They Just Might

Former Vice President Kamala Harris is still considering a political comeback.

Asked if she would run for President in 2028, she said that she just "might" do so.

To those who think she should try for the Presidency again, let me refresh your memories.

How many primaries and caucuses did she win in her 2020 presidential campaign?  Zero.

How many primaries and caucuses did she actually compete in in her 2020 presidential campaign?  Zero.  She had to end her candidacy in 2019.

How many swing states did she win in the 2024 general election?  Zero.

How many Democratic presidential candidates other than Harris have lost the popular vote in the past twenty years?  Zero.

Well, at least she has a perfect record.

You know, it's really galling to hear Harris say she might run again after losing to Trump in 2024 and not see her being ridiculed en masse when Martin O'Malley, who showed a real feistiness in going after Trump when he ran for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, got laughed at when he said that he might run again in 2020 after he lost to Trump in 2016, and . . . oh, wait, that was Hillary Clinton!

Good luck with another run for the Presidency, Madam Former Vice President.  The Democrats, as repeatedly noted here, are notorious for shunning and turning away failed presidential nominees.  They don't get to make comebacks.   They don't get a second chance.  They don't even get a lousy speaking slot at the next Democratic National Convention.  They are complete . . . losers.

And that certainly includes Harris.  In fact, she's even less popular than Donald Trump.  Seriously.  In an NBC News poll released this week, Donald Trump - who has led the country into another unjust war in the Middle East, destroyed the economy, sicced ICE on native-born U.S. citizens - including journalists - suspended civil liberties, dismantled federal government services, and has taken away people's health insurance - had 41 percent of people surveyed respond favorably to him.  Harris had a 36 percent favorable response.

Is it any wonder why advertising genius Donny Deutsch laughed at the Democrats on television two days after Trump forced Harris into early retirement? 

Oh, and lest you think I'm being a nasty ol' white man beating up on a woman of color, I'm also here to tell you that Gavin Newsom, Harris's fellow Californian, is even less popular; he only got a 27 percent favorable response.  It's not really surprising.  Newsom has trolled Trump and ridiculed him every chance he gets and has been instrumental in bringing Donald's poll numbers down.  But that should not be construed into thinking that Newsom himself is popular.  In fact, he has been held in great - and justified - suspicion among progressives, who have noted that Newsom does not want to tax billionaires because of the wealth they benefit for the economy, he started a podcast because he apparently has too much time on his hands as governor of California, his podcast included guests such as Steve Bannon and the late Charlie Kirk, and, while talking with Kirk, he agreed with him that it is "unfair" in allowing transsexual women to compete in women's sports.

Gavin Newsom is not the savior of the Democratic Party, people.  He's a smooth-talking technocrat who takes superficially liberal positions and hopes his suave demeanor and his perfect hair will compensate for his lack of substance.  In other words, he's the Gary Hart of California.

I hope Democrats don't get sold on Harris or Newsom in 2028 simply on name recognition alone - or because they're not Vance or Rubio (or Trump, who's already plotting on how to stand for a third term).  As for whom the Democrats should nominate for President in 2028 - assuming there'll be two candidates for th3e office - they must remember Smokey Robinson's mother's advice.

They'd better shop around.  Just not in California.     

More Of This and That

The Democrats are expected to do very well in not spectacularly well in the midterm elections this year, but it will be more likely due to Trump's own ineptitude than anything the Democrats are doing right.  As long as the Democrats keep stepping on each other's toes (and their own), a Democratic victory in November won't mean that the Democrats will have won.  It will only mean that the Republicans will have lost.

As I type, Americans will have either seen their health insurance costs double or their policies slip away completely because the Republicans allowed Affordable Care Act subsidies to expire after enough Senate Democrats agreed to reopen the government for the promise of a vote on  Affordable Care Act subsidies that never happened.  Washington insiders claim that the Democrats won the fight over the subsidies by allowing the government shutdown to happen, but the only folks who are buying that argument are . . . other Washington insiders.

As for the redistricting fight . . . let's just say the Democrats lucked out, dudes.  They seemingly blew it when Texas Democratic legislators returned to Austin from Chicago to give the Republicans a quorum to redistrict the state and create five new Republican U.S. House districts, but thanks to Gavin Newsom (above) and California voters, Republicans got outplayed and lost their net advantage from the redrawing of the Texas maps.  Then Trump tried to have more GOP-friendly districts in Ohio and Indiana only to meet with fierce resistance from . . . Republicans.  Especially in Indiana.  Hoosiers (whom Trump acolytes from outside the state have referred to as "Indianians") don't like being told what to do by outsiders.  It's that stubborn Indiana independence that had long made Hoosier Republicans logical running mates for Republican presidential nominees, from Schuyler Colfax to Mike Pence (though their collective record has been mixed at best) and also produced one of the few memorable Democratic Vice Presidents, Thomas Marshall, whose wit and humor made his role as a liaison between the Wilson administration and Congress more interesting than it would have been (you know that quote "What this country needs is a really good five-cent cigar"? him).  

