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In a heavily Democratic state where Gov. Gavin Newsom beat his Republican opponent in 2018 by 3 million votes, the recall stands within a few percentage points of passing next month. | Jeff Chiu/AP Photo

By DAVID SIDERS

08/23/2021 04:56 PM EDT

LOS ANGELES Donald Trump could swing the California governorship to a Republican. Merely by his absence.

Democrats turned out in record numbers when they had Trump to vote against. But in one of the first, large-scale tests of voter enthusiasm for Democrats in the post-Trump era, Californias surprisingly close gubernatorial recall election is laying bare just how hard it may be for the party to motivate its base without Trump as a foil.

Even in this bastion of progressive politics, ominous signs for the Democratic Party are everywhere. A CBS News-YouGov poll last week found voters who cast ballots for Joe Biden were less likely than Trump supporters to be very closely following the recall and less motivated to vote. In a Berkeley-IGS survey, registered Democrats and independent voters were nearly 30 percentage points less likely than Republicans to express a high level of interest in voting in the election.

The lack of enthusiasm is so concerning to Democrats that Gavin Newsom, the states Democratic governor, has been furiously working to yoke his main Republican opponent, Larry Elder, to Trump, while volunteers working with the progressive advocacy group Courage California texted voters a plea last week not to throw their mail ballots away.

Can Democrats win without having Trump as their foil? This is the challenge, said Gray Davis, the former California governor who was recalled in 2003.

Were going to find out pretty soon," he said in an interview.

In a heavily Democratic state where Newsom, a first-term Democrat, beat his Republican opponent in 2018 by 3 million votes and where Joe Biden clobbered Trump by nearly 30 percentage points two years later, the recall stands within a few percentage points of passing next month. That once-unthinkably close margin is almost entirely the result of tepid Democratic interest in the race. And even if Newsom prevails, as is widely expected, the competitiveness of the contest is the latest indicator that turnout gains made by Democrats nationally during the Trump era may be unsustainable with significant implications for Democrats ahead of the midterm elections next year.

It isnt just California. In a special election in May in a Texas House district Trump carried by just 3 percentage points in 2020, the top Democratic candidate in the field failed in a low-turnout contest to even advance from the all-party primary. Last week in Connecticut, a Republican won a special election for a state Senate seat in a district Biden carried by 20 percentage points in November.

As the returns came in from that race in Connecticut, David Keith, a Democratic strategist who has worked on House contests around the country, called it very much a barometer.

Turning out Democratic voters without Trump on the ballot, he said, is is a big deal problem for Democrats They ran as hard as they could run [in Connecticut] and still came up short.

In California, the FiveThirtyEight polling average late last week had Newsom retaining his job, but by a narrow margin, at just more than 1 percentage point. His job approval ratings remain above water, and all registered voters in the state are being mailed a ballot. The widely held belief of political professionals of both parties in California is that Newsom will likely win. But it is far closer than most expected.

I think he pulls it out, Antonio Villaraigosa, the Democratic former mayor of Los Angeles, said of Newsom. But its going to be close. It shouldnt be. But its going to be very, very close because Republicans are animated, and were not.

Explanations for a lackluster Democratic electorate are wide-ranging. Democrats who expect Newsom to win may be complacent. Democrats who object to the recall in the first place may simply not participate. The resurgence of the coronavirus pandemic is consuming public attention. And the election is unfolding in late summer in an off-election year, when voters are not conditioned to be casting ballots.

But the absence of Trump is a significant enough factor that Newsom is working to both raise Elders profile and tie him to the twice-impeached former president. In a recent campaign ad, a narrator highlights Elders opposition to coronavirus restrictions, calls the election a matter of life and death and offers a photograph of Elder standing beside Trump with their thumbs up. Newsom, campaigning recently in San Francisco, called Elder to the right of Donald Trump, and he said, Thats whats at stake in this election.

