies.
We did this all with fear, as we watched wave after wave of infections disrupt our lives and kill members of our families.
But now, as we suffer through a second summer of illness and death, we find ourselves confronted with a category of people whose behavior is despicable — the COVID obstructionists, the ones who not only refuse to protect themselves but actively prevent others from doing so.
There's no point trying to understand them, no reasoning with them. They deserve no patience, no forbearance. The only reasonable response to these miscreants is anger. White hot anger.
“It’s probably rigged.” That was Donald Trump’s assessment of the effort to recall Democratic California Governor Gavin Newsom, during an appearance on the dutifully sycophantic network Newsmax. “They’re sending out all ballots―the ballots are mail-out, mail-in ballots. I guess you even have a case where you can make your own ballot. When that happens, nobody’s going to win except these Democrats.”
...As with so many of the ideas that spill from Trump’s paranoiac imagination, the idea that Democrats have engineered a massive voter fraud conspiracy across dozens of states is now a key plank of the Republican Party platform; an operating premise of the party that’s done more to undermine democracy than any since the Reconstruction era.
...Fox Nation’s Tomi Lahren told her viewers that “the only thing that will save Gavin Newsom is voter fraud.” Baseless claims of fraud have trended on social media throughout the summer. Larry Elder, the Republican radio host most likely to become the state’s governor if Newsom is recalled, has also suggested that Dominion Voting Systems was working to rig the gubernatorial recall election.
...As The Washington Post’s Philip Bump argued on Wednesday, these tactics also provide “a way to undermine the credibility of elections in general, using a Democratic state preserving a Democratic governor as evidence that Democrats are somehow cheating.” This all bolsters the larger argument that will be the foundation of Trump’s 2024 run: that he was cheated out of reelection in 2020 by a vast conspiracy that is stealing elections from righteous Republicans.
Gov. Gavin Newsom is on track to survive a recall election in deep-blue California after initially causing Democrats severe heartburn, with veteran Republican insiders blaming GOP front-runner Larry Elder.
The conservative talk-radio host motivated previously complacent rank-and-file Democrats — which neutralized Newsom’s biggest challenge of voter apathy — by catering to the Republican base with polarizing rhetoric and adamantly opposing mask and vaccine mandates amid a resurgence of the coronavirus. In a state where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans 2–1, Elder made himself the perfect foil for Newsom — enabling the Democratic incumbent to make the campaign about the GOP rather than his embattled leadership.
“Newsom has successfully framed the race as him versus Elder, and Democratic voters are responding by voting,” said Rob Stutzman, a GOP operative in Sacramento who advised former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Republican who succeeded Gray Davis after the Democrat was recalled from office in 2003. “Elder has no appeal outside of GOP voters.”
...“Before Elder, the race was all about Gavin, and our polls were looking very good,” said a Republican consultant in California. “If the election had been four or more weeks ago, we would have won.”
Elder has received some support outside of the traditional conservative circles.
Democrat Gloria Romero, who served as her party’s majority leader in the California Senate, even cut a television advertisement for the Republican.
“Yes, I’m a Democrat. But the recall of Newsom is not about political party,” she said in the spot. Meanwhile, Elder’s Republican critics concede the GOP faced several hurdles in this special election campaign that have nothing to do with Elder, as is true for the party in every statewide contest.
The Democratic Party enjoys a 22.4 percentage point advantage over Republicans among registered voters, and Newsom and the anti-recall forces vastly outspent the pro-recall groups and the handful of Republicans seeking to replace the governor. Additionally, former President Donald Trump, broadly viewed as the leader of the Republican Party, is disliked in California. In contrast, top Democrats — President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and former President Barack Obama — are popular.
Despite all of that, some Republicans claim Elder squandered opportunities to hobble Newsom when he was on the ropes. Voters were upset with the governor for infamously ignoring his own pandemic, and they tired of his coronavirus regulatory regime. There was frustration over closed public schools, rising crime, and a homelessness epidemic. The state unemployment agency overseen by Newsom’s administration was beset by fraud and mismanagement.
