Crazy California Recall Is Getting Deadly Serious
It’s Time to Stop Laughing About the Recall, Vote NO, and Do What You Can to Help Stop This Nightmare from Happening
By Jim Miller
California is the stuff of late-night comedy recently, with the wingnuts’ insane anti-vaccine ranting at the San Diego County Board of Supervisors meeting making us a national laughingstock. And if that was not bad enough, the campaign to recall Governor Gavin Newsom is leading the rest of the country to wonder whether the most progressive state in America will succumb to the bewitching power of the clown car of Republicans being driven by Larry Elder with his pathetic straight man, Kevin Faulconer, former mayor of the place where happy happens.
At this point, it’s pretty clear that no amount of repackaging or craven pandering by Faulconer will be enough for him to either convince Republicans that he is Trumpy enough or Democrats that he is anything other than a disgusting hypocrite who will say whatever to whoever if he thinks it will benefit him.
Thus, Californians who are paying attention are suddenly confronted with the fact that they could wake up on September 15th with a Governor Elder, someone elected with 20% of the vote who is the pure product of the Rightwing talk radio hate-and-bullshit machine.
Back in February, before we even knew that the recall election would qualify for the ballot, I noted in this space that what was most important about the campaign was not the ever-opportunistic-and-consistently-reprehensible front men like Carl DeMaio, but the dark money and even darker forces being energized to support it. The recall was and still is being brought to us by reactionary billionaires, unprincipled education reformers, and some of the most dangerous anti-democratic forces in the country:
[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.
So it goes.
After the recall qualified, it appeared that it would end up being an obscenely expensive joke with Newsom cruising to an easy victory as Covid-19 faded, the state reopened, and the likes of Caitlyn Jenner were unable to move beyond punch-line status. But then, as the Delta variant emerged and the attention of California Democrats waned, the polling showed the contest tightening with all the energy on the right and loads of apathy on the left.
Thus, here in late August, Heather Digby Parton, astutely frames the race in Salon as a potential disaster for American Democracy:
You might think that a Republican pulling this off is impossible since the state is so blue it's downright iridescent. But weird off-year elections like this one are notoriously low turnout and polling right now is showing a serious enthusiasm gap. Republicans in the state are salivating at the chance to pull off an anti-democratic, legal coup in the most liberal state in the country while Democrats either aren't paying attention or see Newsom as "unlikeable." (They really need to wake up and recognize that what's really unlikeable is a Trumpish right-winger in the governor's mansion.) . . .
If Republicans pull this off it will be one more piece of evidence that their anti-democratic strategy is working. If they can seize the reins of power in the heart of blue America by using arcane rules that benefit a minority, they will believe they are unstoppable.
She’s right. It’s time for Democratic California to wake up and not allow the most powerful office in the state to be handed over to a dangerously unqualified demagogue who would blow up our efforts to reign in the pandemic and set us back on everything from climate policy and equity to workers’ rights and criminal justice reform. Name your issue and the outcome would be disastrous.
While it is true that there are some hopeful signs in the early ballot returns that we may avert political catastrophe in California, the overall implications of this recall are bad for American democracy. Over the weekend in the Guardian, Arwa Mahdawi hit the nail on the head:
I’ve got a feeling that, in the end, Newsom will probably cling on to power. But that’s not really something to celebrate either. This recall election is going to end up costing $276m. That may only be five bottles of wine at the French Laundry for the likes of Newsom; but for normal people, it’s a colossal waste of money that is desperately needed for other things. The election is also a depressing reminder that the Republicans are incredibly good at finding sneaky ways to get into power and hold on to it. The power-grab in California is just a small taste of things to come.
There isn’t anything funny about that is there?