California Crazy: Fear, Loathing, Covid-19, and the Campaign to Recall Governor Newsom
...it seems difficult for some otherwise reasonable folks to grok that we really are in a moment of rightwing assault on democracy.
By Jim Miller
In the national epidemic of crazy, California is well-represented. Here in the Golden State, the worst are full of passionate intensity, as the famous Yeats poem says, while the best lack all conviction.
Recently the Los Angeles Times editorial page chided the California Democratic Party for attacking the campaign to recall Governor Newsom as the product of right-wing forces declaring that the “Recall is not a ‘coup’ and certainly no joke.”
But then a funny thing happened in a subsequent edition of that very paper when the Times’ own journalists got to work and uncovered an embarrassing truth:
[A] Times investigation found that recall campaign leaders, seeking to capitalize on the darkening public mood, allied with radical and extreme elements early on to help collect signatures. Those included groups promoting distrust of government, science and medicine; peddlers of QAnon doomsday conspiracies; "patriots" readying for battle and one organization allied with the far-right extremist group, the Proud Boys.
A few days after that investigative reporting from the LA Times, the Washington Post revealed that one of the Newsom-hating, anti-mask, re-open zealots in California was indeed part of a “coup,” this one at the Capitol:
In May, after California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) ordered nonessential businesses to close as coronavirus cases spiked, Jacob Lewis refused to keep his Victorville, Calif., gym closed. The gym owner, who became a local face of the anti-coronavirus restriction movement, said he was reopening, and openly defying the state’s orders to protect his customers’ mental health and personal freedom . . . Now, he’s facing felony charges for allegedly storming the U.S. Capitol in the deadly attempted insurrection earlier this month.
Of course, there are still those Newsom critics in favor of his recall who will cry foul and claim that they are not part of the radical right. The Governor, they say, is horrible because of the harm his shutdown orders have done to California’s small businesses and workers.
The only problem with this argument is that they have got it backwards. As another analysis published in the Washington Post in recent days documented:
The coronavirus pandemic has killed more than 416,000 Americans and recently pulled the U.S. economic recovery into reverse. Some states have shut down again to get a handle on surging caseloads. And critics have blamed those states’ governors, typically Democrats, for job losses.
But pandemic-related economic research shows the shutdowns aren’t killing jobs; the virus is.
In the first outbreaks last spring, people stayed home to avoid contracting the deadly novel coronavirus, regardless of what their governor said.
Thus, the research shows what thinking people have known all along: you can’t bring the economy back to full speed until you contain the pandemic--end of story. As our very recent past clearly illustrates, if you open up before Covid-19 is contained, it will have precisely the opposite effect of what proponents of business want. Nonetheless, the insanity persists.
That’s why Newsom’s recent decision to partially reopen based on “projections” of decreased Covid-19 caseloads despite the rise of a host of new variants is so dismaying. Last week, Michael Smolens in the San Diego Union-Tribune called this latest move by the Governor “Newsom’s Risky Covid Shuffle,” noting how his previous premature re-opening in the summer led to a spike in infections when the numbers were far lower than they are now.
I would go further and call Newsom’s pivot to partial reopening a transparent exhibit of political cowardice in response to the recall. And, in this case, blinking in the face of this political threat may very well result in a significant amount of unnecessary suffering and death while alienating many of his allies.
What would have been a better course? Standing up to the political pressure and doing the right thing, recall be damned. Help small businesses by delivering more aid to save them from financial ruin and make sure that all essential workers stay in the front of the line for vaccines rather than doing the crazy Covid-19 shuffle and pleasing no one.
Newsom might also have pointed to the recent news that Trump administration officials actively lobbied to deny states the funding for their vaccine rollouts last fall and then pleaded for patience while the Biden Administration cleans up the mess they were left, sends more Federal aid, and speeds vaccine production in the weeks to come.
But, alas, that’s not the world we’re living in.
On the political front, some people I have spoken to with their ear to the ground in Sacramento are skeptical that the recall forces have enough money to get the signatures. Others, like recall scholar Joshua Spivak, think it has a good chance of making it to the ballot but a bad chance of succeeding.