...“This is over,” added Garry South, the Democratic operative who was Davis’s chief political adviser in 2003. “Newsom beats it by double digits.”
A Democratic candidate in the California recall election against Gov. Gavin Newsom alleges that Republican front runner Larry Elder’s security detail assaulted her and detained her against her will after she interrupted a speech Elder was giving at a Los Angeles area church on Sunday.
Jacqueline “Jackie” McGowan, a cannabis advocate and lobbyist who is one of 46 candidates seeking to replace Gov. Newsom in a recall election, told The Sacramento Bee in an interview that several security guards “attempted to bodyslam me because I challenged (Elder) to a debate.”
SACRAMENTO — Most likely California voters are opposed to the Republican-led recall effort against Gov. Gavin Newsom and a growing number fear the consequences of removing him from office with a hard-right conservative best positioned to take his place, according to new poll by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California.
The poll found that 58% of likely voters surveyed in California oppose removing Newsom from office compared to 39% who support recalling the governor, a gap rooted in the sharp partisan divide between Democratic and Republican voters in the state.
The findings, which were gathered by pollsters over a nine-day period ending on Sunday, may offer some hope for Newsom, who has for the past month expressed concern that an “enthusiasm gap” among Democratic and nonaffiliated voters could lead to his political demise — particularly with high engagement in the recall effort among Republicans.
In response, Newsom has blanketed California with ads attacking the top GOP candidates, casting them as devotees of former President Trump who oppose state mandates for COVID-19 vaccinations and mask wearing, a clear strategy to rally California’s left-leaning electorate.
...If Newsom is recalled, the candidate on the ballot who receives the most votes wins — no matter how many votes he or she receives. The crowded field of candidates is expected to splinter the electorate, which means a Republican who reels in just a small fraction of the vote could become California’s next governor. No Republican has won a statewide election in the state since 2006.
Ballots have already been mailed to all California registered voters. The mail ballot returns so far show that more than twice as many Democrats have voted than Republicans and that liberal areas of the state such as the Bay Area have the highest rates of return, according to state officials and political data researchers.
As a graduate student, Chuck studied lightning under Professor Phillip Krider and was awarded his Ph.D. in Atmospheric Sciences in 1982. He subsequently spent his entire academic career at the University of Arizona, retiring in January 2021 after four decades of exemplary service. His innovative field experiments to study lightning in Quebec, Papua New Guinea, Brazil, and the Kennedy Space Center were truly notable. The Tropical Ocean Global Atmospheric Coupled Ocean Atmosphere Response Experiment (TOGA COARE) was a large international field experiment conducted in 1992-1993 to study the atmospheric and oceanic processes over the region of the western Pacific known as the "warm pool," a region of warm ocean and atmospheric clouds, lightning and precipitation that is linked to El Nino.
Chuck will probably be remembered most of all for his remarkable skill in the classroom. He set the gold standard when it came to teaching freshman introductory atmospheric science courses. He emphasized the scientific method and famously punctuated his lectures with hand-written notes and colorful hand-drawn figures to illustrate examples of atmospheric phenomena.
Chuck was unmatched in the suite of take-home experiments he developed for his students. Frequently, these numbered 600-800 per semester, and he himself meticulously built the kits in the machine shop during summer recess. In addition, Chuck taught a graduate-level course in atmospheric electricity which was in high demand and very popular.
While still a graduate student, Chuck spent time abroad in France where he learned French and discovered his love of bicycling and the Tour de France.
Dr. Weidman will be remembered as a world-class researcher, an unparalleled teacher, and a supportive and collaborative colleague with a wonderful dry sense of humor.
Unlike his three immediate predecessors in the Oval Office, all of whom also came to see the futility of the Afghan operation, Biden alone had the political courage to fully end America’s involvement.
