Thankfully, Larry Elder is no Arnold Schwarzenegger. I admit I was sweating the astroturf recall in California probably more than was necessary. These kinds of anti-democratic shenanigans are the worst kind really because the best possible outcome is that nothing changes. We liberals can hope that California Democrats will now reform their recall laws to make it harder for right-wing authoritarians to force the state to waste $300 million and reinforce their big lie about fraud, but more likely they will just go back to complacency about the inevitable demographic destiny about winning without delivering.
While Gavin Newsom is no prize, Jello Biafra once talked about him being prominent in "Democrats for Bush" back in the dubya tyranny, his repulse of the latest republican chevauchee gives me a chance to revisit a hypothesis made after doughfacedonny stole the presidency. Namely, that elected Democrats are knights in feudalist America. Republicans are the barbarians at the gates, who reject civilization and are only interested in the power to dominate and oppress. While those two components are readily apparent in a White hat/Black hat sort of dichotomy, the other layers of feudalism in America line up less neatly but I still think knights and barbarians are a better comparison than cowboys and cattle rustlers or Old West outlaws and lawmen.
What are the practical effects of Newsom maintaining his seat? The It Can Happen Here Podcast did a fairly good summary of where California is and will continue to be now that the recall is over recently, especially concerning wildfires and other environmental issues. Just having a grown up in charge of state efforts is a start IMO. Not to go back to the Jello well again but he is the foremost California leftist that I know, he summed up the republican desire pretty well in his spoken-word piece "The Last Big Gulp" where republicans (mainly boomers) want to use up everything on their way out to preserve their selfish, decadent lifestyles of consumption and waste, fck everyone else. Elder would have thrown open the spigots and depleted the freshwater supply drastically while taking even modest controls off of developers to turn green spaces into strip malls and McMansions. Efforts to help people would all be channeled into militarized security forces to keep white boomers safe from poor people. As the Talking Post Memo article from the top said, "negative partisanship worked in this election" telling people how awful republicans are and reminding them of how badly republicans govern can do a lot.
It is a bit like the hypothesis I also have used in the past to say that half of half a loaf is better than a boot stamping on a human face for all eternity. Which, if you paid attention to the destruction wrought by Dubya and doughfacedonny, along with all the teabag and MAGA governors basically speaks for itself. The problem was that Democrats did not take the problem of republican barbarism seriously when they held power. Eight years of Dubya running roughshod over the constitution after stealing the presidency on a technicality and no action on reforming the Electoral College during Obama's administration. They wasted valuable legislating time debating republicans and letting them hang poison pill amendments on the ACA while doing almost nothing to counter the teabagger's racism and mobs at townhalls. Democrats acted during those years like demographic destiny had arrived and they could rest on their laurels... then losing a thousand legislative seats over the next series of elections.
Still, I one hundred percent prefer Democrats in office over republicans. Despite their flaws Democrats are the only political party in the country, the other being a death cult of human suffering that is so dedicated to the ends of power they will sacrifice their own members to make Joe Biden look bad and simply reject democracy when they are so toxic that no one will vote for them. It would be a catastrophe if the lessons of 2010 disappear down the memory hole and we wake up to a republican congress. Recently I heard leftist activists complain that the Democratic Party is a fundraising machine and little else, which pigeonholes into the comparison I wanted to make about medieval knights. If I could contribute even a little bit to bolstering morale and encouraging Democrats to show up to vote and stay involved by reaching with an imperfect analogy then let's go.
To Be Continued...