They want Trump to be on the ballot. Thats the whole thing. Thats the whole premise of the campaign, said Darry Sragow, a longtime Democratic strategist and publisher of the nonpartisan California Target Book, which handicaps elections in the state. From the beginning, the fundamental premise of the anti-recall strategy has been that this is a referendum on Donald Trump, not on Gavin Newsom.

In a normal election with multiple candidates and issues on the ballot, that might be enough. But in the recall, there are only two questions first, whether a voter wants to recall Newsom and second, if he is ousted, which of 46 candidates they want to replace him, including Elder, 2018 Republican candidate John Cox, former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer and reality TV star Caitlyn Jenner. Newsom is encouraging voters who have already received their ballots in the all-by-mail election to check no on the first question and leave the second part blank.

What voters have to take into consideration, and whats at stake in this Sept. 14 recall election, said Mark Gonzalez, chair of the Los Angeles County Democratic Party, is that if Democrats dont vote in the recall election we could wake up with a Trump supporter as governor of California.

Newsom has a massive financial advantage, raising about $57 million since the start of the year, and his campaign says it is assembling the largest in-person get-out-the-vote operation in state history, with more than 600 paid field staff throughout the state. In its internal surveys, the campaign said its seen an uptick in recent days in voter familiarity with the recall and interest in turning out.

Given the fundamentals of the state and the electorate, it would take a remarkable change in voter behavior for the Republicans to recall Newsom, said Rose Kapolczynski, a Democratic strategist and adviser to former Sen. Barbara Boxer.

But Newsom has not run a seamless campaign. There was the dinner party for a top political adviser that he attended last year at the upscale restaurant The French Laundry, just as he was discouraging Californians from gathering for the holidays. There was the error that left him appearing on the ballot without the Democratic Party label after his name. When news broke last week that Newsom had sold his $5.9 million Bay Area home in May, Republicans reading the headlines could hardly believe their good fortune.

The guy is his own worst enemy, said Tom Del Beccaro, a former state Republican Party chairman who now chairs Rescue California, a group that has raised and spent close to $5 million in support of the recall. Whats he doing selling his $5.9 million house in the middle of the recall? He cant help himself.

Del Beccaros Republican Party in California represents less than a quarter of the electorate. But these problems Democrats are having with turnout more than level the playing field, he said.

That is probably overstating Republicans case. But Democrats and political observers in California are no longer laughing the recall off, as many did for much of last year.

One reason its hard to discount the possibility of an upset-inducing swing in voter behavior is that in a post-Trump, off-year election conducted amid a lingering pandemic, its almost impossible to accurately interpret the composition of the vote, even as strategists begin to track the partisan breakdown of mail ballots. Thats because no one knows if voting in the recall or in the midterms in 2022 will follow the pre-Trump template of Republicans turning out in higher numbers earlier than Democrats or if Republicans will hold onto their ballots, as many did in 2020, because of baseless concerns stoked by Trump about the integrity of absentee voting.

We dont know what world were in, said Paul Mitchell, an elections expert who tracks vote-by-mail ballots in California. Are we in the universe of Republicans wanting to vote early because they always vote early or are we in the universe where Republicans vote late because they dont trust vote by mail?

He said, We might think we know something, but we dont even know what universe were in.

Davis, the former governor, cited Newsoms job performance rating, Democrats massive voter registration advantage, the benefit of ballots being mailed to every voter and the endorsements of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, a Californian, in the governors favor.

But no one expects turnout to meet levels they did when Trump was on the ballot and Democrats were paying more attention.

What he has working against him, Davis said of Newsom, is that people are generally tuned out in August.

I doubt if half the people in the state know theres an election in 30 days, Davis said. That is complicating the problem for Democrats.

He said, We have to rise to the challenge.

Colby Bermel and Jeremy B. White contributed to this report.

Read more:
Democrats sweat turnout disaster in California without Trump to run against - POLITICO

US Representative Seth Moulton is back to a familiar place in the Massachusetts congressional delegation out there, alone, as he speaks the truth about the chaotic aftermath of President Bidens decision to withdraw American troops from Afghanistan.

