For what it's worth, I'd recommend that everyone hold off on hot takes about "What the California recall means for ________ ." The recall was the work of idiot Trumpistas, and it failed because California is a very blue state and Republicans had no credible candidates to oppose Gavin Newsom. It has no lessons for normal elections in swing states.
That won't stop anyone, I suppose. But you have been warned.
The lesson may be that next time Republicans need to find a well-known superhero from the entertainment industry (like Arnold, who won in 2003) to replace the Governor. Or maybe just a reality-show superhero like Trump. Maybe they need such candidates for all elections, including the Presidential race of 2024. Remember voters are liking and trusting actual politicians of both parties less and less.
But the reason why Arnold didn’t run before the recall was that he knew it would have been impossible for him to win the Republican primary. And even if he did somehow run far enough into the fever swamps to emerge as the Republican nominee, what he’d need to do would make it impossible for him to win the general election.
There are high profile Republicans in Hollywood but the ones like Adam Sandler who are conservative not crazy know they couldn’t win the primary and the ones like Ted Nugent or Larry Elder are too loopy to even be competitive in a general election.
Caitlyn was right there.
Column-inches, Kevin. There's space on the page to be filled, 800 words here, 500 there. Editors need something to edit, paychecks must be earned...
What California's recall means for__________
The REST of America?
Personal opinion? You guys are a hot mess
Generating recall elections with such a small portion of the voting eligible population? Having suave Dem governors formerly married to Kim Gerbil, an avid Trump supporter.
California is just plain bat shit crazy (with apologies to all the bats out there)
Trump lost California by 5 million votes. Too bad the rest of the country isn’t that crazy.
i long for the days of the upvote
Yes, indeed
Amen, iamr4man
The rest of the country will follow in overdue course
Yeah but the DEMs find ways to lose it seems
We just can't get over how easy it has been to get a recall election started,
THAT is the bat shit crazy part
CA voted for Newsom, good for them, I guess, I clearly don't know enough about him or his leadership. But for a party to express fiscal responsibility the GOP in CA is really not practicing what they have historically preached
As I noted a few weeks earlier, the odds of a Republican being elected to a statewide office in California is about the same as a Democrat's chances in Wyoming.
As a note: Biden carried California by about the same percentage as Trump carried Wyoming. Of course, California is and will remain for decades to come to the largest state in the Union, and Wyoming is in the process of becoming a "rotten borough", but we have to live with curse of our Founding Fathers
The only reason why the GOP has any Congressional seats in California at all is that it is a politically decent state, unlike, say Texas.
Well, the lesson is that we libs need to get a lot smarter about how we rig elections. If we had rigged it at the signature-gathering phase -- if we had just declared that 4 million "Donald Trump Jr" signatures didn't cut it, sorry, no recall for you -- then we could have saved $276 million spent on the rigged election and spent that money on homelessness or other things.
The never ending farce called American elections…
One lesson should be that the Trumpists can suffer major defeats, and Republican politicians should dispense with loyalty to Trump. But this lesson will not be learned for now. Trump is king, and all must follow. We have learned how manipulative a narcissistic sociopath can be. They live by different moral rules, and this leaves others vulnerable to their deceptions and lies.
The dumbest take on the election? We may have a winner.
The GOP got walloped. What people once thought was going to be a close election moved toward a double-digit lead for Newsom in the polls, and the final margin may be about double that. Because people are fed up with the dipshits who make up the Republican Party and all they represent. The GOP lost the cities and lost the suburbs. They lost onetime strongholds like Orange County. They lost about every county where lots of people live except Fresno. The overwhelming majority of people support government taking sensible steps to protect the health and safety of the public during a pandemic. The people of California thoroughly rejected Elder and Trumpism -- which like it or not, is the core of the Republican Party today.
But that's just California, not America, right? One of every 8 Americans lives in the state of California. It's not some piddling state that's an outlier to the country. It's a closer representation of what's going on in this country than any other state.