But California and Newsom notwithstanding, Democrats have benefited more from Republican mistakes than their own aptitude.  They're going to have to do better than how they've been doing unless they want to win Congress by default.

(As this blog post was "going to press," I heard that Trump invaded Venezuela and took custody of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.  I'll address that story as soon as I absorb it sufficiently.)   

Climate Clownishness

When it became apparent that either President Biden was likely to lose the 2024 presidential election or the Democrats would never be able to overcome the sluggish economy and keep the White House with a different nominee, John Kerry, President Biden's special envoy for climate-change issues, was on the PBS NewsHour explaining why a future Republican President, whom most people assumed would not be Donald Trump, would honor the Paris Climate Agreement, which President Biden had had the United States rejoin in 2021 after Trump had pulled the U.S. out of it.  Kerry explained that the business sector would advise such a hypothetical Republican President to remain in the climate accord because it was good for business and good for the economy.

Fast forward to 2025.  Trump returned to power, he pulled the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement ten minutes after taking office to the thunderously vocalized approval of F-150-owning MAGA cultists present, and a good deal of the business sector capitulated to Trump's entire economic agenda.  (And I no longer watch the PBS NewsHour.) This became apparent - no, blatantly obvious - when former Volkswagen of America president Scott Keogh, now heading up Volkswagen's Scout SUV subsidiary, announced that Scout would instead develop gasoline/electric hybrid systems rather than the electric-only vehicles Scout had been created to develop.  And, while only a year ago, clean energy sources like solar power and wind power were the wave of the future, the major energy policy upheaval Trump perpetrated as soon as Biden (and Harris) was gone now envisions a future of more oil and gas - which only satisfies "public" utilities overcharging its customers for electricity and gas, Vladimir Putin, Russian energy oligarchs, American legacy oil and gas companies, and startup oil and gas companies like Phoenix Energy, which just went public and has been insufferably running ads on YouTube - which, thankfully, can be skipped. 

It is in the milieu of this brutal reality that European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced the EC's new policy toward climate change.

Von Der Leyen announced that the European Commission would focus on controlling and fighting carbon emissions from fossil fuels rather than going after fossil fuels themselves.  This is like conservatives on a local school board who believe that rap is a detriment to America's musical heritage (and it is) deciding to censor rap by banning it from student events and school campuses rather than spending more money on music education.     

When it comes to trying to heal the planet, the Europeans are America's superiors, just as they are in cinema, urban planning, social welfare, and intellectualism, but von der Leyen and her fellow commissioners seem resigned to the idea that anything they attempt to do to combat climate change that is more than what they're doing right now is going to be canceled out by Trump.  The United States is already the biggest polluter on earth, except when in some years it's China, and Trump's commitment to more carbon pollution - which he took pride in during his incoherently improvised speech to the United Nations this past September - is only going to make that worse.

To be fair, many American companies such as General Motors and Pepsico, along with even a couple of oil companies like Occidental Petroleum, are defying Trump and working with foreign governments and various NGOs to do something about climate change, recognizing, as John Kerry predicted, the positive business opportunities that dealing with climate change offers.  Many of them were active in the COP30 climate change summit in Brazil, as was California governor Gavin Newsom, who as the chief executive of the world's fourth-largest economy, is a de facto world leader. But - and you knew I was coming to a "but" - the mission statement COP30 issued was as substantial as milquetoast, and the participants who vowed vocally to continue the fight against climate change spoke with the roar of a tiger but offered the bite of a kitten. 

And while there are many states other than California who still want to be in the Paris Agreement and commit to its goals, Trump is already working on ways to prevent that, and in, for example, my home state of New Jersey, where Trump canceled federal support for a wind farm designed to reduce energy costs, Governor-elect Mikie Sherrill has her work cut out for her. Given that there is more commitment to the Paris Agreement in more Democratic regions of the United States than in Republican regions, and given that the U.S. is too divided to return to the Paris Agreement if a Democrat ever holds the Presidency again - not that we'll be welcomed back in, given that a future Republican President probably would pull us back out and cause a perpetual whiplash when it comes to American climate policy - well, bearing all that in mind, this is just another perfect argument for breaking up the United States in separate countries.     

The California Republic will join the Paris Agreement and stay in.  So will the United Republic of New England and whatever republic New Jersey ends up in.  The Confederate States will reject the Paris Agreement and stay out. 

Bye bye, Florida. 

Mikie Makes a Move

Gavin Newsom has floated the idea of California withholding tax payments to the federal government as a way of protesting Trump's regime.  Now it looks like New Jersey's incoming governor might beat Newsom to the punch.

Politico has reported that Mikie Sherrill is seriously looking into having New Jersey withholding federal tax dollars from Washington, telling native New Jerseyan Jon Stewart on his podcast that she has thought about it all time, calling it a "great idea. "If they’re not gonna run the programs, then what are we paying them for?" she said. "It’s like, you know, 'you’re paying us for a service,' and they're not delivering. So let's stop paying for it."