...Former military officers and intelligence operatives, as well as commentators who had long been advocates of extending America’s presence in Afghanistan, railed against Biden’s artificial deadline. Some critics were former Bush-administration officials or supporters who had gotten the U.S. into the mess in the first place, setting us on the impossible path toward nation building and, effectively, a mission without a clear exit or metric for success. Some were Obama-administration officials or supporters who had doubled down on the investment of personnel in the country and later, when the futility of the war was clear, lacked the political courage to withdraw. Some were Trump-administration officials or supporters who had negotiated with and helped strengthen the Taliban with their concessions in the peace deal and then had punted the ultimate exit from the country to the next administration.
They all conveniently forgot that they were responsible for some of America’s biggest errors in this war and instead were incandescently self-righteous in their invective against the Biden administration. Never mind the fact that the Taliban had been gaining ground since it resumed its military campaign in 2004 and, according to U.S. estimates even four years ago, controlled or contested about a third of Afghanistan. Never mind that the previous administration’s deal with the Taliban included the release of 5,000 fighters from prison and favored an even earlier departure date than the one that Biden embraced. Never mind that Trump had drawn down U.S. troop levels from about 13,000 to 2,500 during his last year in office and had failed to repatriate America’s equipment on the ground. Never mind the delay caused by Trump and his adviser Stephen Miller’s active obstruction of special visas for Afghans who helped us.
Never mind the facts. Never mind the losses. Never mind the lessons.
Biden, they felt, was in the wrong. Despite the criticism, Biden, who had argued unsuccessfully when he was Barack Obama’s vice president to seriously reduce America’s presence in Afghanistan, remained resolute. Rather than view the heartbreaking scenes in Afghanistan in a political light as his opponents did, Biden effectively said, “Politics be damned—we’re going to do what’s right” and ordered his team to stick with the deadline and find a way to make the best of the difficult situation in Kabul.
The Biden administration nimbly adapted its plans, ramping up the airlift and sending additional troops into the country to aid crisis teams and to enhance security. Around-the-clock flights came into and went out of Afghanistan. Giant cargo planes departed, a number of them packed with as many as 600 occupants. Senior administration officials convened regular meetings with U.S. allies to find destinations for those planes to land and places for the refugees to stay. The State Department tracked down Americans in the country, as well as Afghans who had worked with the U.S., to arrange their passage to the airport. The Special Immigrant Visa program that the Trump administration had slowed down was kicked into high gear.
Despite years of fighting, the administration and the military spoke with the Taliban many times to coordinate passage of those seeking to depart to the airport, to mitigate risks as best as possible, to discuss their shared interest in meeting the August 31 deadline.
...The very last chapter of America’s benighted stay in Afghanistan should be seen as one of accomplishment on the part of the military and its civilian leadership. Once again the courage and unique capabilities of the U.S. armed services have been made clear. And, in a stark change from recent years, an American leader has done the hard thing, the right thing: set aside politics and put both America’s interests and values first.
All these victories are provisional as long as we are in a pandemic.
The purpose of social isolation at the start of the pandemic, in March 2020, was to slow the virus' advance, so the hospitals weren't overwhelmed. Preserving the function of hospitals is still the primary goal. Since hospitals are nearly overwhelmed now - witness the recent doctors' strike in Florida - changes will be made. Unvaccinated staff will be canned: everyone has to be committed to the mission and staff that might be harboring virus will be denied entry. Most importantly, coming soon (watch for it), unvaccinated patients will be admitted only on a case-by-case basis. Hospital functionality is still the primary goal. If there are too many unvaccinated patients, they walk the plank first.
Left: The Rite-Aid drive-up window at Stockton and Fruitridge, in Sacramento.
Well, it looks like I may have been exposed to the coronavirus, on Thursday, August 19th. So, on Monday, August 23rd, I put a swab up my nose in the Rite-Aid drive-up window driveway - a self-administered test (which made me sneeze).These folks are slow - it'll be three or four days before I hear back. So, for the moment, I'm trying to mask up more and avoid the public.Personally, I don't think I have coronavirus, but there is no reason to believe I wasn't exposed. Prudence is called for.