To say that today is anything short of a disaster would be dishonest, Moulton said in a statement he also posted on Facebook after the Taliban took over Kabul and scenes of Afghans, desperate to leave their country, took over cable news. When Biden first went on television to defend the withdrawal and blamed the chaos on Afghans who did not want to leave earlier, Moulton called out that presidential excuse as utter BS. He also told CNNs Jake Tapper that the hasty withdrawal could lead to more veteran suicides.

Meanwhile, the rest of the all-Democratic delegation have been tiptoeing down an increasingly uncomfortable line of loyalty to Biden, given the unfolding ugliness. Massachusetts lawmakers are defending Biden for doing his best with an inherited mess and pressing the administration to safely evacuate US staff and Afghan allies while avoiding any honest critiques of the president who got us into the current mess. In an interview with Slate, Representative Jake Auchincloss, an Afghan war veteran, said he had unspecified questions he would like the administration to answer, but praised Biden for having the integrity to tell the truth about the status of the war. Senators Edward J. Markey and Elizabeth Warren signed a bipartisan letter asking the Biden administration to protect Afghan women.

That leaves Moulton on the outside, where he has been ever since he beat Representative John Tierney in a 2015 primary fight. In Washington, he ruffles everyones feathers. When he campaigned to get young Democratic veterans elected to Congress, some on the left were unhappy with him, and when he tried to oust House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in 2016 and 2018, he angered the partys powerful center. His 2020 presidential bid went nowhere, delighting detractors back home.

Moulton has the credentials to call Afghanistan as he sees it. A Harvard graduate, he joined the Marines after the terrorist attacks of 9/11; he served four tours of combat in Iraq and was twice decorated for heroism. At the same time, his critique of the Biden administrations mishandling of the Afghanistan withdrawal feeds into Republican attacks on Biden. It also raises Moultons political profile. Still, Moulton is saying out loud what many Americans, including many Democrats, are thinking. While there might be no right time for withdrawal, as Biden said, the bungled execution of the one that happened on his watch is hard to stomach.

As reported by The New York Times, for months before the scheduled withdrawal, Moulton joined other human rights advocates who told officials in the White House, the State Department, and the Pentagon they need to stop processing visas in Afghanistan and just get people to safety. That didnt happen, and the human toll is there for all to see. Over the weekend, Biden suggested the possibility of keeping an American presence at the airport past the original Aug. 31 deadline, but a Taliban spokesman warned of consequences from such an action.

There was much hand-wringing from Democrats over the decline of Americas standing in the world during Donald Trumps presidency. As Tom Donilon, now a Biden senior adviser, told The Washington Post in July 2020, By almost every measure, Americas standing and influence in the world has been damaged over the last three-and-a-half years. Over the past few days, global reaction to Americas withdrawal from Afghanistan has not been kind and neither has Moulton.

Scott Ferson, a political consultant who advised Moulton during his first congressional run, said that one of his traits, either like it or dislike it, is that hes not afraid to say what he believes. What if that helps to undermine the president Moulton endorsed and supports? Everything is politicized today, said Ferson. But why do we as Democrats think its a good idea to continue to not face the reality of the situation [in Afghanistan]? Its not the withdrawal policy, Ferson said. Its the intelligence failure of the withdrawal that needs to be talked about amongst Democrats.

Moulton started talking about that truth right away. Painful as it is, more Democrats need to join in the conversation.

Joan Vennochi can be reached at joan.vennochi@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @joan_vennochi.

Original post:
Seth Moulton, a Democrat who is speaking the truth about Afghanistan and President Biden - The Boston Globe

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott had threatened to block paychecks to state House Democrats who fled the state to block votes on new election laws. Enough Democrats have returned that Republicans can go back to the legislation. Eric Gay/AP hide caption

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott had threatened to block paychecks to state House Democrats who fled the state to block votes on new election laws. Enough Democrats have returned that Republicans can go back to the legislation.