You know whom they are delivering services for with New Jersey's - and California's - federal tax dollars?  Republican states like Louisiana, Arkansas, Montana, and Nebraska, among others, as well as Wyoming, North Dakota - you know, the states Jimmy Stewart once called "the rectangular ones."  

The Democratic states are repeatedly paying for services poorer, more conservative states get more of, and they have to raise state taxes to provide the programs and amenities their constituents expect with less and less help from the federal government - and no state and local tax (SALT) deductions anymore, thanks to Trump.  Sherrill - and, hopefully, Newsom - are ready to rub SALT deductions in Trump's wounds.

Upon hearing of Governor-elect Sherrill's commetns, a White House spokesperson repsonded,"Wow, a Democrat encouraging lawbreaking. What else is new?"

She who refuses to submit federal taxes to a national administration run by a megalomaniacal tyrant violates no laws.

And this could be the first act of New Jersey seceding from the Union.  Theoretically speaking, of course.  😉  

I can't wait to see what Virginia's new incoming female govenror, Abigail Spanberger, does when she takes office.  And is she wants to take her state out of the Union - hey, the state's motto is Sic semper tyrannis - she can always dust off Virginia's 1861 ordinance of secession.

Of course, the Virginia legislature will have to rewrite and amend the part about the federal government "having perverted said powers not only to the injury of the people of Virginia, but to the oppression of the Southern slave-holding States."

Texas Hold-Up

The economy is tanking, Social Security is in trouble, and people are ticked off about the big ugly bill.  So what can Trump do now?  He might decide - no, he did decide - to tell Texas governor Greg Abbott to redraw the districts in the Texas U.S. House delegation so that the Republicans can gain five House seats and thwart any effort by the Democrats to win back the chamber in the 2026 midterms.  So Abbott, who was only too happy to oblige and called a special session of the Texas state legislature.  Democratic legislators quickly left the state and didn't come back until after the special session expired.  Abbott was thwarted, but like the bad guy in any dime-store Western novel, he'll be back.

And when he is, Gavin Newsom (above) will be there to meet him.  The California Democratic governor has vowed to get the California state legislature to find a way to gerrymander California's U.S. House districts if Texas gerrymanders its own.  Until Texas acts, California will stand pat, so if and when Newsom makes his move, he will be fighting back, not playing tit for tat.  Democrats are finally fighting back against Trump.  That's the good news.  The bad news is that none of them are serving in Washington.  and they might not be serving in Congress for much longer.  When they return after summer recess, Trump just might have them arrested and sent to a concentration camp.  He already has the National Guard running the place.

And if California successfully thwarts Texas . . . well, Trump is already looking to outlaw mail-in voting, and he plans to "investigate" voter irregularities in any states that do allow mail-in voting in the 2026 midterms . . . even if the governors and legislatures there don't have any basis to look into such charges and tell Trump not to interfere.  

Be afraid.  Be very afraid.

Ten Years Gone

It was ten years ago today that Donald Trump rode down his own golden escalator to announce his 2016 candidacy for President of the United States, a story that was at the time only worthy of coverage on "Access Hollywood" or "Entertainment Tonight."  And everyone laughed - it was just another silly celebrity presidential campaign, like that of Joe Walsh (the Eagles guitarist, not the former Illinois congressman) or Bozo the Clown.

No one is laughing now.

In the past ten years, Trump has pushed right-wing agendas, used his power to grift from the government, restrict civil liberties, and even used his time between his two presidential terms to wreck havoc in Washington through his congressional minions.  His cuts to various programs and agencies since returning to power in January 2025 have done more damage - mostly irreversible - to America in five months than anything Trump had done in the nine years and seven months before then.  And because the damage he's done to America in the last five months is mostly irreversible, that is, again, why I am a secessionist today.

But never mind that.  Ten years of Trump's impish mischief-making have pretty much culminated in the past week in the reaping of the mean and stunted fruit that Trumpism has born.  Among the lowlights:

• Trump has tightened his grip on the California National Guard and the Marines in Los Angeles, keeping the troops in place as he appeals a judicial ruling saying that he cannot.
• Two Minnesota lawmakers and their spouses were shot, one of the couples shot to death, by a MAGA extremist.
• U.S. Senator Alex Padilla (D-CA) walked into a briefing by Homeland Security Secretary and ICE Barbie Kristi Numbskull and attempted to ask her questions regarding the ongoing mass deportation going on in his state.  Senator Padilla was then accosted and seized by federal officers before being hauled out and pinned to the floor and handcuffed.  The Homeland Security Secretary continued to talk as if nothing were happening.
• Numbskull also threatened to have the governor of California and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass forcibly removed from office.
• Israel bombed suspected Iranian nuclear-research sites, and Trump may have gotten us inadvertently involved. 
• The parade.  That damn military parade.  

But here's some good news.  The Trump birthday military parade was an unmitigated disaster.  So few people bothered to show up that empty bleachers were clearly visible along the parade route.  The soldiers dressed in fatigues rather than dress uniforms, and they don't so much march as they walked.  A quiet protest among the Army personnel for being forced into such a farcical event was plainly obvious not only by their style of dress and casual strolling but also by a tank . . .

