Republicans Are On The Retreat In California

As the new year started, conservative radio host and former California governor hopefuls Larry Elder said announced that he would not run against Gavin Newsom in the 2022 election.

The decision was met with a collective yawn. Sure Elder – a Trump-style self-promoter – would not run in a general election in a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans two to one. After the California Conservatives were beaten by Newsom in a recall election in which the rules of the competition heavily favored those seeking to overthrow the governor, they know they will not win statewide offices in a regular election anytime soon. This is especially true given the current household numbers: California is approaching 2022, with analysts forecasting a staggering forecast $ 31 billion budget surplus, and looking ahead, an additional surplus of many billions of dollars each year for the years to come.

This excess allows Newsom to reinvent California’s safety net in ways that will fundamentally transform the state in the time to come. the $ 100 billion California comeback plan, which Newsom launched in October, a month after the recall, is directing huge sums of money into childcare, tax credits, environmental projects, affordable housing, expanded health care and other major changes to the safety net.

After surviving the recall, Newsom’s popularity in California was far higher than Joe Biden’s on the national stage. The approval ratings of the California governor in mid-September reaches 57 percent. The President’s popularity rating, on the other hand, is now in the bathroom, with 56 percent of respondents in the latest survey said they disapproved of his job performance.

One lesson can be drawn from this: Newsom and the Statehouse Democratic majority are effectively using political power to enact important and popular reforms that, in turn, bolster their political popularity. In contrast, the President and Democrats in Congress are so bogged down and held hostage to the machinations of Senators Manchin and Sinema and the GOP blockade tactics in the Senate that they appear to be completely unable to use their power to pass vital laws; and the result is that voters who see a majority-controlled party in Congress that is unable to effectively mobilize their power turn against them.

There is another lesson. In February Last year, when the pandemic hit California, Newsom’s approval ratings began to decline. Last spring and early summer, the California governor’s popularity was about as high as Biden’s now. In other words, not good. Many commentators, including myself, argued that he was really in danger of losing the recall. But by August his numbers had recovered, in September he knocked down the recall with ease, and in October he bolstered support for the next regular election cycle by pushing through the ambitious comeback plan. At this point in the electoral cycle, the chances are pretty good that Newsom will be re-elected for another full term.

Biden and the Democrats in Congress still have a chance to turn things around before the 2022 midterm elections. Because while the public mood has deteriorated and the Democrats are doing poorly in their dealings with the economy – not least because they rule at a time of pandemic-induced high inflation – millions of jobs are in fact being created and the economy is growing at record pace. But to get the public back on board, they must be able to tout concrete and ambitious legislative and administrative achievements that are currently missing from them.

Back in California, Larry Elder described his campaign retreat as almost altruistic: instead, he wanted to create a political action committee so that he could focus his resources on helping other GOP candidates in the state vote.

That is, of course, at least misleading. If Elder thought he had a hell of a chance of winning the gubernatorial race in November, he would be right to go. But he knows he doesn’t. It’s not that Newsom is doing everything right – for example, with housing and homelessness, the state remains in crisis mode – but he’s getting enough right on issues big enough that voters are ready to help him out when in doubt.

With the mid-term elections only 10 months away, Democrats across the country are in a hole. If Manchin has its way, they will spend the next few months thinking in ever smaller steps, abandoning their bold plans, joking about their 2020 election promises, and embracing a GOP lite vision of the social pact. It’s the wrong way. Voters don’t punish Democrats for thinking big – them great promise the Build Back Better plan, from child support to improved access to health care and investing in the environment, are hugely popular – but because they don’t seal the deal and don’t get the job done; Voters don’t like the spectacle of sausage-making and don’t like the aura of incompetence that surrounds intra-party negotiations.

The Republicans are doing everything they can to fight the Democrats among themselves. McConnell and McCarthy are not against Build Back Better because they think it’s bad economically; on the contrary, they oppose Build Back Better because they know that reforms will be of sufficient benefit to fundamentally reshape American society if it ever passes, or if essential elements of it ever pass. If that happens, Biden’s popularity – and thus that of the Democrats in Congress – could recover similarly to that of Gavin Newsom in California.

Republicans Are on the Retreat in California

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