As liberal pundits continue to pile up the defenses of California Gov. Gavin Newsom ahead of the looming recall, a question needs to be asked: Is it possible that the recall is Newsom’s own fault?
Liberal pundits continue to say that it isn’t. After Paul Krugman’s lackluster defense of Newsom in the New York Times, editorial board member Michelle Cottle penned her own. CNN’s Van Jones says that he is “proud to be working as an unpaid volunteer to help him keep his job.” Both have decided that the recall is not Newsom’s fault.
Cottle, to her limited credit, does slam the “pure idiocy” of Newsom violating his own coronavirus restrictions for the birthday party of a lobbyist at an upscale restaurant. But her piece goes on to lament that the recall process is too easy to initiate because every governor since 1960 has faced a recall petition, and Newsom himself faced five before this successful attempt.
She seems to miss that only two recall petitions have ever reached the ballot in California. How is it that former Gov. George Deukmejian faced 11 recalls yet never saw any of them make the ballot? Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger faced seven recalls as a Republican in the overwhelmingly Democratic state, yet he too never saw one reach the ballot. In short, things have to get pretty awful before a recall election is actually called.
If the problem is, as Cottle asserts, that the signature threshold is too low for recall petitions and governors can be recalled for any reason at all, how is it that only two of the 50 recall efforts against governors since 1960 have been successful in reaching the ballot?
In short, is it at all possible that this is Newsom’s fault?
According to Van Jones, it can’t be. Newsom, Jones says, has “brought heart, smarts, resilience and determination” to the state during the pandemic. This is nothing more than a “thinly disguised ruse to abuse the direct democracy process” in California to “install an extremist governor” who hates that people are vaccinated.
Jones can barely bring himself to mention that Newsom, the epitome of privilege, violated the coronavirus restrictions he had imposed on the rest of the state, all so he could properly celebrate a lobbyist’s birthday. For Jones, that’s just one of “some well-publicized missteps.” Jones later says that Newsom has “owned up to his mistakes” and “shown his humanity.”
Well, perhaps we remember the French Laundry incident a little differently. Newsom’s smug elitism seeped through his faux apology. Newsom was caught thinking that he is above the residents of his own state. That is why the recall took off. It was not backed by some evil cabal of white Republicans but by independents, Latinos, and, yes, even vaccinated Californians.
Newsom did this to himself. Aside from California failing its lower- and middle-class residents, aside from the homelessness and the worst-in-America poverty, aside from the water and energy issues, Newsom invited this recall through his own hypocrisy as he imposed some of the strictest lockdowns in the country on his state’s little people.
Whether he survives the recall or not, no one is more responsible for this than Newsom himself. Don’t indulge anyone’s delusion to the contrary.