. . . with wheels that squeak.

By contrast, the No Kings protests that were held from coast to coast attracted millions of people, like this rally in Chicago.

Anyone not at this rally was likely at the White Sox ball park to hear Pope Leo XIV celebrate Mass from Rome via satellite.

If there was a winner from all of this mishigas, it was California governor Gavin Newsom.  Newsom has always been seen as the Gary Hart of  Generation X - glib, polished, policy wonk - but more recently he's been seen as such for all the wrong reasons - dubious relationships with women, conniving, willing to take right-wingers seriously by communicating with them, too slick for his own good. This past week, however, Newsom threw caution to the wind and delivered a sharp, pointed detailed attack on Trump that more or less accused the Dear Leader of doing exactly what he's doing - attempting to assume dictatorial powers and instigating trouble in the streets of Los Angeles as part of a plan to assume more power.  In other words, he did what most Democratic politicians should do but have not.  He's had enough and he said what needed to be said. 

A week ago, I wrote that Kentucky governor Andy Beshear was the logical choice for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination - that is, if the Democratic Party hasn't been banned under martial law by then - in my argument that we need a white male Protestant.  I didn't even mention Gavin Newsom in that post.  Now I look at him anew and I'm thinking, yes, he ought to be in the running for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination as well.

There's just one little bugaboo - he's a Roman Catholic, and of course a lot of white Protestants don't want a President who might bow to an American Holy Father in Rome.  So let's keep that little detail about Newsom to ourselves. 😉   

P.S.  You might have noticed that Kamala Harris hasn't resurfaced in the past week despite her adopted hometown of Los Angeles being under military occupation.  Most likely, she's ruled out another run for the Presidency (before Democrats adhere to tradition and rule it out for her) and she is now hoping that the next Democratic President will appoint her as U.S. Attorney General - the job she should have had in the Biden administration, because she would have been more aggressive against Trump than Merrick Garland was.   

Gavin Newscum

That's the name Donald Trump gave the current governor of California.  And these days, alas, it fits him.

Gavin Newsom, long considered a presidential possibility in the Democratic Party, has branched out into podcasting as his administration becomes a lamer duck by the day.  Smart idea - podcasting is in these days, and it's a great way for anyone to get their names and reputations out in public.  And Newsom has always been politically savvy, having pretty much destroyed Ron DeSantis' political ambitions in an on-camera debate with the Florida governor on Fox News.

But when Newsom launched his podcast with its debut episode, his own political ambitions were smashed like DeSantis'.  And again, it was Newsom who did the smashing.  Newsom's strengths as a Democratic politician have always been his support for environmental causes, gay rights, and other issues dear to the hearts of mainstream Democrats and progressives.  So imagine how many jaws in the anti-Trump left dropped when Newsom featured as his first guest on his "This Is Gavin Newsom" (clever title, huh? 😛 ) the right-wing flamethrower Charlie Kirk, whose misogynistic and homophonic remarks have made him one of the biggest rhymes-with-glass-poles in America.  And if that weren't bad enough, his next guest was Steve Bannon, the architect of the xenophobic, authoritarian MAGA movement.  

What Newsom has done is give a platform to two of the most dangerous voices against the democratic system.  I mean, sure, he's trying to expand beyond his Democratic echo chamber, and he wants to understand what makes MAGA tick, but that should not be the objective.  We shouldn't care what drives MAGAts; the fact that they're there and a threat to our system of government should be enough for us to understand and oppose them.  Now is not the time for reaching a hand across the table to the other side when the other side is a fascist plot to take over America.  Newsom seems to think he can charm MAGAts into thinking things through and realizing what fools they've been for embracing Donald Trump.   That's just the sort of politician - a guy who wants so much to be liked by as many people as possible - you should avoid.

And so, Gavin Newsom has gone from being a potential future President to being the Gary hart of the 2020s.  By that, I don't mean that Newsom is this decade's suave, sophisticated Democratic A-list politico from a Western state.  I mean he's self-important and reckless, and he just ended his own political career with an egregiously dumb move.  Having Kirk and Bannon on his podcast suggests what you'd get if the leader of a rising star in the German Social Democratic Party of the 1920s had a radio show and invited Adolf Hitler as a guest to promote "Mein Kampf."

Remember when Gary Hart said that the Western states represented the future of the Democratic Party and America?  Uh, yeah.  First Hart's own Bimini affair, then the complete disappearance of Montanans Brian Schweitzer and Steve Bullock, then Kamala Harris' failed presidential campaigns, now Newsom . . . do Western Democrats have a future left?  Or Democrats from any region of the country, for that matter? 

Fit To Be Tied

It's September 2023, and all the polls show the same thing . . . President Biden and Donald Trump are tied in a potential 2024 rematch despite Trump having been indicted four times for money fraud,  mishandling secret documents, interfering in the 2020 Georgia presidential election (Georgia the U.S. state, not Georgia the Transcaucasian country and former Soviet republic), and insurrection.  How on earth can Biden not be so far ahead of Trump that he can win a landslide - apart from the fact that Americans are morons?

