Hmm, fair point.
CNN: Gavin Newsom faces growing pressure to intervene in a scrambled California governor’s race
I just filled out a push poll for Tom Steyer – too bad for them I’m Team Porter.
Ugh. I hate push-polls. I know “everybody” does them these days because it’s a tactic that seems to work, especially with lower-information voters. But I always get irrationally annoyed when I get one and think less of the candidate behind them, even though they may not have ever gotten their own hands dirty authorizing it. It’s just what campaigns do in the modern era.
I’ve mentioned this before but the worst college job I ever had was doing political telemarketing. It was a Democratic Party-backing private firm - mostly fundraising with the occasional push-poll. Asking an elderly person on a fixed income for the third time 'for even just $5’ while your supervisor is standing at the desk listening in and staring you down balefully to make sure you did your job was just upsetting and made you want to take a shower. I finally up and quit after three or four months.
Probably not just a Tom Steyer thing. I’d be willing to bet $1 Katie Porter uses them as well or would if she could spare the campaign funds. Most of them do. But Steyer has more money to go whole hog.
I finally saw a Katie Porter ad on TV today. Pretty good timing, I guess, to try to scrape up some Swalwell voters. It had good production values, but I have to say I was not impressed with the content. Lots of tough-person attitude, but pretty light in the area of what she actually intends to do except to continue to “stand up to them” as she says she has in the past. There was one example of a confrontation, probably in a House hearing, between her and some overpaid executive, that’s all I remember of the contents.
The other thing I noticed, much more readily (I am somewhat ashamed to admit) was that her appearance has really changed. She appears to have lost weight and had a makeover. I am fully aware I would probably not be saying this about any male candidate, but in the interest of full disclosure (of my own mental tendencies) I thought I should mention it.
eta: I also saw 3 or 4 Steyer ads in the same span of time today, including the supposed “behind the scenes” ads, and the ones with supposed voters shouting his name. All of these efforts scream “Fake!” to me, everything is so manufactured, there doesn’t seem to be anything genuine about them. My reaction is highly subjective, but if you were seeing all these ads, not the same ads repeated but new ads every week and even every day, you might be forgiven for thinking that he is doing his damnedest to buy this election.
This article is from today:
Sacramento data expert Paul Mitchell, who created an online model that simulates thousands of election scenarios, said that “the program really believes that the odds of two Republicans splitting the vote is more remote, almost nonexistent.”
That seems like good news. Also…
Analysts also said President Donald Trump’s endorsement this month of Hilton “probably consolidates at least a lot of the MAGA support behind Hilton,” decreasing the chance of two Republicans advancing, said Ruth Bernstein, the senior principal with EMC Research, which was Swalwell’s longtime pollster.
That was the thing that put her on the map. The whole thing is a fun watch.
Yeah, no shit. It was never really an issue even before that other dickhead dropped out. The whole scare was just to get more people engaged and talking about the election to shrink the odds a bit but it was never, IMO, an actual possibility.
Steyer is saying he’ll jail ICE agents if they break state laws, which would be about enough to get me to vote for him if I still lived there.
He is not alone, Thurmond has said the same thing, and others. Unfortunately the U.S. Constitution’s Supremacy Clause makes this unlikely in real life.
In theory nothing stops state prosecutors from bringing homicide charges under regular state criminal law against the officers. But a doctrine of Supremacy Clause immunity would intervene, namely the officers could escape liability by showing that however bad the consequences, they acted reasonably, if mistakenly, within the scope of their duties. In addition, a federal law says that if the state brings criminal charges, the officer defendant can move the case from state to federal court, presumably on the theory that the federal courts are more objective. Oddly enough in that federal court, the prosecutor will still be the state prosecutor and the law applied will be state homicide law. But the chances of conviction there may be affected if the jury pool in a federal district encompasses a different demographic than the county pool.
This encapsulates my dislike of Steyer, a person who makes big promises with expensive TV ads in order to get elected, even though he KNOWS that most of them are outside the reach of a state governor.
Well, Minnesota has become the first State to actually indict one of the motherfuckers. Maybe we should be taking another look at Walz?
Moderating:
This is the thread for Governor of California, not Walz’s future.
Sorry, my bad.
Just got my ballot! (“Overseas” voter.) It’s a bit early to vote, but it’s nice to have.
I just got my first look today at the California Voters Pamphlet (online edition). Some things I didn’t know:
In order to qualify to have (by purchase) a photo and statement in the Voters Pamphlet, statewide candidates have to agree to limit their campaign expenditures to a fixed amount. For governor, that amount is under $12 million. Katie Porter and the Sheriff from SoCal (don’t care enough about him to look up his name) are the only two major candidates who did so agree, and therefore are the only two major candidates with their pictures and statements in the pamphlet. Steyer did not (big surprise), Swalwell did not (saves him the embarrassment) and Hilton did not. I don’t usually pay a lot of attention to the candidate statements in the Voters Pamphlet, so I did not know that this voluntary limit was a thing, and I do not know how long this has been going on. But I approve of Porter for signing the spending limit. She also happens to be the first one in the pamphlet (I believe the positions are chosen by random drawing).
New polls suggest it will be Steyer vs Hilton. But the Swalwell flameout still hasnt settled out.
I really like Porter but I don’t care who it is as long as it’s not a Republican. I am fine with Steyer and will vote for him if the polls suggest that it’s the best strategy.
Not a Californian, but I liked Steyer when he was running in the 2020 presidential primary, mainly because he was one of the few who voiced concerns about the environment, and other progressive subjects. However, that was six years ago, and he may have changed his emphasis. Any Democrat would be far superior than any Republican candidate.
I’m convinced that whoever is making the campaign ads for Steyer actually hates him. His latest one with his whispering old crackled voice actually makes me cringe. And his insincerity just seeps out of his pores.
Yuck, please don’t elect this ancient fucking billionaire.
I certainly believe he would not pay for any commercial he himself had not approved, with content that he insisted on. Maybe that just means that he’s clueless as to what he himself is putting out there, which would not be surprising at all.
He might be another among the self-risen flowers of billionaire-dom who think they know better than experts and professionals about everything.
In current polling news, Steyer seems to have swept up a noticeable number of Swalwell voters, while Katie Porter’s numbers continue to slowly slide. It certainly seems to be between those two for having one of the finalists actually be a Democrat, which is too bad. 6+ weeks to go. Here is what seems to be a fairly straightforward aggregator of polls on the subject: