Do you think the effort will succeed? Should it?
I dont like Newsom. But to be fair, he did pretty good on the Covid stuff. Also the GOP ran a total loser, worse than trump vs him, so we had little choice. Coe, insane and a carpetbagger to boot.
No, nothing he has done rises to getting him recalled and no, he wont be.
OTOH, if the GOP runs someone sane next election, I could be tempted. I did vote for Arnie. The ex-mayor of San Diego might be OK.
The one thing I hate about living in California is that with enough money, you can get anything (including recalls) on the ballot. I wish grocery stores would ban those paid petition collectors from their doors.
Oh the trumpists are sooo angry at him, calling him “dictator” because he came up with common sense covid closures, etc.
And of course Newsom did have a couple lapses of judgement, like attending that dinner party, etc. Not wise, but hardly recall-reasons.
This is nuts … since 1913, there have been 179 recall attempts of state elected officials in California – 55 targeting the governor, 27 against California Supreme Court justices, and once against the entire Supreme Court. Ten recall efforts collected enough signatures to qualify for the ballot and of those, the elected official was recalled in six instances.
Yeah, you have to figure that, considering Newsom would have to run for re-election next year anyway, most voters in California would figure this to be a wasted effort. Quite a few will probably also remember the 2003 recall, which a) devolved into a circus that made a mockery of American democracy and b) ultimately did very little to help solve the issues facing the state.
That looks to me like the system works pretty well. If you’re going to have a procedure for recall of elected officials, then of course it’s going to be attempted many times, so the 173 attempts doesn’t look unreasonable. Of course, you don’t want all of those to reach the ballot, and indeed, most of them didn’t. The standard for something reaching the ballot should be that it’s at the point that you’re genuinely unsure what the people want, which means that if the standards for reaching the ballot are calibrated correctly, about half of the measures that get there will pass, and 6/10 is close enough for that.
What, no conservative outcry against this flagrant excess of “cancel culture”?
INCCWARDI
It’s Not Cancel Culture When A Republican Does It.
Agreed on both points. I’ve thought he’s a bit of a dirtbag ever since he slept with his buddy’s wife. Plus he has a splash of the rich, elitist, rules-don’t-apply-to-me stench to him. Double-plus too much fucking hair product 
- makes him look like a rich douchebag (yes, yes - I have issues).
But he’s sane, competent, intelligent, hard-working and generally on the side of the righteous. I voted for him and would again. And this recall is some bullshit. It should and probably will fail.
I voted for Arnie is his second term as well (literally the last time I voted for a Republican and I kinda regretted that one).
But I will NEVER vote for the ex-mayor of San Diego. Why? Because he admits he voted for Trump in 2020 for “economic reasons” 
. Voting for Trump in 2016 is not an automatic disqualifier for me, he was just a gross unknown. Voting for him in 2020 absolutely is, he was by then a known sociopath - I don’t care what your reasons are. It’s a hard and fast first litmus test for me.
My point, however, is that where I live, we have a fairly well-functioning liberal democracy and have had (AFAIK) 0 recalls on the ballot and 0 successful recalls out of a grand total of 0 recall attempts. We elect leaders and legislators and leave them to do their jobs. If we don’t like the results, the next election cycle we elect someone else. That’s what I meant by the “this is nuts” comment. It’s kind of like signing an offer to buy a house, and then changing your mind a week later. It’s hard for systems to function that way.
I am with you there. 2016? Sure. 2020? Nope.
This would be much more interesting if we knew which jurisdiction you’re in. In 30 states, there’s no way to recall a governor. If you’re in one of those states, of course there haven’t been any attempted recalls; it’s impossible. That’s, of course, assuming you’re in the US - what’s the threshold for a recall where you are?
For CA, you need about 1/8 of the people who voted from multiple counties to even get it on the ballot. If that many people are that pissed, then they can find out for certain if half the voters are equally as pissed or if they’re really out on their own.
Yeah, I don’t think I would say that a recall is an essential feature of a functional democracy… but that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily an unreasonable one. And sometimes, it’s good to be able to get rid of someone who turns out to be a lot worse than voters expected.
Sorry about that. I’m in Ontario, Canada, which I’ve mentioned fairly frequently (but apparently not frequently enough! 
). In general, in Canada we’re big believers in representative democracy rather than voters directly voting on issues like “would you like a tax increase?” (guess what the typical answer is, regardless of the reason for the needed funds?) or “would you like this guy you voted for to be tarred and feathered because you hate him now?”. A bit cynical, but that was kind of the gist of my comment.
I think the purveyors of this recall effort know there is no path to removing Newsom from office, but they are persisting with the idea of smearing him good in the event he wants to pursue a national-level office, which he is smarmy enough to want to do.
I do not care for him, either, but I agree he has done a competent job with the pandemic and other things. And what are we going to replace him with?
IMHO this recall is a complete waste of time and $$ put forward by the butt-hurt CA GOP. If I were that guy from San Diego, I would keep my powder dry for the real election next year.
The arrogance Newsom displayed at his infamous French Laundry dinner was the last straw for many Californians.
Not to derail the thread, but even in 2016 there were plenty of warning signs. I’ve voted for Republicans before and I’m sure I will again, but if I knew one had voted for Trump either time it would be a yuuuuge disqualifier for me.
Oh, absolutely. And Trump was in many respects a culmination rather than the genesis of Republican dysfunction.
However in my most generous moments I am willing to cut some slack to single-issue and platform voters who held their nose and voted Trump in 2016. They were very, very wrong - predictably so IMO. But even I’m surprised at just how wrong they turned out to be.
I mean I was pretty sure he was going to be an shitty dumpster fire of a president, but even I didn’t think he’d turn out to be extinction event-level bad. I was hoping at best for a bumbling incompetent vulgarian and populist who just did a lot of ineffectual shouting and twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom. We got all that but with the added bonus of a mass movement of white supremacists and conspiracy theory-addled, anti-democratic death cultists and an attempted coup. He was mind-bogglingly awful.
I can cut a tiny bit of slack for making a truly dumb-ass choice in 2016 if you then came to your senses in 2020 (which is implied). We all fuck up badly once in awhile. But 2020 is a deal-breaker. Platform before individual doesn’t cut it anymore with that dude.
Modding: Let’s get back to the recall on Newsom.