California voters recommitted their state as a leftist paradise on Tuesday.
On the recall question of Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom, residents overwhelmingly approved the status quo and rejected the initiative nearly 64 to 36 percent, with 68 percent of precincts reporting.
The race was effectively framed as a referendum on Newsom’s aggressive lockdowns, under which California residents suffered some of the most prolonged and stringent restrictions of any state in the country. Indeed, voters surveyed by The New York Times cited the pandemic as their No. 1 issue going into the polls. The effort to force a measure on the ballot 14 months before the next scheduled election picked up steam after the governor was caught flouting his own rules.
Voters, however, not only rejected Newsom’s removal but endorsed the heavy constraints on their own freedoms while excusing their governor’s hypocrisy. The elite disconnect, featuring leftist leaders who dismiss protocols imposed on their servant class, has become a routine practice within the country’s left-wing enclaves.
The elites may show their faces & signal their virtues.
Their servants must hide their faces & bear silent witness. pic.twitter.com/jahn8Odaen
— Geoffrey Miller (@primalpoly) September 14, 2021
All the servants fully masked.
The almost-entirely old, white, rich crowd of DCCC donors free to go maskless as they're served. https://t.co/OuhPp468q9
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) August 22, 2021
The results of the California recall contest may be seen as a green light among Democrats nationwide to reimpose harsh restrictions this fall after already implementing mask mandates for the vaccinated. At the end of the day, however, the race all came down to simple math in a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans 2-1 and enjoy supermajorities in the legislature. Democrats merely energized their base, and they turned out. Those Democrats are obviously a different breed than those in Minnesota or Texas, however. It’s easier to gin up turnout among far-left Democrats who faced a genuine conservative as an alternative.
The only national takeaway from Tuesday night is that California is very, very blue. Shocker. But California’s deep-blue color has implications.
Did the vote to save the governor actually reveal a love for Newsom, or just a contempt for neighbor? Newsom’s speech Tuesday night certainly didn’t hide his harsh feelings. The governor ironically branded his opponents as bigoted, anti-science authoritarians.
“We said yes to ending this pandemic. We said yes to peoples’ right to vote without fear of fake fraud, voter suppression. We said yes to women’s fundamental constitutional right to decide for herself what she does with her body, her fate, and future. We said yes to diversity. We said yes to inclusion. We said yes to pluralism,” Newsom told supporters in Sacramento.
The same governor was silent over the racial attacks against rival candidate and conservative radio host Larry Elder by the LA Times and MSNBC. In August, the state’s flagship paper published a column that labeled Elder as the “Black Face of White Supremacy.”
In California, where voters ultimately favored the leftist status quo, restrictions on liberties are encouraged, elite hypocrisy and hierarchy is excused, rampant homelessness has become normalized, and racism is celebrated so long as the victim bears the opposing political stripe.
Conservatives in the state, meanwhile, face no choice but to leave if they wish to escape the ultra-left rule of Sacramento. In northern California, a movement preceding the recall effort has already been underway among several conservative counties to join “Greater Idaho,” pending an Idaho annexation of counties in eastern Oregon that have been similarly disenfranchised by leftists ruling in Salem.
The political battles emboldening the left, such as the unsuccessful California recall, only stand to exacerbate divisions. In California, the leaders who have cemented their hold on power revealed what a true leftist paradise will look like, creating two classes that illustrate the very form of inequality they claim to despise.