AUSTIN, Texas A standoff in Texas over new voting restrictions that gridlocked the state Capitol for 38 consecutive days ended Thursday when some Democrats who fled to Washington, D.C., dropped their holdout, paving the way for Republicans to resume pushing an elections overhaul.

It abruptly and messily drew to a close one of the few and lengthiest quorum breaks in modern Texas history.

Instead of a unified and celebratory return by Democrats, some members lashed out at their colleagues over what they criticized as breaking ranks. Many of the proposed changes to Texas voting that Democrats have railed against for months remain in a bill that already passed the state Senate, and Republican Gov. Greg Abbott could now sign the legislation in a matter of weeks, if not sooner.

Only three new Democrats showed up Thursday, and the vast majority of the more than 50 Democrats who bolted for the nation's capital in July continue to stay away from the Texas Capitol. Still, Republican House Speaker Dade Phelan said enough were there to achieve a quorum, which in the House is normally 100 present legislators. Growing impatience among Republicans had led to escalating threats that missing lawmakers could face arrest, but officers never appeared to do more than leaving warrants at Democrats' homes.

"It's been a very long summer. Been through a lot. I appreciate you all being here," Phelan said. "It's time to get back to the business of the people of Texas."

Not all Democrats joined in the holdout, and the newest to come back to the Texas House defended their decision, saying they had successfully pushed Congress on voting rights legislation while pointing to the growing urgency of surging COVID-19 caseloads in Texas. One of them, Democrat Garnet Coleman of Houston, did not go to Washington because he was recovering from having a leg amputation brought on by an infection.

"One of the things in life is that we have to know what our responsibilities are and we have to work to move something in the direction we want it to be," Coleman said from a wheelchair while delivering the prayer on the House floor.

But other Democrats who remained absent did not hide their frustration.

"This is how Texas Democrats lose elections," state Rep. Michelle Beckley tweeted.

Abbott now has an opening to divert attention back to the Capitol and away from criticism and defiance by Texas' largest cities and school districts over his handling of worsening COVID-19 numbers. Abbott, who is up for reelection in 2022, had also jammed the agenda of this latest 30-day special session which is nearly half over with other hot-button conservative issues including border security and how race is taught in public schools.

Abbott this week tested positive for COVID-19, although his office had said the 63-year-old governor did not have symptoms.

It leaves Democrats much in the same position as when the holdout started: unable to permanently stop the GOP-controlled Legislature from putting new limits and rules over how more that 16 million registered voters can cast a ballot. And federal voting rights protections that Texas Democrats lobbied for while in Washington still face long odds of getting around GOP opposition in Congress.

For months, Texas Republicans have tried to pass measures that would prohibit 24-hour polling sites, ban drive-through voting and give partisan poll watchers more access. One version of the bill that was just hours from reaching Abbott's desk in May also would have banned Sunday morning early voting when many Black churchgoers go to the polls and made it easier for a judge to overturn an election. Democrats' first walkout wound up permanently scuttled those two provisions, but Republicans have kept intact other contested measures.

Abbott vetoed paychecks for about 2,100 legislative staffers after Democrats walked out the first time in a move that was aimed at pressuring Democrats to return in order to restore that funding.

The full House quickly adjourned Thursday, but Republicans worked fast to schedule a hearing on the elections bill for Saturday.

"People want to get to work. They're relieved that after all this time that we've been held hostage in Austin that we can finally get down to business," said state Rep. Jim Murphy, chairman of the House Republican Caucus.

Months of protests had put Texas Democrats at the center of a new national battle over voting. Republicans around the U.S. have rushed to enact new voting restrictions in response to former President Donald Trump's false claims that the 2020 election was stolen.

Republicans are now back on a path to pass new elections laws in Texas before the current special session ends on Sept. 5.

