Replacing Gov. Gavin Newsom with Larry Elder Really Can Happen
Remember how you felt when Trump won?
Californians should be worried about feeling that way again. Yep. We could have a Republican beholden to his party’s most extreme elements running the state’s executive branch come September 15.
The Golden State can be the ultimate testing ground for the GOP’s return to using race as the fulcrum to overcome their credibility and/or registration disadvantage. Who needs the Big Lie when you can say the lefties are poisoning our children by talking about racism?
And get this-- the way I see it, they’re gonna use a Black guy to do it. Read on to see where I’m going with this thought.
****
As election dates and primaries around the country have come and gone, coastal California activists have used the privilege they have of living in a place not threatened by Trumpies to send postcards and texts to voters in other states where turnout was critical.
Now we’re the ones under the gun. The once-ridiculous notion that a bunch of right wingers could put together a campaign to dump Gov. Gavin Newsom is seriously close to happening.
You might think, with 88% of the eligible voters in California registered (as opposed to 73% a decade ago), and nearly twice as many voters saying they’re Democrats than Republicans, that dumping the governor would be a big lift. Sadly that’s not the case.
Why? Because Democrats and left-leaning independents are not taking the recall seriously. Republicans and their allies are evidencing real enthusiasm.
The latest Berkeley IGS polling shows 35% of registered Democrats with little to no interest in the recall effort and 8% of Republicans not really caring. Republicans with moderate to strong interest total 91% of their registered voters; 64% of Democrats say they’re interested. (Numbers don’t add up due to rounding)
The survey released Tuesday showed that while Republicans account for just a fourth of registered voters in California, they make up a third of the likely voters in the race. Meanwhile, Democrats make up 46 percent of the state’s voters, though only 42 percent of Democratic voters said they are likely to cast ballots in September.
Looking at the totality of likely voters, Newsom’s survival comes at the edge of the margin of error, 50-47%. A robust GOP turnout (likely to happen, because they’re not going to win any other statewide contests in the near future) would easily make the difference.
Combine this potential motivation with the right’s campaign of vaxxed victimhood, the fear of defunding police, along with outrage over a political theory they don’t understand and I’d be mighty encouraged if I was a Republican.
Making things even scarier is the reality that Republicans have a near-celebrity on the ballot--not Trump, but nasty anyway-- in talk show host Larry Elder. Although new to the contest, Elder has a six point lead over John H Cox, with San Diego’s former mayor in third place.
Elder has already blown past everybody but former Mayor Kevin Faulconer (favorite of the GOP’s monied old guard) in terms of donor support in just a couple of weeks. John Cox’s bear and garbage tour, funded with $5 million of his own money, is sitting by the side of the road waiting for a tow truck.
Remember, a candidate does not need a majority to win in a recall contest. If the election were held today--assuming Newsom was to be recalled-- Elder would win with as little as 35% of the vote.
Governor Larry Elder. Those words should make Californians very uncomfortable. While Democrats may control the legislature, a great deal of power is delegated to the chief of the executive branch.
“I’ve got the power to declare a statewide emergency [if elected governor],” Elder said on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Sunday with host Joel Pollak. “I can do that on crime. I can do that on homelessness. I can do that on education. I have the veto power … [and] also have a line item veto, and I have the power to appoint people to these various commissions that are shoving down all these rules and regulations down the throats of the American people.”
Labor leaning Democrats have seized on Elder’s pronouncement that the minimum wage should be zero; “individual businesses should decide what wages to pay their worker.”
That’s just the tip of Elder’s libertarian beliefs. The conservative talk show is running on the most radical school-choice platform of the four; he says if elected he would declare a state of emergency for California’s public schools and fire the state’s 15,000 “worst” teachers.
He is promising to suspend the California Environmental Quality Act, which he says is being used by environmental extremists to hike up the costs of California’s housing.
However, Elder’s brand as a talk show host, and what gained him a young Stephen Miller as a fan, is flipping the subject of racism from a systemic problem to being an individual problem. His machine-gun fast lectures about the inadequacies of existing as a minority start with blaming liberals for the status quo and end with stories reinforcing stereotypes.
His favorite go-to in this regard is the myth of the “absent Black father.” What they all add up to is a “feel good” experience for white listeners because they think they’re absolved from the consequences of a racist society.
Over the past fifty years, the GOP’s chosen strategy to rile up voters has been used repeatedly: strategic racism. Coded language about crime and encouraging the perception that white grievance voters are having their heritage “taken away” are the tactics, now reinforced with the notion that something called Critical Race Theory is fomenting division.
Here’s a snip from the Dear Leader’s speech at the recent Censervative Political Action Conference:
These people are sick. We will completely defund and bar critical race theory…That’s all they talk about. Race. The whole show. race, race. We don’t talk about our country being great anymore. We don’t talk about how America can lead the world. We don’t talk about stopping crime or the hundreds and hundreds of people that are being shot in Democrat-run cities. We don’t talk about ending the drugs pouring across our borders…The Democrat obsession with race is only dragging us backward into the past, and it is bringing our country down
Having Larry Elder deliver a slightly repackaged version of the above gives Republicans all the benefits of white grievance without the toxicity (to independent voters) of the Trump brand.
https://twitter.com/DineshDSouza/status/1419336620222914567?s=20
***
Ballots will be arriving for every California voter in about three weeks. The decision not to toss them into the recycle bin or put off mailing it back (for free!) can make all the difference in the world.
When your mail-in ballot arrives, what you must do is really simple. Despite the ballot looking impressively large, there are no hard choices about propositions or down ballot candidates you’ve never heard of.
There are two questions, and you only need to answer one.
Question #1 asks if you think Gov. Gavin Newsom should be recalled. That should be a hard NO, even if you think he’s a corporate Democrat or worse.
Question #2 asks you to pick who you’d like to take his place from a long list consisting mostly of people you’ve never heard of and/or are losers. YOU CAN SKIP THIS ONE.
***
If you want to do more than just vote, there are phone banking and texting opportunities via the local Democratic Party.
Saturdays until election week there’s virtual phone banking event with the SD County Dem party: Sign up mobilize.us/sandiegodems
You can text voters at your convenience http://bit.ly/recalltexting
Don't worry if you've never done that before. When you sign up there is virtual training with a little quiz to make sure you're ready.
Hey folks! Be sure to like/follow Words & Deeds on Facebook. If you’d like to have each post emailed to you check out the simple subscription form on the right side of the front page.
Email me at WritetoDougPorter@Gmail.com