Regarding the California recall election

I posted some of this in a post about the 1/6 coup attempt, but the recall election is worth focusing on specifically.

In the California recall election, the state’s fascist Republican Party (FRP) failed in its attempt to take the governorship. The governor was not recalled and it was not close. FiveThirtyEight writes:

Our colleagues at the ABC News Decision Desk projected that the recall would fail at 11:37 p.m. Eastern, barely half an hour after polls closed. As of this writing, 67 percent of voters voted against the recall, and 33 percent voted for it. That margin will almost certainly narrow as more votes are counted (the numbers we have right now are mostly mail ballots, which lean very Democratic), but it’s still likely that Newsom will survive by a large margin, perhaps even comparable to his 24-point win in 2018.

But even before the polls closed in California, the lead FRP candidate alleged widespread vote fraud. That candidate, Larry Elder (~43% compared to  ~10% for another leading candidate) is a fascist conspiracy theory crackpot and long-time radical right talk show host in Los Angeles. Elder believes the 2020 election was stolen. He may contest the recall election. As usual for FRP losers, Elder did not produce one shred of credible evidence of vote fraud. All that Elder had was his bare assertion of fraud.

Elder’s alleged evidence of vote fraud was an alleged statistical analysis, Benford’s Law, of the votes used to detect vote fraud. The problem with that is that the statistical analysis cannot be done before an election. The votes have to be analyzed after an election. Despite that idiotic, fatal flaw, Elder was so enthusiastic about his vote fraud lie that he launched an anti-voter fraud website the day before the election, saying at that time that Newsome had won the election.

Clearly, the FRP’s election fraud poison has spread to states where FRP candidates lose. In states where FRP candidates win, there is no reason to allege fraud. The point is winning, not holding honest elections. That is fascism, or at least anti-democratic authoritarianism. 

What does this mean?

Opinions differ. They range from (1) this means little or nothing and it is just politics as usual, to (2) this is more evidence that the ideology and agenda of the Republican Party is authoritarian and focused on undermining elections, democracy and civil liberties. 

Is it evidence that maybe there is a backlash against the fascist Trumpism cult and if so is it confined to California or does it exist more broadly? My take on it is that once it looked like the divisive fascist Larry Elder would be the FRP’s top vote getter, Democratic voters were motivated to vote against a recall to keep him from winning the recall. The counties that voted to recall Newsome were, as expected, mostly rural counties in the Eastern part of the state. That part of California is about as radical right as just about any red state in the country. 

Green mostly rural counties voted for the recall

Red mostly urban counties voted against the recall 

As of now, it is 36.2% for the recall and 63.8% against

What was striking was the vote tally for Elder. He got 47% of the votes compared to 8.6% for Kevin Faulconer, the former Republican San Diego mayor and arguably the choice of the GOP establishment. That seems to indicate that mainstream Republican voters are not loyal to the GOP as an institution. Instead those voters look for colorful but aggressive personalities like the incendiary Elder, an online radical right talk show host. In San Diego, Faulconer governed as a center right pragmatist. In the election, he was forced to adopt to GOP's crackpot rhetoric and fantasies, but that didn't help him. He just was not radical enough for the rank and file. One can reasonably believe that the ex-president was successful in turning most of the rank and file against establishment Republicans.

This indicates that most of the Republican Party rank and file in California has radicalized and looks a lot like the party in red states. Thus, things that the FRP does in red states it controls are things that Republicans in California and probably most all other states would like to do, e.g., attack elections as fraudulent and rigged, attack civil liberties and attack democracy generally.

 

In my opinion, this is not remotely close to politics as usual, at least in my adult lifetime. The FRP has become mostly authoritarian and aggressively anti-democratic in probably all states. Elder openly lied about election fraud and it has no adverse impact on him within the FRP. That is evidence the FRP does not care about opinion outside the party and is willing to govern as a tyranny of a radical authoritarian minority.

On that last point, Elder was crystal clear. He flatly said that if he won the recall election and Democratic Senator Diane Feinstein died, he would appoint a Republican to replace her and to give control of the Senate back to the FRP and Mitch McConnell. Elder expressed no concern about contrary majority public opinion in California.

The FRP complains a lot these days that some of the things the Democrats want to do amounts to a power grab. Like protecting voting rights is a power grab. Wanting infrastructure spending is a power grab. But so what? When given the chance, the FRP does not hesitate a second to grab power by any means that it can get away with. With restraining political and ethics norms now blown to smithereens by the authoritarian FRP and its poisonous ex-president, grabbing power and exercising it regardless of majority public opinion is just what the FRP does when it gets a chance. 

In my opinion, this recall election spoke loudly about what the FRP has degenerated into, namely an authoritarian cult grounded in fantasies and disregard for public opinion. What is not clear is how non-Republican Americans will vote, fail to vote, be prevented form voting, or be subverted from voting in the 2022 and 2024 elections, which the FRP is working hard to rig in its favor. 

In California, (1) Democrats probably voted in a backlash against the divisive radical Elder, and (2) the state FRP could not suppress votes or rig the election to subvert it. That will not be the case in over 17 other states where the FRP has passed laws intended to suppress opposition votes and/or to rig elections in its favor. We still have to wait for 2022 and 2024 before we know whether the American experiment is doomed to fail and end in some form of an aggressive Christian autocratic-plutocratic authoritarianism or will continue to muddle along as a wounded, barely functional representative democracy.

Question: Can the situation in the Republican Party and its voters in California be extrapolated to most or all other states, red, blue or purple? Does it shed light on how the 2022 and 2024 elections will turn out?