Why He's in Trouble Is Why It Won't Matter

Via RealClear Politics is a lengthy but cogent analysis of dynamics pertinent to California's upcoming recall election. Here is the paragraph that best sums things up, in my opinion:

Image by Jon Tyson, via Unsplash, license.

... Business owners -- merchants, restaurant owners, contractors, salon owners -- they're furious at Newsom for what they considered nonsensical and random shutdown measures, a fury that peaked during the winter shutdown when the state was grappling with a second wave of coronavirus.

These are all reasons why Schwarznegger was right in another sense. He told Politico that the election wouldn't just be about two political parties, Republicans versus Democrats, each side marshaling their voters to the polls. "It had nothing to do then -- and it has nothing to do today -- with either party," Schwarzenegger said. "People are dissatisfied. [The recall is] the people's way of kind of letting off some steam, and then they decide: Do we want to follow through, or not follow through?" Indeed, for many voters on the wrong side of government's failures, real or perceived, the recall simply represents the first big opportunity of 2021 to say "fuck you" to a Person In Charge. That person happens to be Gavin Newsom, and he's in real trouble. [bold added]

Indeed.

Two of the most prominent themes in the news about the recall that have struck me have been voter dissatisfaction, largely with things that government does today that are actually outside its scope -- and Newsom's hypocrisy.

While hypocrisy is a serious charge, it is usually more important to ask why someone is making it. In today's political climate, those reasons are almost always bad ones: Someone has been caught preaching a Bad Idea by (1) someone who supports the Bad Idea and wants it put into political practice good and hard; or (2) someone who is afraid to oppose the Bad Idea, but is relieved he can call a political opponent a hypocrite; or (3) someone who wants to bring down a political opponent any way he can so someone else can turn right around and do basically the same thing.

So, for example, were Newsom's ruinous lockdowns a good idea that he should have followed himself or a bad idea it seemed politically dubious to challenge -- or a convenient trap he set for himself that a more politically astute aspiring tyrant can use?

I see no fundamental objections to Newsom's policies among the dissatisfied Democrats the newsletter cites: The objections seem to fall into the categories of blind rebellion to such woke nonsense as defunding the police (at best) to the disappointing idea that they just have the wrong person in office to run their immoral and impractical welfare state.

As I see it, Newsom may well lose for the wrong reasons, and whatever good someone like Larry Elder might say or do while in office will likely fall on deaf ears and only temporarily staunch that state's hemorrhaging until the next egalitarian wins office.

-- CAV