There is another election on Tuesday, next week or this week pending the publishment of this blog. The editor is on sabbatical out of the country; we pray his Visa or Passport paperwork is in order.
CA is voting on a Proposition 50, which they labeled Stop the Trump Gerrymander or something like that. It’s funny, the ballot is quite literally 2/3 of a page. We out here, on the Left Coast, are used to ballots being about 5 pages. Simply put, this measure will re-draw our congressional maps and basically elect 5 more Democrats to Congress in November of NEXT year.
So why do I blame the GOP you ask? Simple, I’ll lay it out in bullet point form with my thoughts.
- Trump is the anti-Christ in California. Anything he does, we hate it; or at least a very large majority hate it. Clever on Newsom and Bonta for drawing the legal language as an “anti-Trump” move.
- Using very bad surrogates on the campaign. Kevin McCarthy and former Governor Arnold Schwarzengger, two very unpopular ex-politicians, who rank low in respectability among GOP Voters, are somehow the voice of reason? Worse, these guys lack any credibility with the voting majority in California. Seriously folks, who thought putting up a Governor who essentially became a Democrat and a very, very moderate former Speaker as the face of the opposition would be a smart thing? If the CAGOP and CRA hate them (to their credit btw), what do you think the rest of the voters think?
- Voter apathy never happened. Elections, especially special ones, have a very, very muted turnout. Typically, it’s just hyper-partisan voters. The hyper-partisan ones on the Right come nowhere near the level of the ones on the Left.
- Trump cannot and will not get out of his own way. First, I do not understand the need to redistrict Texas, but I digress. This thing would have died out (Prop 50) had he just moved on, instead they moved on to North Carolina, Missouri, and now Indiana, and possibly Florida are going to redraw. Keeping this issue in the news just further enrages the anti-Trump voter.
- Touching on the point above, the opposition has centered on “its illegal.” While that may be true in California, it’s also unconstitutional in the other states where the GOP did it. The argument sounds like one child taunting another, “I can do it, but you can’t.” Its poor messaging and actually energizes the other side more wanting to vote.
- CA GOP Leader, James Gallagher, is another problem. He proposed a 2-state solution. I heard and read about this and thought “is this Jimmy Carter in disguise?” Really, he is comparing California to Israel and Gaza? When they were in the midst of an actual war? No way would that ever work.
- The shutdown isn’t helping. It doesn’t matter whose fault the shutdown in Washington DC is blamed on. Again, Trump is not popular here. The proposition is framed to voters as a way to stop Trump. See my point?
So, in closing, I’m thinking a result of around 58-42 or so in favor. There are just way too many Democrats and anti-Trump folks out here. Things may have been different if the above were not true, but I doubt it. I do not understand why any of this is actually necessary. President Trump has used Congress for only the “Big Beautiful Bill” as far as I know. It seems weird to go all in on this when he doesn’t actually seem to need anything to get passed by Congress.
Chief.
Full disclosure, I had a different blog written on this, but I thought it was a “little too inside baseball” and will publish it later. It deals more with the nuts and bolts of redistricting than this post.