You Oldsome, you Newsome.
Heebie, re: "tepid Newsom sentiment", I'd say that a relevant comparison is the ACA. Remember back when it was passed, and there were lots of people who thought it didn't go far enough? And they were lumped-together with the dead-ender anti-ACA nutjobs, as "ACA opponents" ? I think the same thing is going on here: I doubt anybody who's actually "tepid" about Newsom, is going to vote to recall him: to be tepid about him, is already to be knowledgeable enough to understand that any GrOPer replacement would be infinitely worse.
Elder tipped his hand by launching a website yesterday claiming the recall only failed because it has been proven fraudulent using Benford's law. The fact that he made this claim before there are actually any numbers to analyze will not prevent headlines tomorrow such as "Newsom recall fails in disputed election"
Someone at the Economist hand-drew a trendline over the 538 graph excluding an outlier poll which had recall up 11 points in early August, and it looked more just like a steady increase for Newsom as people figured out how to vote.
It could still be that those polls kicked enough people into panic mode to get more movement in the later polls. But if the trendline was really going up before too, who knows.
Assuming Newsom wins, the interesting thing will be if we manage to effectively reform the recall process. A constitutional amendment for something more democratic - runoff? LG automatically takes the post? incumbent can be in question #2? - but some stealth legislative improvements like increasing signatures, decreasing time to submit them, etc. might also help.
Or you could just toss the whole thing as a failed experiment.
It's probably a little too soon to declare California a failure.
I'm Newsom-tepid, but from the left. I think you're right. Any Democratic CA governor would have had a recall launched against him or her. I'll actually expect them every time now, unless the Leg makes them harder.
Famously, the other factor besides "want some[one/thing] more to the left" was just less engagement or enthusiasm from anyone other than Republicans.
Why have a system where a state with a hugely strong Democratic base has to continually expend resources to fight a minority so small it would be ignored in any state with a Republican majority? It's just wearing out the people who donate and volunteer.
Anyway, I resent his fundraising emails. I got enough problems locally.
It is for sure wearing out the people who volunteer. I know several who put a lot of work into fighting the recall. It noticeably subtracted from their other activism. It was wasteful. I'd like to think that it also taxed the people who put a lot of work into promoting the recall, but maybe that's wishful thinking. The other side's money always seems infinite.
I wonder if deposits for voter initiatives (like the UK model, paid back if they get a certain threshold of votes in the end) would make a difference. Obviously someone wealthy enough wouldn't care, but I think sometimes grassroots groups file initiatives and then wealthy donors will gauge their legs by how many signatures they collect with their own volunteer efforts, so if you make that first step harder that winnows.
(No initiative not using paid signature gatherers has succeeded since I believe 1988.)
13: Pretty sure voters don't hate recalls enough to get rid of them entirely - they hate politicians more. I'd be happy to be proven wrong.
One of these days, I hope a recall will succeed, and a radical left candidate (who would have no hope of getting a majority) wins with like 16% of the vote. Maybe that would discourage Republican recall supporters.
Anyway, I know next to nothing about him, but I didn't know how else to vote on Q2, so I voted for Dan Kapelovitz. He seemed like the only candidate who was not entirely dumb or crazy.
I voted no/Paffrath for reasons I elaborated in a previous thread, hopefully irrelevant. Later I found Jackie McGowan has an okay platform.
We've had a lot of recall activity up here too recently, on both sides. There was a campaign to recall the governor that was gaining a lot of steam up until COVID came and they were no longer able to gather signatures; they recently gave up the effort when it got to the point when they would need to disclose more information on donors and they still didn't have enough signatures. (It's also getting pretty close to when he's up for reelection anyway, and the recall effort did succeed in moderating his crazy governance a little so there's that.)
Locally, the right has been going hard at recalling members of the Anchorage Assembly (city council equivalent). The real reason is frustration over COVID restrictions, but the ostensible reason that they've been able to get two recalls on the ballot is, hilariously, that the Assembly members permitted a meeting to continue when it may have had more people present in person than allowed under the COVID restrictions in place at the time. One recall went to the ballot in April and failed; the other is up in late October.
Alaska has much more stringent recall rules than California; signature requirements are fairly steep, and recalls can only be for cause, which means they usually go through the courts at some point.
17.2: How does a meeting error lead to recall? Was it just political fodder, or do you mean in some technical way?
Anyone can make an error in a meeting.
How does a meeting error lead to recall? Was it just political fodder, or do you mean in some technical way?
Both? Again, recalls in Alaska can only be for cause, which in practice means that a court needs to find that the stated grounds for recall in the petition, if true, would constitute misconduct on the part of the official in question egregious enough to justify removing them from office. In this case, the emergency measures under which the city was operating at the time included a restriction that in-person gatherings not exceed some number of people. The Assembly therefore restricted in-person attendance at Assembly meetings to that number and livestreamed the meetings to meet public transparency/open meeting requirements. At one point during one of these meetings someone suggested that there might be too many people physically in the room to comply with the standard, but instead of stopping the meeting to count and kick people out if necessary, the Assembly chair just continued the meeting. A court found that to be sufficient grounds for recall of the chair and one other member.