Link:
Texas Democrats Return, Ending A 38-Day Holdout That Blocked A Voting Bill - NPR

Four weeks from now, a right-wing Republican could win thegovernor's office in California. Somepollingindicates that Democrat Gavin Newsom is likely to lose his job via the recall election set for Sept. 14. When CBS News released apollon Sunday, Gov. Newsom's razor-thin edge among likely voters was within the margin of error. How this could be happening in a state where Republicans are only24 percentof registered voters is largely a tale of corporate-friendly elitism and tone-deaf egotism at the top of the California Democratic Party.

Newsom has always been enmeshed with the power of big money."Gavin Newsom wasn't born to wealth and privilege but as a youngster he was enveloped in it as the surrogate son of billionaire Gordon Getty," longtime conservative California journalist Dan Walters haspointed out. "Later, Getty's personal trust fund managed by Newsom's father provided initial financing for business ventures that made Newsom wealthy enough to segue into a political career as a protg of San Francisco's fabled political mastermind, Willie Brown."In 1996, as mayor, Brownappointed Newsomto the city's Parking and Traffic Committee. Twenty-five years later, Newsom is chief executive of a state with the world's fifth-largest economy.

Last November, Newsom dramatized his upper-crust arrogance of "Do as I say, not as I do."Photos emergedthat showed him having dinner with acorporate lobbyist friendamong people from several households, all without masks, in a mostly enclosed dining room at anextremely expensiveNapa Valley restaurant, the French Laundry at a time when Newsom was urging Californians to stay away from public gatherings and to wear masks. The governor's self-inflicted political wound forhypocrisy badly damaged his image.

After deep-pocketed funders teamed up with the state's Republican Party to circulate petitions forcing a recall election, initial liberaloptimismassumed that the GOP was overplaying its hand. But the recall effort kept gaining momentum. Now there's every indication that Republicans will vote at a significantly higher rate than Democrats,a fact that speaks not only to conservative fervor but also to the chronic detachment of the state's Democratic Party from its base.

Newsom's most fervent boosters include corporate interests, mainline labor unions and the California Democratic Party. Just about every leader of the CDP, along with the vast majority of Democrats in the state legislature, is pleased to call themselves "progressive." But the label is often a thin veneer for corporate business as usual.

Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.

For instance, the CDP's platform has long been on record calling for a single-payer health care system in California. Such measures passed the legislature during the time when Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger was governor from 2003 to 2011, and he surprised no one byvetoing the bills. But the heavily Democratic legislature has obliged the latest two Democratic governors, Jerry Brown and Newsom, by bottling up single-payer legislation; it's been well understood that Brown and Newsom wanted to confine the state party's support for single-payer to lip service.

In the same vein, the CDP's current chair, Rusty Hicks, signed a pledge that the state party would not accept fossil-fuel money. But he went on to doexactly thatto the tune of several hundred thousand dollars.

As an elected member of the California Democratic Party's central committee during the last decade, I've often witnessed such top-down maneuvers. Frequently, the CDP's most powerful leaders are in a groove of thwarting the progressive aspirations of the party's bedrock supporters and blocking measures that would materially improve the lives of millions of Californians.

"This is what happens when the culture of high-priced consultants and cult of personality meets a corporate-controlled legislature and party," said Karen Bernal, a Sacramento-based activist who chaired the CDP'sProgressive Caucus for six years. She told me: "The campaign promises and vows of support for progressive policy are revealed to be nothing more than performative, while the hopes and dreams of the party's progressive base are sent to die in committee and behind closed doors. The end result is a noticeable lack of fight when it's most needed."

Now, with the recall election barreling down on the state, the routinely aloof orientation of the state party's structure is coming back to haunt it. Overall, the CDP's actual connections to grassroots activists and core constituencies are tenuous at best, while Newsom comes across as more Hollywood and Wall Street than neighborhood and Main Street. No wonder Democrats statewide are less energized about voting on the recall than Republicans are.

If Newsom loses the recall, his successor as governor will be determined by who gets the most votes on "part 2" of the same ballot. In that case, you might logically ask, isn't the "part 2" winner a safe bet to be a Democrat in such a heavily Democratic state? Actually, no.