I'm sure there'll be some stupid takes on the election. But you say there are NO LESSONS at all? That's the stupidest take of all. Go back to posting cat pix, dude. You're out of you league.
Joseph, that is a bit harsh...Kevin Drum is not a clown like Tucker Carlson who is clueless and can only pander to his base, but anyway, KD has a thick skin as he has been blogging for years and can handle barbs thrown his way.
I will say one thing though, yes, you are correct that CA is indeed a state that to this day has the heft to set the tone for a good chunk of the country, and there is nothing wrong with CA leaning into that fact, especially during these unusual times we live in.
Harsh, but based on this post, entirely fair.
Speaking of stupid takes:
"One of every 8 Americans lives in the state of California. It's not some piddling state that's an outlier to the country. It's a closer representation of what's going on in this country than any other state."
So what. Trump lost the popular vote in 2016 but was appointed by the electoral college, the only vote that matters. The Democrats hold the Senate by the thinnest of margins and will certainly lose control in 2022 because what's going on in the country has nothing to do with the Senate majority, by design.
Take your trolling somewhere else, dude. You're out of your league.
Well, historical trends say the Dems will lose the House, but the particular third of the Senate that is on the ballot next year slightly favors them. If Biden’s progressive initiatives aren’t watered down too much by Congress, I am cautiously optimistic about the mid-terms. The GOP will remain a personality cult devoted to a two-time loser; I think that will work against trend for them.
I want to say again that Trump is a two-time LOSER!!
What about all the times he lost at the Emmy Awards?
"The Democrats hold the Senate by the thinnest of margins and will certainly lose control in 2022 because what's going on in the country has nothing to do with the Senate majority, by design."
So impressed you can call an election 14 months into the future when the best pollsters in the country couldn't predict the election on Tuesday with less than a double-digit margin of error. Why do they call thousands of voters when they could have just asked you?
joel-
The DEMs were not supposed to get to 48+2 seats either
That was a surprise. If anything they were supposed to pick up 1 seat
Is this a trend? Who knows?
I went into the last election thinking a DEM president would have his work cut out for him dealing with McConnell. I was right the Dem president DOES have his work cut out for him but the problem is Schumer who didn't expect to be Majority Leader
The GOP got “walloped” in one of the bluest states in the country. Most states are much more conservative. Also, while California accounts for nearly 1/8 of the country’s population, as you point out, its representation in the Senate is a grand total of 2%.
I’d love to think this defeat for MAGA presages a return to normalcy for the United States. But I think Kevin’s quite correct. And I believe Democrats bank on such outcomes in the future at their peril, and the country’s.
there isn't anything that happened tuesday that we didn't know already. you might be correct mathematically that one in eight americans are califorians but that has little to do with elections in other parts of the country. trump and trumpism in fact might be a drag on the party in certain parts of the county — particularly the suburbs — and that may prove to be a factor in '22 but that's been out there well before the recall.
The lesson is the California recall process needs to be overhauled immediately.
A bunch of cranks can get the necessary signatures for a recall with minimal effort and the state is on the hook for nearly $300 million to fund it, easy way for Republicans to bankrupt the state by running recall after recall.
Ideally you'd get rid of it altogether, but if it has to stay make the bar much higher, like orders of magnitude more signatures required. And then make it be if the Governor is recalled the Lt Governor becomes Governor, the dual voting thing with unlimited candidates is absurd.
The law could also be changed to require a super majority.
There are lessons, but there there will be no lessons *learned*.
Well, "lesson" is the entirely wrong word, not that its Kevin's fault, that's what all the major and minor media uses.
I speculate that "lesson" used to mean the difference between polls and reality, in other words, before the election people thought X was going to happen, but after the election when X happens it is a "lesson" with respect to what prior to the election was speculation or estimation. Now there is nothing left to speculate about. Its not like there are small discernable differences between candidates, and a conservative Dem and a liberal Repub might surprise somone.
I have heard various things, including stuff like why be surprised, CA is a blue state.
