I'm wondering if there's a Democrat we can all coalesce around as a replacement. Let the Republicans vote yes on the recall and then split their vote between the various nazis on their end, and we can all vote no on the recall and pick one Democrat as the replacement in case the yes votes win, and then maybe the Democrat winds up with more votes than any of the Republican options.
Oh, Jesus. It's worse than I thought. I took a look at the list of candidates and their statements - you can find the voter guide here: https://vig.cdn.sos.ca.gov/2021/pdf/complete-vig.pdf I think they had to pay by the word for their statements, because some of them are like two words, and some are in caveman talk, because eliminating articles ("a", "the") will save words, at the cost of sounding like a caveman. (Cue the Geico commercial guy showing up and looking disappointed in me.) All of the Republican statements are about how awful California is, and all the Democratic statements are about how they want to turn it into a hippie paradise. Well, more of a hippie paradise. I wish there was one Democrat who showed up and said "Vote no on the recall, but in case it passes, vote for me because I'm just going to keep doing what Newsom was doing." I'd vote for that one.
They pay $25 per word. I was thinking about running with a 1 word statement: "Whatever". The mantra of my generation! Meanwhile ... You know, I kinda can!
I was just reading that. I wonder if that guy was going to argue that "U" is not a word so he doesn't have to pay for it? Anyways, I got my ballot and crossed out all of the Republicans and non-serious candidates (unfortunately including the "Can you dig it?" and "Love U" guys). There's only like five candidates left, and two of them didn't even submit a statement, so they're probably in the non-serious category.
I saw that one. If we wanted a straight up socialist, it's good to know there's one in the field. Maybe we can give Fox News years of content by electing a real socialist instead of the vanilla Democratic stuff that they always claim is socialism.
I don't really like it when Nate Silver gets me, but Nate Silver gets me. It's kind of amazing that no 2nd- or even 3rd-tier Democrat put themselves on the recall ballot in case Newsom loses. Someone threw away a ~30% chance or whatever to be the governor of the world's 6th-largest economy! pic.twitter.com/mhuXknoHg3— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) August 15, 2021
Our next governor could be a 29 year old kid. A YouTube entrepreneur, he is leading in the polls to replace Gavin Newsom. https://www.yahoo.com/news/29-old-youtube-millionaire-leading-194037668.html
Supposedly a centrist who voted for Biden. I dunno, it’s starting to look like picking the least moldy piece of shit from the pile may be the best option if it looks like the yes’s will win out.
I need video of this ... CA Republican gubernatorial candidate John Cox was served a subpoena during tonight’s recall debate in Sacramento with two other candidates looking to replace @Gavinnewsom. Subpoena is related to unpaid political consulting fees from Cox’s unsuccessful gubernatorial bid in 2018— Melody Gutierrez (@MelodyGutierrez) August 18, 2021
Found it ... WATCH: CA Republican gubernatorial candidate in recall served subpoena during debate pic.twitter.com/jUue7ozmTh— Melody Gutierrez (@MelodyGutierrez) August 18, 2021 Not as good as I hoped.
I got my California recall ballot today. I'm voting no on the recall. But since there are exactly zero decent options to vote for as a replacement, I'm thinking of voting for the can you dig it guy.
I ended up voting for that Paffrath guy, but the important thing is to vote no. Dropped my ballot off in one of the convenient local county drop boxes today.
Yep, vote for whichever guy can keep the governor's mansion out of the hands of the Cox/Elder types. The point about Feinstein is REAL.
How long after Elder (for example) is sworn in can HE be recalled? Because as I understand it, the winner isn't going to be anywhere near a majority, which is just a massively anti-democratic outcome. The institutional Democratic party is in a tough spot...obviously the official position has to be "no on recall." But any planning for a yes on recall undermines their primary position. So if they're planning a rerecall, it has to be on the DL.
First of all, I can't see how Newsom can lose. Not unless over half of the democrats decide to turn on him or decide that he is not worth even the effort to mail a ballot. But yeah, the Democrats are in a tough spot. The fact that in a state in which they outnumber Republicans by over 2 to 1 we are even having this conversation - and that even important media outlets like the LA times are even considering the possibility that Newsom might lose and an extremist Libertarian without any political experience like Larry Elder might win - tells you that Democrats in leadership position in the state need to do some self-criticism and rethink their priorities, because in a state that has in recently years been basically a one-party system, blaming the Republicans for all our problems is not going to cut it.
I'm an outsider, but I blame the stupid recall system. There's no doubt in my mind that if we went by popular vote, Trump would have been recalled in 2017. Probably Obama would have been recalled in 2010, based in part upon popularity and in part on the difference in motivation between the two sides. Bush would unquestionably have been recalled post Katrina. Clinton probably would have been recalled about 1994. Bush I, he was never deeply unpopular like his successors, but he never had fans either. So he's hard to predict. And Reagan unquestionably would have been recalled in 1982. Recalling Carter at the depths of his unpopularity would have been weird because it was basically election season at the time. Ford would have been recalled after pardoning Nixon. That's as far back as my guessing goes, but I'll point out that Nixon resigned anyway. Now, I'm only looking at one side of this counterfactual, my best guess as to the number of people who would have voted for and against a recall. I guess it's possible that the actual reality of recalling a president would change how people would vote in a real election with real consequences. My point is that the system is stupid.
And, oh, how the world would be different! As a fellow outsider, I think you would find it hard to find anyone who disagrees with this statement, least of all Governor Newsom.