For those on the left who I’ve seen pining for a recall of Newsom so they could get a more progressive Governor, I recommend asking Cruz Bustamante how that worked out in the last recall election.
That said, I have a hard time seeing the state of California rallying to elect Kevin Faulconer when recent polling shows him with only a 2-percentage point lead over Newsom in the city where he just served as mayor.
Indeed, I could craft the attack ad now featuring the Union-Tribune editorial page’s C- grade for Faulconer’s legacy. And with Republican registration down to historic lows statewide, it’s hard to imagine John Cox or any other GOP figure rising to the challenge in the wake of the Trump nightmare.
Even the entry into the fray of Silicon Valley billionaire Democrat Chamath Palihapitiya seems little more than a vanity trip that might help fund a recall but not unseat the Governor.
Thus, it’s all the more disappointing to watch Governor Newsom twisting in the wind again. From the first premature reopen to the French Laundry debacle, to this most recent erratic plan, he can be his own worst enemy. But putting the state through a ridiculous circus sideshow of a recall in the midst of a pandemic is about as awful an idea as one could devise.
Whatever most Californians think of Newsom at this stage in his governorship, rewarding a campaign principally driven by folks like Carl DeMaio and a fringe cast of whack jobs would be a national embarrassment.
As opposed to the LA Times editorial board, I think it is fair of Democrats to compare this recall effort to the coup in the Capitol. It’s driven by some of the same nasty impulses on the far right and some of the same dark money.
Surprisingly, at present, it seems difficult for some otherwise reasonable folks to grok that we really are in a moment of rightwing assault on democracy. But that doesn’t make it any less true.
Many of the people I’ve seen here in San Diego pushing recall petitions are aggressively anti-mask and anti-science as evidenced by their homemade signs, some of which compare public health measures to fascism. A similar crew showed up in Los Angeles last Saturday where they temporarily shut down a vaccination center at Dodger Stadium as the LA Times reported:
A post on social media described the demonstration as the “Scamdemic Protest/March.” It advised participants to “please refrain from wearing Trump/MAGA attire as we want our statement to resonate with the sheeple. No flags but informational signs only.”
“This is a sharing information protest and march against everything COVID, Vaccine, PCR Tests, Lockdowns, Masks, Fauci, Gates, Newsom, China, digital tracking, etc.”
This attempt to deny a life-saving vaccine to the public is simply an escalation building on other actions taken by a coalition of MAGA misfit toys in Los Angeles and elsewhere where they have stormed grocery stores and malls decrying “Mask Nazis” and started altercations with other shoppers who were obeying public health guidelines. Because, you know, “freedom.”
But of course, it’s not the masked citizens who are the fascists but the unmasked brown shirts as we saw in the case of militant Trump supporter Ian Benjamin Rogers who, when he was arrested for plotting to bomb Newsom’s Sacramento office along with those of Twitter and Facebook, was found to be the proud possessor of a Nazi flag and 49 firearms.
His distaste for social media companies and accompanying hatred of Governor Newsom had pushed him to take extreme measures. As CNBC reported last week, Rogers was fed up with Democrats:
“I want to blow up a democratic building so bad,” the man, Ian Benjamin Rogers of Napa County, wrote in a text message detailed in a criminal complaint filed in federal court for the Northern District of California. The complaint described a large array of firearms, ammunition, bomb-making equipment and warfare manuals found in his possession.
“The democrats need to pay,” wrote Rogers, a married father of two, who owns British Auto Repair of the Napa Valley.
In another text message, Rogers said he was “thinking sac office first target,” which an FBI agent said is suspected of being the Sacramento office of California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
“Then maybe bird and face offices,” the 44-year-old wrote, according to the complaint.
“Sad it’s come to this but I’m not going down without a fight ... These commies need to be told what’s up.”
It’s hard to know what to say about this news. Perhaps Mr. Rogers was simply too impatient or distrustful to help gather signatures.
Lead image: Screengrab from CBS8 coverage