The irony being that the recall sponsors of course opposed the limit on the size of in-person gatherings along with all other COVID restrictions, and that was the real reason they wanted to recall the Assembly members.
Interesting. I knew several states require a reason for recall, but I didn't realize that included a judge agreeing it checks out.
It's not a formal requirement, but anybody who gets a recall petition launched against them is of course going to sue to try to stop it, so in practice it always happens.
The court is not allowed to judge the accuracy of the grounds for recall, btw. That's for the voters to decide. The court just determines if the alleged action(s), if true, would meet the legal standard for egregious misconduct.
There is a required review of the grounds for recall by the official in charge of elections at the relevant level (municipal clerk at the local level, lieutenant governor at the state level), who often finds the grounds insufficient. Then the recall proponents sue and it goes to the courts.
Thank god there's no reason to recall Abbott.
would dearly love to eliminate direct democracy from the cal constitution, but at a minimum we desperately need to universally ban paid signature gathering.
So if they alleged an official to be trafficking children disguised as furniture shipments, they would have to evaluate that allegation as true for that purpose?
I suppose there might be some value in forcing recall proponents to state their reasons and keep them consistently disclosed. Like how the AG writes a summary of ballot initiatives that they have to put up front when signature gathering.
just. prohibit. them. from. using. paid. signature. gatherers.
done & dusted.
Either they've gotten better over time or California does it better, but the paid people did such a bad job for Nader here in 2004 that they got stuck for the Democrats legal fees.
Though I would bet they weren't ever able to collect on that.
29.1: There's probably some minimum threshold of plausibility they apply, so something made up completely from whole cloth with no evidence wouldn't fly. I'm not sure of the exact standard.
The unions would never allow the banning of paid signature gatherers unless they got an exemption for their own people. Which IIRC they did get in a bill the legislature passed at least once (exemption for people on staff as opposed to paid per signature), but I think the governor vetoed it.
Aha: it is illegal per SCOTUS to ban the practice of paid signature gathering altogether, but most appeals courts except the Sixth have upheld bans on paying gatherers per signature. The Legislature passed such bans in 2011 and 2018, but Brown vetoed them both times. His veto message both times said "Eliminating this option will drive up the cost of circulating ballot measures, thereby further favoring the wealthiest interests."
In 2019 they sent another to Newsom, who vetoed with a similar statement: "I believe this measure could make the qualification of many initiatives cost-prohibitive... I am a strong supporter of California's system of direct democracy and am reluctant to sign any bill that erects barriers to citizen participation in the electoral process."
Another such bill, SB 660, was presented to Newsom for signature literally yesterday. It dispenses with a provision in the 2019 bill that further required 10% of signatures be collected by volunteers or nonprofit employees. It'll be interesting to see if his position changes.
Our local preliminary election is going OK. It's not totally clear which of the reasonable candidates have proceeded to the general election, but the terrible candidates have definitively lost.
I'm not a fan of dumping more unpaid labor on campaign volunteers.
Kasie Hunt goes the full Cillizza.
CA GOV BIG PICTURE: One of the top Democrats in the country got caught living like an elite while everyone else suffered. Elites vs. the rest is the driving force in our politics right now and Democrats have a tough needle to thread both in California & nationwide ...
Democrats need to prove they can govern for EVERYBODY...
Posted at 11:08 so I guess after early results revealed the outcome.
Also see Elites, Self-Loathing.
The stimulus plus unemployment bonus appear to be the most effective boost in wages for the lower quartile since at least WW2 and nobody notices except if the Burger King has too long of a line.
39: if this is in response to my comments - in cal signature gathering has zilch to do with regular elections. it only is required to voter-qualify a referendum, an initiative or a recall for the ballot. for decades it has been impossible to qualify a ballot measure without paid signature gathering, making direct democracy an exclusively pay-to-play phenomenon and allowing e.g. the mormons to swan in, dump a load of $$$ and get a repulsive measure on the ballot.
also the signature gathering industry is gross, hugely exploitative of their workforce.
also also imo the possibility that e.g. the death penalty might someday be gotten rid of via ballot measure creates an out for dem pols who should just suck it up and do the right thing.
In Nebraska, the Unicameral voted out the death penalty. The governor started a successful petition drive to reinstate it, funded by his parents.
Some rich parents just buy their kids a Subway franchise, not a governorship.
39: When I was a young person, I spent some time talking to aging civil rights leaders in Memphis about race relations and political organizing in the context of the mayoral election. This was three-plus decades ago -- and the folks I spoke to were decades past their organizing heyday. They fondly remembered the days of political action by volunteers. By the late 80s, they told me, you couldn't get people to work without paying them.