There are actually several reasons, all of them quite sobering - and scary enough to encourage me to plan for a future in which the Proud Boys (at least those that haven't been sent to prison already) are deputized into a new secret police.  First, despite the improving economy, not enough people are feeling it thanks to aftereffects of inflationary pressures.  Although inflation is cooling,  food and gas prices are still high and many people are still forced to economize.  That's why two people disapprove of Biden's handling of the economy for every one person that approves.

Another reason is that Trump has a solid, loyal following that Biden never had outside Delaware in his entire political career.  Trump supporters would go through fire to vote for him; Biden supporters aren't that devoted to their candidate.  Biden still doesn't get much respect, if any, from the party's progressive base despite all he's done for him.  Whereas Trump could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose any votes, Biden could accidentally spill coffee on someone on Fifth Avenue and he'd be out of the presidential campaign within a week.  

Third, there's the age problem.  Democrats are concerned about Biden being and looking so old at 80 years of age.  Trump, despite being only 3½ years younger than Biden, doesn't have that handicap.  That's because, whatever you say about Trump, he comes across as a feisty, energized, animated fighter ready to take on anyone.  Biden is so low-key, by contrast, that videos of his speeches could put the sleeping-pill industry out of business.  Fair or unfair, Biden looks much older than Trump than he actually is.    

Fourth, Biden is leading an economic comeback based on good jobs at good wages . . . with no Democrats following him.  The corporate wing of the Democratic Party still dominates Washington, a legacy of three decades of trying to please business interests and Wall Street financiers.  Biden has always been a lunchbox Democrat in the tradition of Hubert Humphrey and Tim Ryan, but most Democrats are elitists who spend more time hanging out with movie stars than with factory workers.  Trump has consistently appealed to working-class voters and convinced them that he's the only friend they have when it comes to protecting their interests - which isn't true, of course.  But he did it so well in 2016 that he had blue-collar voters sewn up long before Biden could come around to win them back in 2020.  And  Democratic Party leaders don't seem to care.       

Fifth - Kamala Harris.  She's the one Democrat that is less popular then Joe Biden right now.  Admittedly, that's mainly because she's a black woman who's also part South Asian and whose husband is a Jew - and she prefers Bootsy Collins records to Phil Collins records.  But even leaving all of that aside, she doesn't come across as warm and fuzzy as Biden does, and she seems somewhat strident even when she's in a good mood.  Many people are uncomfortable about her being a heartbeat away from the Presidency when the President is an octogenarian.  There has been talk of another California Democrat - Gavin Newsom, the governor of California - stepping in as the vice presidential candidate in 2024 and the heir apparent in 2028. I guarantee you, that if the Democrats go that route - no matter how logical that sounds, given Newsom's own political gifts - you'll start seeing stickers on car windows that read this:

Because Democrats would rather be politically correct than politically successful, that's how we got Hillary Clinton over Martin O'Malley and Bernie Sanders.

So what are we left with?  A likely Biden renomination and a rematch against Trump, whose re-election is viewed unfavorably by 69 percent of American voters, according to one poll.  But get this: That same poll shows that 75 percent of voters view Biden's re-election unfavorably.  To say that Biden has a tough fight ahead of him is an understatement, and he just keeps saying, "Watch me."  I have watched his 2024 presidential campaign; so far, it's like watching paint dry.

That said, this is precisely why I'm beginning to view Trump's return to power as inevitable.  I expect that a second Trump administration will last beyond January 20, 2029 because Trump will declare martial law at the first sign of civil unrest, he'll have Democrats bodily removed from Congress, and all of his opponents and enemies - including average citizens, whose IP addresses will be collected by the government - will get one-way train rides to concentration camps in North Dakota, if not sent to the gallows.  

Though some of them may just be taken out to a football field and face a firing squad.

Fighting Fire With Fire

California governor Gavin Newsom is taking the opportunity to nullify national law as seriously as Greg Abbott has done in Texas.

Taking a cue from the anti-abortion law in Texas that allows private citizens to sue to enforce it, Governor Newsom, who clearly wants to run for President someday and is feeling his oats after surviving a recall attempt back in September, is proposing legislation to allow California residents to sue "anyone who manufactures, distributes, or sells an assault weapon" in California and allow up to $10,000 in damages for this who sue successfully.  This is wen though the band on assault weapons in California is being litigated in federal court.

The idea is that, if the U.S. Supreme Court lets the anti-abortion law in Texas stand while litigation against that goes through the federal courts, it can have no complaints against a similar gun-control law in California.  Sorry, but I'm one of those cynics who think that the Supreme Court will apply a double standard and strike down such a California law outright. And they'll it with this reasoning.  Where does it say "right of the people to keep and bear arms" mentioned in the Constitution?  The Second Amendment, of course.  Now . . . where does it say "right to an abortion in the Constitution?