But at the moment the "lesson" is as follows:
1. The only reason we even wasted money on this was the hard core nut base of Republicans live to pwn libs.
2. Those same Repubs are in some sort of alternative reality where they think a radio talk show host who is an anti-vaxxer and election fraud alleger is going to win in California.
3. The only hope was that CA voters are so apathetic that allowing the clown show which would have followed a Governor Elder would have been something so few of the 66% paid attention to that they would stay home.
Nope, Nope and Nope.
But my god, listening to SoCal NPR you would have thought Larry Elder was sane and that if Newsom lost it would have been some normal election result.
I guess you may have been listening to Larry Mantle. NPR (local and national) is an abomination when covering politics.
Not Mantle, per se, but NPR in general is certainly guilty of taking Republican made up nonsense and acting like its rational.
Was Harry Lime your first choice for moniker?
Second. My first choice for moniker was my name. But that was either blocked or didn't work for some other reason. I'd rather not use a pseudonym if I didn't have to.
Agree 100%
Kevin Faulconer might be a viable Republican candidate in California, but for just how toxic anything Republican has become in California ... and that Larry Elder swooped in and sucked the air out of Faulconer's balloon. That Elder got more than four times more votes than Faulconer tells you where the California GOP remains today.
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One lesson is that the electorate here had no interest in the Republican swill that seems so appealing elsewhere. The Rs thought they could tap into anti-lockdown, anti-mask, anti-vaccine mandate anger and found to their surprise that people here like taking measures to protect their lives and their health. Imagine that.
I noticed radio silence from Loq Qabin Republiqan Nate Silver & SEC football head KKKlay Travis after the recall. Perplexing. America's most renowned epidemiologist & alternative medicine specialist were cocksure about Newsom losing... figured they would just tweet thru the pain of the aberrant result.
The lesson is that CA voters want more taxes, more homelessness, and more crime.
Yeah, I guess the\y want more budget surpluses, less COVID and lower unemployment too.
On the whole I agree with you Kevin but there are some interesting points to be made: (I'll call them points rather than "Takes")
1). It's a disaster for the California GOP. Not only because the two candidates they had that could actually WIN a statewide race had their legs taken out from under them finishing with under 10 percent of the vote but the fact that Elder won 47 percent on Question No. 2 means their voting base either wants him or someone like him as their choice of party nominees for various public offices. In California, that's not good and it means one-party rule will continue for the foreseeable future because the party has become a collection of cranks who are catnip to right-wing media influencers who say the most extreme things to get an audience. But isn't that how this recall got started in the first place? Three old cranks who had a radio show in Fresno? It also shows how idiotic their approach to politics is. They didn't initiate the recall but given that it fell into their laps, they might have wanted to influence the kind of candidate who could win the second questions. Well they didn't and thus Elder took off in the polls and the best candidates they did have both were annihilated. Nice going.
2). Talk-show hosts make bad political candidates. Unless you're Mike Pence in a safe red district or state, parties should not nominate partisan media figures as candidates. It's a little different out there away from your studios and microphones when you're not in control isn't it? Elder spent the last few weeks of the campaign complaining about his media coverage. Hey, welcome to the "Mitch McConnell School of Politics - How to Win Elections when Everyone Despises You" - you make the other candidate so bad you can't possibly vote for them. What this says is that unless the right-wing media's hold over the party is broken (and doesn't look like it will be anytime soon) the party will be held hostage to candidates who say the most extreme things to win a primary but cannot win a general election outside a ruby red state. Caitlyn Jenner was supposed to be the celebrity candidate ala Schwartzenegger and when she showed she wasn't very good at politics, it was Elder who stepped into that void. Yeah, well now the California GOP is stuck with him. Remember, such candidates are not interested in winning so much as they are promoting themselves for a media audience. They're more brands than candidates. Jenner doesn't really need to do that with politics while Elder does. You see the end result.
It should also be noted Jenner sounded like old Mo Udall after lost all those primaries back in '76 (some by very close margins). "The people have spoken - the bastards!"