What we can (and can't) learn from California

I’m Isaac Saul, and this is Tangle: an independent, ad-free, subscriber-supported politics newsletter that summarizes the best arguments from across the political spectrum on the news of the day — then “my take.” Today’s issue is a special Friday edition.

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A month ago, California Gov. Gavin Newsom looked like he might be in trouble. Today, Newsom looks less like a political survivor and more like someone who easily flexed his political muscle to stay in office.

When I first covered the recall election, FiveThirtyEight had California voters leaning to keep Newsom as governor by a mere percentage point. Folks on the left were already writing his obituary while criticizing the Democratic party for overlooking the recall and not taking the threat seriously enough. Meanwhile, the right had coalesced not just around removing Newsom, but around replacing him with Larry Elder, the most popular conservative on the ballot, a talk radio host whose following appeared to be boosting him in the polls.

In the end, 6.1 million Californians voted to keep Newsom, and 3.4 million voted to remove him, a 63.7 percent to 36.3 percent margin.

The question now is: What to make of it? No matter how much Democrats want this to be a sign of strength, I’m not sure it is.

Yes, Newsom over-performed most of the polling. And yes, despite all the hype, he held off the recall effort rather easily. But Democrats outnumber Republicans by nearly 2 to 1 in California, and it took a visit from President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris; it took a media frenzy; it took a rotating cast of Democratic celebrities encouraging people to turn out and vote. It was clear, based both on how Newsom campaigned in the final weeks and how the Democratic party addressed this, that team blue broke a sweat.

And in California, the momentum this recall had is not a great sign. This is a state Donald Trump lost by nearly 30 points and Newsom won handily three years ago. It’s also a state where Newsom wants to be spending his time pursuing pace-setting progressive politics, not fighting off recall elections. If you’re trying to zoom out to the midterms or take the temperature on 2024, though, I would quit while you’re ahead. Californians had unique motivations for the recall