They conservatives on the Court aren't called "strict constructionists" for nothing.

Sometimes, when you fight fire with fire, you can expect to get burned.

Gavin Newsom - Still the Governor of California

How did Gavin Newsom (below) survive an attempt to recall him as governor of California and put a right-wing wacko in his place?

Perhaps this map explains it.

This is a map showing the rate of COVID contagion in the United States.  Red states are at a level of high contagion, and orange states are one level lower than that.  California is one of only three states, along with the District of Columbia, to be at the lower level of contagion.  (The other two, as you can plainly see, are Connecticut and Vermont.)

Governor Newsom's policies on containing COVID are working.  More people are getting vaccinated in California than most other states.   Newsom committed some unforced errors early on in the COVID crisis, like eating at a swank restaurant when most of the state was under lockdown, but California voters forgave him for being human. All the had to do was look at the alternative, and Newsom was happily to show it to them in the form of Larry Elder, who threatened to undo COVID mandates and restrictions and also undo a lot of popular social programs (which wasn't possible, since the legislature would still be Democratic), as well as appoint a Republican U.S. Senator should incumbent Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein die or resign (which was probable, since Senator Feinstein is 88).  But mainly he successfully portrayed Elder as a California version of Donald Trump, which wasn't that hard to do, and now many Democrats looking at the treacherous terrain for the 2022 midterms are thinking of doing what Newsom did - rally the base to come out and vote against Trumpism and the Republican extremists who embrace it.

They'll have to do more than that.  Newsom also found enough time to tout his stands on issues like the environment and abortion at a time when half of the state is on fire and Roe v. Wade might not survive its fiftieth anniversary (in January 2023, the month the next Congress convenes).  He also cited his own record as governor.  Democrats in 2022 need something to get voters to vote for them, not just against Trumpism.  They need to pass that infrastructure bill in Congress.  They need to at lest try to get Roe v. Wade codified.  They also need to win big in more competitive gubernatorial races later this year, New Jersey and Virginia.  And they need to get voters to have confidence in the outcomes of the elections - like in California, where Larry Elder conceded after threatening to charge fraud if he lost.  (It was such a blowout, he had no choice.)

I certainly would have voted to keep Newsom if I had been a California voter.  But, since even those who voted to keep him could have voted for someone to replace him if the recall were to succeed, I still would have voted for someone.

Of course, I would have written in Janet Evans.

Because why would I have voted for Caitlyn Jenner? 😛

Hurricane Larry

Not this.

This.

Larry Elder could be elected governor of California one week from today, if incumbent governor Gavin Newsom is recalled.  Elder opposes the minimum wage, sneers at COVID restrictions, denies climate change, and would replace ailing Democratic U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein with a Republican even nuttier than he is, costing U.S. Senate Democrats their majority. 

And he could still win.  I'm not saying Elder will win, only that he could win.  And I said the same thing about Donald Trump's presidential bid in 2016.  Although the polls show Newsom comfortably ahead on the recall issue, polls have been notoriously unreliable in many elections, and the fact that this is a September election in an odd-numbered off year could skew the results of the polls as well.  Democrats in California are voting by mail, while Republicans could vote in person on September 14, and - fueled by hatred for all things the emanate from the Democratic Party - could tip the balance in Elder's favor.

And, if Newsom is recalled, Elder will be governor of a liberal state with just 25 percent of the vote.  Maybe 27. 

Be afraid. Be very afraid. 😨

Elder Statesman

Talk radio host Larry Elder comes across as an odd bird - a black conservative Republican who dismisses New Deal social programs and gives air time to climate-change deniers and vaccine-resistant folks who think COVID is a bigger hoax than global warming. His campaign has been anything but orthodox.  He allegedly brandished a gun against his fiancée.   And yet here he is, running for governor of California in the September 14 recall election absent incumbent governor Gavin Newsom.  He's offended everyone in the mainstream press in his campaign, refusing to acknowledge them and giving time to GOP-friendly outlets in the media. 

And here's the scary part - he could actually win.

Here's the deal.  Gavin Newsom is in over his head.  He's done a haphazard job handling the COVID crisis in California, the state is literally burning up with all of those wildfires, there's a growing homelessness crisis, a fraud scandal has dealt a blow to the state's unemployment bureau, and a lot of people in California are so ticked off at the dude that they're willing to try anything different - even a black conservative nut job who threatens women and denies the very climate-change phenomenon that is fueling those wildfires in the first place.

The polls show a close race between those who support recalling Newsom and those who don't, but Newsom has the edge right now.  And Elder is hardly a shoo-in.  California voters who vote no on recalling Newsom can still vote for a governor to replace him, and those who vote no would likely vote for Democrat Kevin Paffrath, a real estate broker (but not a developer - he's not a Trump!) and a financial analyst who.. like Elder, has never held public office, but who is seen as a safer and more moderate choice than Elder.  If enough people who support the recall split their votes for their preferred candidate between Elder and other Republicans (and there are many), it could allow Paffrath to squeak by and win the governorship should the recall go through.

