California Recall, Newsom, And Nostalgia
On CA Gov And Political Nostalgia
Sabato's Crystal Ball is out with their first 2022 (or, more accurately, 2021-2022 cycle of) Governors Ratings, and the first day of a Crystal Ball release is always good fun.
These ratings are mostly fine, and while I may quibble in places, there aren't a lot of broad disagreements here - or, at least, any disagreements I'm particularly willing to go to the wall for. Except one - their Likely D rating of California Governor, because of the recall.
The argument is that Newsom is in some danger because of the two step process by which Californians decide - a single Yes/No question on whether to recall, and then a First Past The Post election amongst all the potential recall candidates, of which the incumbent does not appear. It's a stupid system, but it's the system they have, and it did remove a Governor once before, in 2003. The problem is, 2021 is not 2003, and both in specific in California and in a broader sense, there is a weird form of political nostalgia way too apparent in much analysis.
Yes, the Republicans flipped California because of a recall in 2003, but they did so in a state that would vote for John Kerry by 10% in 2004, not in the one that would elect Joe Biden by 30% in 2020. The California of 2003 was much closer to purple, a state where majority opinion was in favour of banning gay marriage, a state where Prop 8 would win 5 years later. It also bears almost no resemblance to the state of California today.
In 2003, Arnold Schwarzenegger got 63.5% of the vote in Orange County. Donald Trump got 44.4% there. Please, explain to me how the GOP wins statewide in California if there is not a huge amount of Democrats voting for a recall? And, there is no evidence there is any amount of Democratic enthusiasm for such an act. And yet, the media - not Crystal Ball specifically, who rightly consider the race mostly uncompetitive, but the broader chattering classes - think this race has the potential to be competitive. They are, based on current evidence, crazy.
For a recall effort to succeed, Democrats would need to hate Gavin Newsom enough to want to risk a Republican governor, as opposed to, I don't know, just primarying him next year? And, again, there's literally no evidence that Newsom faces any amount of hatred from his own flank right now. Yes, the French Laundry dinner was an own goal, but he's doing alright with COVID now, and more importantly, voters do not seem to be blaming politicians for bad COVID outcomes - which explains why Andrew Cuomo ducked political strife for the initial death toll and even the report about his handling of nursing home care. Trump faced no penalty electorally for incompetence, and even Boris Johnson is riding a huge polling wave right now in the UK despite European highs in deaths.
The bigger issue I have with the Crystal Ball ratings - which, again, I think are quite reasonable on the whole - is the reticence to describe safe blue state as properly safe. There is a form of political nostalgia for the days of the 90s and 00s, where things were more interesting, because good campaigns could matter more, and bad campaigns could hurt you more. You could have Mario Cuomo lose, like he did in 1994, or Grey Davis getting recalled in 2003. The problem is, it's just not happening anymore. The dream is over, the queen is dead, and everyone is acting like things aren't what they are.
I've used this state before, but in 2006, 16 of 36 states voted for a Governor of a different party than they had elected at the 2004 Presidential election. That number was 8 in 2018. The halcyon days of bipartisanship and of Democratic landslides in Wyoming and Tennessee are done. If you want to say California is Likely because of Recall Randomness, I get it, even if I disagree. If you want to say New York is Likely because of Cuomo's troubles, fine. But Crystal Ball rightly has Florida as Likely GOP, a state which Trump won by 3%, then has Rhode Island and Connecticut, Biden +20% states, Likely Democratic. One of those two sets of ratings is wrong, and it isn't Florida.
Ah, but in 2018 Connecticut Governor was close(-ish), so a Likely rating makes sense, I can hear someone say. Sure, but then why is South Dakota a Safe GOP state, when Billie Sutton ran the race of his life and almost made it into the Governorship three years ago? This is nostalgia for the past, both for the days when these races were almost entirely de-federalized, and for the idea of a midterm environment that could get very bad for Democrats. Remember, the 2010 and 2014 results were because the share of the electorate that is white and degree holding spiked, and those voters at the time were Republicans. Now, they're not.
I really appreciate the work that so many people do to better analyze elections, but the reluctance of people to look at the Obama midterms for the lessons behind the midterms is infuriating. Democrats have a demographic advantage under the current global realignment in midterms which they were the victims of in 2014. Nostalgia for the past is now blinding people to electoral reality, and this is now stopping people from realizing what is going to happen moving forward.
And yes, California Governor is Safe Democratic, at this point.