On the theory that having any prominent Democrat in contention would harm his chances of surviving the yes/no recall vote on the ballot's "part 1," Newsom and party operatives conveyed to all of the state's prominent Democrats:Don't even think about it.

The intimidation was successful. Not a single Democrat with substantial name recognition is on "part 2" of the ballot, so no reasonable safety-net contender exists if the recall wins. As a result, Newsom's replacement looks as likely to be an ultra-right Republican as a Democrat. And even if the replacement is a Democrat, it would almost certainly be a highly problematic fellow financial adviser and YouTube starKevin Paffrath, whose grab bag of ideas includes a few that appeal to Democrats (marriage equality, higher teacher pay and promotion of solar and wind farms) but features a lot of pseudo-populist notions that would do tremendous damage if implemented.

Paffrath's proposals, asdescribedby the Southern California News Group, seek"to make all coronavirus safety measures optional, to ditch income tax for anyone making less than $250,000, to use the National Guard to get all unhoused Californians off the streets and to give trained gun owners more rights." As a clue to the inclusivity of the "centrist solutions" that Paffrath says heyearnsfor, he introduced himself to voters with a video that "features clips from Fox News and from conservative media host Ben Shapiro."Recent polling shows the 29-year-old Paffrath neck-and-neck with the frontrunning Republican on the ballot,bombastic Trumpist talk-show hostLarry Elder.

Whether Newsom will remain governor past mid-autumn now looks like a coin flip. And what's at stake in the recall goes far beyond California in fact, all the way to the nation's capital.

California's 88-year-old senior senator, Dianne Feinstein, is widely understood to be in poor health andsuffering from cognitive declineas she withincreasing difficultynavigates the U.S. Senate, now evenly split between the two parties. Under state law, if she dies or otherwise leaves her seat vacant, the governor gets to appoint the replacement. In a worst-case scenario, a Republican becomes governor when the recall election results are certified in October and thus, for at least the next14 months, would have the power to select Feinstein's replacement, thereby once again making Mitch McConnell the Senate majority leader.

Given the looming political dangers, Feinstein should resign so that Newsom could appoint a Democratic replacement. But such a selfless moveis highly unlikely. Despite all the talk about loyalty to their party and determination to defeat the extremism of the Republican Party, corporate Democrats like Newsom and Feinstein routinely look out for No. 1. That's how we got into this ominous recall mess in the first place.

Continue reading here:
California recall looks like a disaster and the state's top Democrats paved the way - Salon

The drama in Texas over election reform is drawing to a close.

A week ago last Monday, the Texas Senate held hearings on S.B.1 and opened debate Wednesday. Sen. Carol Alvarado, a respected Houston Democrat, then filibustered the bill with a 15-hour speech that began early Wednesday evening and ended Thursday at about 9 a.m. As she concluded her filibuster, Ms. Alvarado was surrounded by Democratic colleagues, then congratulated by some Republican senators for her grit. The Senate still passed the election-reform bill on a party-line vote, 18-11.

Meanwhile, Democratic state representatives are drifting back from Washington, where 56 of them had fled to deny the House a quorum to conduct business. They seem to have left Texas with a superspreader among them, as five later said theyd tested positive for Covid despite being vaccinated. Apparently bored by the nations capital, two Democrats also reportedly hit the Portugal beaches in secret before being discovered.

Rumors are that 95 or so of the 100 representatives needed for a quorum are in Austin. Other Democrats are reportedly looking for face-saving ways to show up for work so the special session can finish its business and go sine die.

Yet though it didnt stop S.B.1, Ms. Alvarados filibuster helped clarify what this disturbance is about. Its not the bills increase in the number of required hours for the states already-generous early-voting period, its mandate that more medium-size counties hold weekend early voting, the simplified procedures for verifying absentee ballots, or the requirement that mail-in voters be able to cure online, by phone, or in-person any mistakes in their ballot.

See more here:
Democrats Will Soon Play Texas Fold Em - The Wall Street Journal