Newsom Recall Update

The puzzling thing about the California recall election, scheduled for September 14, is how few polls have been made public. According to Five Thirty Eight, there have been only three since July, none well publicized, and they're all over the landscape. Yet establishment media seems to be prepping its audience for Newsom's removal. The Atlantic ran a story yesterday in which the reporter met with Newsom for breakfast in a San Francisco cafe:

At the café, he quickly ate a banana and slurped the top of his coffee. He’d dropped his breakfast on the floor before I arrived. More bad luck, he said.

“I was always that lucky one, too,” he said, shaking his head. “Just the whole damn thing flipped on me.”

How did things go sideways for a governor who three years ago won his first term by the biggest margin in California history?

Yahoo News reported Thursday:

Every California governor since Ronald Reagan in the 1960s has inspired quixotic recall petitions. Prior to February 2020, Newsom’s opponents introduced five recall petitions against him. None got off the ground. It was only when COVID-19 started to spike over the holidays — and when Newsom seemed to be caught off guard by contradictory public opinion over restrictions and reopenings — that the recallers were able to amass the signatures they needed to get on the ballot. Not helping matters was Newsom’s deeply hypocritical decision to attend a lobbyist’s maskless birthday dinner at the French Laundry, a fancy Napa Valley restaurant.

There's increasing concern that as California goes, so goes Biden, especially in the wake of the Afghanistan catastrophe. According to CNN,

The White House announced this week that President Biden will fly to California to campaign for Gov. Gavin Newsom ahead of the September 14 recall election.

Which raises a basic question: Why?

. . . there's really only one answer to that question above as to why Biden is making the trip for Newsom: The President -- and Democratic strategists more generally -- are worried about the governor losing the recall vote.

Vice President Harris, a product of the California Democrat machine, was scheduled to campaign for Newsom in the San Francisco area yesterday, but she canceled. According to Politico,

Harris, returning from a weeklong trip in Southeast Asia, will head back to Washington D.C., her spokesperson tweeted Thursday afternoon. A campaign spokesperson for Newsom confirmed that Harris will not join Newsom for the Friday car rally, which is now canceled.

While no reason was provided for Harris skipping the event, the cancellation follows deadly attacks at the Kabul airport which have killed a dozen U.S. troops and left many more injured.

Not mentioned in any mainstream media coverage I've seen so far is the fact that Harris is deeply unpopular and a divisive figure, and her presence in California could do more to stoke Republican enthusiasm for the recall than it would rally Democrats. Especially in the wake of Biden's disastrous week, should he do as he's promised and campaign for Newsom, the backlash effect would probably be even greater, especially since Newsom and the Democrats' campaign theme to date has been that retaining Newsom means retaining the Biden-Pelosi agenda.

As I've noted before, Larry Elder's entry into the race transformed it. Before then, the Republican challengers were a bunch of also-rans, with a supporting cast of 40-odd crazies. But Elder represents much more closely the other side of the emerging political divide, the representative of the working and middle classes against the alliance between the wealthy elites and the Lumpenproletariat. That Elder is a racial minority further underscores the class, not the racial, basis of the divide.

Opinion among Hispanics, who are largely working and middle class, reflects this development:

Today, Hispanics in the Emerson poll support recalling the governor by 54 percent to 41 percent. In the SurveyUSA poll, the recall wins among Hispanics by six points. Among blacks and Asians in both polls, Newsom, leads but he’s down significantly from his 2018 showing.

I can't call the election at this point, but it's a portent that the establishment media seems so resigned to the potential outcome.