I don't know what the answer is. Regular folks have less money to donate, but they also have less time to donate. I increasingly suspect the correct answer is, "We're screwed."
The paid organizers for Biden seemed like nice young people. Very patient with the often elderly volunteers.
And by "elderly", I mean "very tedious and slightly condescending. "
By the late 80s, they told me, you couldn't get people to work without paying them. I don't know what the answer is. Regular folks have less money to donate, but they also have less time to donate.
I think the rent-to-minimum-wage ratio has a lot to do with how much volunteering goes on.
Now that the results are in, I have two thoughts:
1. It wasn't wrong to be worried about the outcome, because how the fuck could we know
2. Although it may have been lucky and/or piggybacked on other strengths, the result is still technically a tick in the box for Newsom's "there is no question #2" messaging.
And this is a good reminder that Newsom actively campaigned on masks and vaccine mandates!
I'm just generally worried about everything.
I remember in the old days, crustie punx would travel to Michigan in the summer, as there was usually a bunch of work as a paid picketer for the UAW and whatnot. I don't know if that was still a thing prepan.
I don't suppose any non-MN people are following the anti-police measure news, but I remain really pessimistic. It seems like the pro-cop side has been putting a lot of money and lawyer time into their response, while the city flails about miserably.
Pretty sure Frey is out no matter what, so that's some compensation.
I don't suppose any non-MN people are following the anti-police measure news, but I remain really pessimistic. It seems like the pro-cop side has been putting a lot of money and lawyer time into their response, while the city flails about miserably.
Pretty sure Frey is out no matter what, so that's some compensation.
54: Is there even going to be a ballot measure?
Right, that's what I mean, we may not even get to vote because lawyers.
I'm tempted to say something like "boy, it sure is a relief that a Democrat can still win statewide office in California," but this place is depressing enough as it is, so I won't. (Except I did. Whoops.)
45-49: I'm sure money and time are parts of it, but I think the "bowling alone" thing is also part of the problem. Civic participation of all types is down throughout America (the world?), not just in liberal grassroots politics.
They closed the bowling alley by me, because of the loneliness.
Sorry, 61 to 47. I see I am becoming slow on the draw.
Preemptively: hopefully this tells us that if Elder comes in #2 in the gubernatorial primary next March, we can stop paying attention to that particular race. (Turnout will be fine, there will be ballot measures and other races to vote on.)
51: That's my bright lining; as people get more and more resentful of those resisting vaccines, I have hope that Newsome and democrats generally running on "we didn't encourage you to die for the good of the economy" will be boosted.
I was just so excited the Millennials killed golf, I wanted to kill something.
65" Although I think it is closer to "encouraging you to die so the economy doesn't recover as well as it could before the midterms."
That was the 2021 push. The 2020 push was go die so the economy improves just a bit before the election.
Full steam ahead on reforming recalls.
Meanwhile, the Republicans are going to pursue a religious exemption for "employees must wash hands" rules in food service.
I still keep wondering if enough vaccine deniers will die to make an electoral difference. Not through changing minds, but by attrition.
I suppose that's ghoulish.
23 I litigated one of these last year. Represented the lead petitioner in the suit brought by the elected official to declare the petition defective as to the justification. Montana law makes recalls pretty tough unless you really have something, and can state a claim within the word limit. California should send a delegation to visit us.
We won the lawsuit but the recall failed. The elected official went a little off the deep end sneakily using public funds to pay his attorney fees -- he was caught and reimbursed with his covid money -- and other stuff. So, while he's still in office, I think he's not running for re-election.
71: Charles Gaba ran the ghoulish numbers and found probably not.
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The Pachucos who Eve Babitz describes were also Californians (that chapter is both really well written and I thought interesting for its anachronism. ) There are apparently Pachuco reenactors.
I enjoyed this dance video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LiGnmwDElA )picks up when the movers come in at 0:44)
Also some dancing in this one, which is informative. Spanish. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQg5NafDuC0
Pick up the book to gab about it later if you're at all interested, she's alternately interesting, infuriating, and stylish.
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I suppose that's ghoulish.
Anyone who claims not to have had this thought is lying.
I feel like I should still stop reading the Herman Cain Awards.
I do not think the valuable analysis in 73 answers the question.
What would be necessary to know is differential death rates between R and D in swing counties. Using county-level death rates to get at that won't help I think, they are pooled the wrong way and include confounding variables, at least population density. Looking at proxy variables, age-stratified or (education+race)-stratified death rates (either nationwide means or ideally structured by population density) might do that though. I'd be interested in the answer, but can't look for such data today.
I'll posit a mechanism to build on 78: Remember when Nebraskans were kinda pro-Obama in 2008, because race wasn't yet as salient to them? In swing districts, deplorables are going to be EXTRA heightened to pwning the libs and Herman-caining themselves.
In what way were Nebraskans pro-Obama? He won the caucuses, but that was a tiny number of people. He lost the state in November by 15 points.
I think that was the only time my sister ever went to a caucus.