Alas, the betting money is on Elder to become the forty-first governor of California in the event of a successful recall, and it would be big blow not only to California Democrats but to Democrats across the country if Newsom, like Gray Davis before him, were to be fired by the voters.  But Davis at least lost to a popular movie actor who is a moderate Republican that believes in science.  Losing to a motormouth like Elder would be a bigger disaster for Newsom, though, on the bright side, Elder likely wouldn't win a full term in 2022 against another Democrat.  But the very idea of him being governor of California for even sixteen months is scary.

Come back, Caitlyn Jenner .  All is forgiven.

California Schemin'

With petitioners in California striving to get Governor Gavin Newsom recalled on account of his mistakes in handling the COVID pandemic, one Republican has already announced plans to run for Newsom's office.

Caitlyn Jenner.

Right.  California could be ready to - let me see if I have this straight - elect another celebrity governor, this one who's best known for having won the Olympic decathlon and starring in reality shows.  And for starring in Can't Stop the Music.

Okay, being an Olympian is no barrier to being elected to office.  Former New Jersey senator Bill Bradley was one.  But he was a Rhodes scholar.  Nor is being a TV personality a barrier to being elected to office.  Ronald Reagan hosted "GE Theater."  But he had been a union president.  Remind me again what Jenner's qualifications are to run the biggest state in the Union?  If being an Olympic decathlon champion determines eligibility for executive office, then Daley Thompson - who won the Olympic decathlon two times in a row (1980 and 1984) - should run for Prime Minister of Great Britain.

Though I imagine he could make a better PM than this guy.

Anyway, Jenner is unlikely to be the next governor of California, because even though there will probably be a recall election, a majority of Californians oppose recalling Newsom.  And if I lived in California and voted for an Olympian for governor - you can vote for a gubernatorial candidate while still voting against the recall - there's only one Olympian I'd vote for. 

But as she's not a political person, I'd have to write her in. 😉 

High-Speed Surrender

I give up.

The Trump Administration has canceled $929 million in federal funds for California to complete a high-speed rail line that would have connected San Francisco to Los Angeles but had been scaled back in February by California's new governor, Gavin Newsom.  Newsom cited cost overruns and interminable delays for his decision, and he decided to build a truncated line connecting two bush-league towns in the Central Valley instead.  Ironically, cost overruns and interminable delays are the reasons the White House cited as the rationale for canceling the funds.  House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy, whose House district is in the Central Valley and who never supported this or any other high-speed rail proposal, couldn't be more pleased to see the plug get pulled.  

Governor Newsom has called the cancellation of funds as illegal and promises to fight the rescinding of funds in court, but he also has to deal with the possibility of having to pay the government back the $2.5 billion the state has already received, which this Republican administration, the most anti-passenger-train Republican administration since the previous Republican administration, is seriously considering.

It's time to admit that this country will never, ever have modern bullet trains.  The American people can't even be bothered to discuss the issue when health care keeps taking up all of the oxygen.  Besides, this country isn't suited for high-speed rail.  Writing in Motor Trend - yes, that's an automobile magazine, but bear with me here - Mark Rechtin, a self-described high-speed rail lover who has traveled on the great bullet trains in Europe and Asia, understands that high-speed rail has a smaller carbon foot print than cars or planes, and it's competitive in terms of cost-and-time with airlines for up to six hundred miles, even winning out over planes most of the time in that distance metric.

"However," Rechtin wrote, "America is a country with a different transportation layout, logistics, cost structures, legal impediments, and population psychographics than Europe, Japan, or increasingly train-loving China. Even if we can corral the costs, high-speed rail will still be competing against the North American airport network, which accounts for half of worldwide air traffic - serviced by low-cost carriers who undoubtedly would apply pricing pressure to any rail competition."

Leaving aside that last point - most airlines want high-speed rail, so it can free up the congestion in the skies - it's hard to argue with Rechtin's conclusions.  Even if the logistics and legal issues weren't a problem, you have to deal with the fact that public transport works only when enough people live close enough to each other to utilize it and allow it to pay for itself.  Americans, however, mostly live in low-density sprawl and in places as far apart from each other as this continent-sized nation allows.  Trains can't reach every place where Americans live.  This is why so many optimistic visions of California's high-speed rail ambitions have turned out to be dead wrong.  In his 1991 book "Supertrains," which advocated for development of high-speed rail in America, ended with a fantasy prediction of California's first high-speed passenger rail line opening in 2005 - fourteen years into the future - to great acclaim and success.  Fourteen years after 2005, California and the U.S. in general are no closer to having bullet trains than they were in 1991.  We may be even farther behind.  We can't even get conventional passenger rail to run right.

There's no way our autocentric suburban living pattern - even many American cities, like Phoenix and Atlanta (and, yes, Los Angeles), are sprawled out like suburban developments - can support modern intercity rail like the living patterns of countries like Germany - 82 million people in an area the size of Montana - can.  And if that doesn't finish off the debate, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's apparent insinuation that we can give up planes and have an undersea rail line to Hawaii (hey, whatever happened to ninety minutes from New York to Paris?) certainly will.

