There will certainly be lessons to learn from the California recall once the state’s notoriously slow ballot counting determines a winner. But the idea that fortune favors Democrats if Gov. Gavin Newsom manages to hang on is just silly.
Andrew Romano has made this assertion at Yahoo News — that Newsom’s win will be a vindication of California’s approach to COVID-19 when compared to that of Florida. Voters’ failure to throw Newsom out of office “could have national implications for both Democrats and Republicans heading into the 2022 midterm elections,” Romano writes.
That is certainly wishful thinking.
In a state where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans 2 to 1, Newsom was always the favorite to win. The reason the recall was newsworthy was precisely that, for a time, it looked like recall supporters could defy political gravity and remove the Democratic governor of one of the most Democratic states in the country.
Newsom won his 2018 election in a landslide. The last three gubernatorial elections have seen Democrats increase their share of the vote. The takeaway is not that if Newsom wins, then Democrats can collect victories in 2022 by following his strategy. The takeaway will be that California is still a blue state, and Newsom rode the delta variant surge to victory (mind you, without the heavy lockdowns he had imposed, which inspired the recall) in a state predisposed to electing Democrats.
This is not to say Democrats cannot win. But many things are going badly for them right now. President Joe Biden’s approval on COVID-19, once the crutch of his administration, has fallen drastically. As CNN’s Harry Enten noted at the end of August, “Biden’s approval rating on the coronavirus had consistently been in the 60s for the first six months of his presidency. That declined to the high 50s in July and has been sunk to the 50s in the month of August.”
According to a Gallup survey released last week, Biden is underwater on COVID-19 for the first time in his presidency. This doesn’t change just because Democrats win an election in a state where they always win. Surviving an election you should win easily isn’t an accomplishment, and it definitely isn’t a strategy for winning elsewhere.
