Will apathy play a role—and who cares, anyway?

By Ed Goldman

It’s been my party since I was old enough to vote and, in time, learned how to simultaneously hold my nose and vote—but why bring up Bill, Hillary and Gavin when we were having such a nice chat?

My Grandma Molly, a Russian immigrant, so despised Richard Nixon that one afternoon in 1971, when I took her for her preferred cocktail, a highball, in the “Sky Room” at the long-vanished Breakers Hotel in Long Beach, I thought we’d be arrested.

She had just told me she was supporting George McGovern for president, then suddenly said, in a voice much louder than her usual tone, “They should kill that Nixon! Just shoot him and be done with it!” I asked her to quiet down and said we could be arrested for seeming to threaten the president. “We?” she said. “Why ‘we’? You didn’t say it!” I explained that, either way, I was still a new reporter and even if it was “my grandma who got pinched by the Feds” (she loved when I tough-talked like this), someone would mention that a journalist bailed her out. 

“‘Journalist?!'” she said. “You may be a journalist. But you’re my grandson, Edellah.” 

What brings this up is that, as you know, we’re having an election in six days to recall or retain Governor Gavin Newsom. 

Even if you’re one of our readers in 16 states besides California, and God love you for that, you probably know Newsom as the telegenic fellow who shows up at wildfire media ops looking as though he’d just stepped out of the J. Peterman catalogue and then threw an REI jacket over his Pendleton shirt and wide-wale corduroys. He sprinkles his statements with a few manly words like “hell” and “damn” to remind us he’s seriously miffed about climate change. But his sense of style is almost the equal of his emotional tone-deafness. He flashes a quick-silver smile at inappropriate moments (like when he’s telling the state’s residents to mask/don’t mask/re-mask) and its teachers to stay home/come back/return home.

His behavioral inconsistencies have made national news. There was that maskless lobbyist-sponsored dinner at French Laundry (a really wonderful restaurant, by the way) while there was a mandate in place for everyone in the state who hadn’t been invited to cover the lower half of their faces.  

He’s also been an unfaithful husband, but that’s between his First Partner, as his wife refers to herself, and him. Besides, to the best of my knowledge, marital fidelity has been an impeachable defense only once, with Bill Clinton.  

Even so, my party has yet to put up a serious candidate to replace Newsom should he actually be removed from office.

It’s beginning to feel as though it might be a case of (Sub)Total Recall if Democrats collectively conclude that Newsom “couldn’t possibly” lose the election, just as, five years ago, they felt that Hillary Clinton also “couldn’t possibly.”

Unintentionally making things worse are headlines like this, from the August 25 edition of the Sacramento Bee, whose editorial policies are middle-Left leaning: “5 ordinary people among those running for governor.” 

Are we meant to infer from this that the clowns who get the most ink—including Larry Elder, a bloated conservative who’ll never be accused of over-thinking on any issue; John Cox, who appears in campaign ads with a bear that has more charisma than the candidate; former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer, whose major claim to fame seems to have been getting alcohol banned from Southern California beaches; and Gavin himself—are somehow extraordinary? That if you look up “exceptionalism” in the dictionary their snapshots will pop up?