So that's it.  I surrender.  The only way I can ever live in a country with high-speed rail is if I become an expatriate - and don't think I haven't considered that!  So, take a good look at this artist's rendering of a bullet train in California . . .

. . . because you're never going to see it for real! >:-(    

High-Speed Fail - California Edition

Donald Trump has demanded that California return federal funds given to the state to develop high-speed rail.  This directive, though it may be difficult for Trump to enforce, should signal the end of efforts to build high-speed trail in California or any other place in America for awhile - maybe for good.

Gavin Newsom, California's new Democratic governor, and other Democrats suspect that this is payback on Trump's part for California suing the executive branch over Trump's national immigration "emergency."  But I have a feeling that Trump would have found a reason to pull the plug on California's already-scaled-back bullet train even if Newsom had minded his business and not done anything to upset Trump at all.  The truth of the matter is the Trump is a Republican, and Republicans have historically been against intercity rail transit since the jet age began.  Even Richard Nixon, who nationalized intercity passenger rail with the creation of Amtrak in 1971, is believed to have done so as a precursor to getting rid of it.

I give up.  If I'm going to ride anything resembling high-speed rail in America, I'll have to settle for the Acela - Spanish for "bullet train lite" - which I actually did ride once . . . in 2001, but not since  then because I haven't been able to travel much in the past several years thanks to the hollowing out of the middle class . . . which we could rebuild by giving people jobs to build and run a modern intercity passenger train network!

Don't bet on that. Trump's attention span is so limited that he seems to have an "infrastructure week" every few months to talk about rebuilding America as an excuse for not talking about Russia or Robert Mueller.     

 

High-Speed Hijinks - 2019 Edition

When the Green New Deal championed by U.S. House member and hot Democratic property Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez mentioned high-speed rail as part of a more environmentally friendly future, I was ecstatic, as it meant that Washington was abuzz with talk of fast trains for the first time in nearly a decade.  Then, on cue, the roof caved in.  Or so it appeared.

A sub-moronic congressional staffer apparently let out a first draft of the Green New Deal that advocates building enough high-speed rail to make air travel in the United States unnecessary, overlooking not just the fact that airliners would still be a preferred transport mode for transcontinental travel but also overlooking the fact that Hawaii - which, last time I checked, is a state - is out in the middle of the Pacific, suggesting the desire to build an ambitious undersea rail line that is the realm of science fiction.  Needless to say, Republicans, who hate passenger trains because it eats into the profitable business of selling cars, pounced and said that this demonstrates what a bunch of twerps high-speed rail advocates are.

But then California's new governor, Gavin Newsom, seemed to have dealt the biggest blow to the hope for high-speed rail in America when he announced that he was scaling back his predecessor Jerry Brown's plan to build a high-speed train line to connect San Francisco and Los Angeles because millions of dollars were spent to get it going and the state isn't one millimeter closer to finishing it than when it started.

California politicians who never wanted a bullet train in the Golden State in the first place - such as U.S. House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy - applauded Newsom's announcement.  The project had been wrongheaded from the start. The route chosen bypassed too many cities and towns in between San Francisco and Los Angeles and took a meandering, indirect path so that it would go through the Central Valley and gain gain political support in that region of the state, and the contractors went ahead and started building without securing the entire route, studying the terrain, or making sure the funding was in place.  

It turns out, though, that Newsom's decision does not mean the end of high-speed rail in California.  Newsom still wants to build it, and he first wants to concentrate on connecting Kevin McCarthy's hometown of Bakersfield with Merced - two cow towns in the Central Valley - by way of Fresno, an agricultural center known for its little 5,000-watt radio stations and not much else.  The distance between Bakersfield and Merced is 164 miles - an easily manageable two-hour drive on California State Route 99.  As ludicrous as building such a line sounds, there's a method to Newsom's madness - he wants to get the easiest part of the project done while rethinking and re-configuring the San Francisco-Los Angeles connection by completing an environmental review and seeking new sources of funding.

A Newsom spokesman told a San Francisco news site that the governor hopes to move forward on the link between San Francisco and Los Angeles as "the Central Valley section demonstrates the viability of the broader project" and added that Newsom's comments about the lack of a path for the overall line was meant  merely to convey that "there isn't the funding to do the project from SF to LA under the current funding stream."

I was ready to throw up my hands when Newsom first declared his intention to scale back this rail project and the media made it sound like he was giving up on it completely, and had Newsom not clarified his comments, this blog entry would have turned out differently.  But I can't help but feel the deepest skepticism that high-speed rail will ever take root in These States, just as I've since become skeptical about the Green New Deal and the folks behind it, given the PR disaster that resulted from the aforementioned first-draft statement about getting rid of all air travel (more on my skepticism later).  I've said this once, and I'll say it again: My initial reaction to a policy proposal I'd be inclined to support, like high-speed rail, used to be, "Sounds good, I'm in!"  Now I'm more likely to say in response, "I've heard it all before."