HOW TO LOSE – OVERNIGHT:  The people of California will vote this week on whether to retain Gavin Newsom as governor, or recall him.  There will be two questions on the ballot.  The first asks voters whether the governor should be recalled.  If the vote is no, the contest is over.   If the vote is yes, voters will go on to the second question, choosing the next governor from a list of those Republicans and others running.  Frankly, it doesn't look very good for our side, which is a major disappointment.  From The Hill: 

California voters appear poised to deliver a solid endorsement of Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) as opposition to the recall election mounts and Democratic voters return ballots at a rapid pace.

A new survey conducted by the University of California-Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies for the Los Angeles Times shows 60 percent of California voters would reject the recall, while just 39 percent say they will support removing Newsom from office.

Those results show a substantial change from late July, when just 50 percent said they would vote to retain Newsom and 47 percent said they would vote to oust him a year before his term expires.

It is the latest in a series of polls that show opposition to the recall growing in the closing weeks as Newsom and his allies blanket the airwaves and mount a furious get-out-the-vote effort.

Polls released in recent weeks by SurveyUSA and the Public Policy institute of California both show opposition to the recall expanding over previous surveys from the same firms. New polls from Suffolk University and YouGov, the first time those firms have sampled California voters, also show Newsom surviving the recall by wide margins.

Pollsters, and both Democratic and Republican strategists, say the landscape in California has changed with the emergence of conservative radio host Larry Elder as the most prominent Republican challenging Newsom. Newsom’s campaign has focused on Elder’s opposition to mask mandates and vaccine mandates and tied him to former President Donald Trump, who lost California by a huge margin.

 “In the early going it was probably more about whether they liked Newsom or not. It was personalized,” Berkeley pollster Mark Di Camillo told the Los Angeles Times. Making Elder the face of the opposition, he said, “changed the whole dynamic of the vote.”

Elder remains the favored candidate of voters who will choose a candidate to replace Newsom, the second question on a two-part ballot. Just over a third, 38 percent, said they would back Elder; 10 percent said they would favor Kevin Paffrath, a Democrat who dispenses financial advice on YouTube and the only other candidate to top double digits.

COMMENT:  A classic variation on the old adage that you can't beat somebody with nobody.  Newsom has done an awful job.  He has the intellectual maturity of a 12-year-old.  California is a mess.  As the story notes, Californians were heading toward a position where removing the governor looked quite possible.  But if you're going to recall a governor, you'd better have a high-profile, magnetic candidate to replace him.  Larry Elder is a nice guy, and a good talk-show host, but he doesn't fit the picture of a man riding in on a white horse to save the state.  Apparently, most Californians feel they'd rather stay with what they have.   The devil they know.

This is a great opportunity lost.  If California could be flipped, it would be the political story of the year, maybe even the decade.  But Republicans in California, like Republicans in New York, have gotten used to losing.  They're comfy with  it.  Not much fight in those veins.

We have to do better, and not assume that the 2022 midterms are in the bag.  Democrats fight back, and they have the media with them.   We should accept that it will be very tough to return both houses of Congress to the Republican column, and fight accordingly.  It can be done.

September 10,  2021