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Are you a Californian, or do you know any Californians, who missed the boat on the recall and plan to spend the rest of the night fending off pangs of regret in the fetal position? GREAT NEWS: The boat is still docked, and you (or they) still have (precious little) time to climb aboard.
- Polls close at 8 p.m. California time tonight, which means if you’re the kind of person who reads this email as soon as it hits your inbox (that is, a good person) you still have three hours to cast your ballots or harangue friends to cast theirs. That includes mail ballots, which you can place in a dropbox, or deliver to a polling place, also by 8 p.m. Think that doesn’t apply because either you or they aren’t registered? More good news! You can register the same day you vote at a polling place or vote center. Here’s where you, or (more likely) your irresponsible friends, can find their polling places; here’s where everyone who voted can track their ballots to assure the state received and counted them.
- Perhaps you think it’s not that important at this point, since polls show growing momentum against recalling Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA). What this paragraph presupposes is: Maybe they’re wrong? A recall election like this is hard to poll for several reasons: It’s an off year; it’s a referendum rather than a head-to-head; it’s California where many people who appear to be voters are actually space aliens. If the polls are wrong, and more than half of voters support the recall, the California governor for the next year-plus at least will almost certainly be Larry Elder. Who’s Larry Elder? This is Larry Elder!
- Even if the polls are accurate as hell, though, you should take advantage of this three-hour window (unless you already voted, in which case, stop, relax, voting more than once is fraud). If the recall fails spectacularly, it’ll rebuke the Republicans who tried to usurp power by exploiting a shitty loophole in the California constitution, and serve as a warning to other Republicans that Dems didn’t demobilize after 2020. If the recall fails narrowly, it’ll nevertheless provide an organizing boost to the second-worst people in politics, who will observe (quite rightly!) that they outperformed fundamentals in a very blue state, and charge into subsequent elections in other states with a head of steam.
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The first-worst people in politics, on the other hand, will be spreading lies about the election being stolen.
- In fact they're already doing that. Over the weekend—that is, days before the election, or its results—Elder’s campaign began directing supporters to a website that claimed to have detected “fraud” in the returns "resulting in Governor Gavin Newsom being reinstated as governor." Then yesterday, disgraced former president Donald Trump said "Does anybody really believe the California Recall Election isn’t rigged?”
- Elder himself has also lied about the integrity of the election and won’t promise to accept defeat if he loses. That’s a big part of why, at a get-out-the-vote event in California yesterday, President Biden called Elder, “the closest thing to a Trump clone that I’ve ever seen in your state.” “You either keep Gavin Newsom as your governor or you’ll get Donald Trump,” he added. “Don’t take anything for granted.”
We saw what happened in November when liars bent on destroying democracy lose by only narrow margins: They immediately begin trying to throw out the results. And when they fail, they foment violence. Your vote can’t stop them from lying, but on top of saving the state from falling into their clutches, it might also limit the damage they can do in defeat.
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Senate Democrats have reached internal agreement on revamped voting-rights and democracy-protection legislation, and plan to hold a test vote on it as early as next week. The new Freedom to Vote Act would create an automatic voter-registration system and same-day registration nationwide, set a 15 day floor for early voting, insulate non-political election workers from pressure, and set federal, judicially enforceable redistricting standards that states would be required to meet one way or another. The good news: These were the most important combined aims of the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. The bad news: To unify the Democratic caucus (that is, to get Joe Manchin’s vote) it also jettisons key federal-ethics and campaign-finance reforms. The worse news: None of it will happen unless Manchin and others get real and stop blocking filibuster reform. Glimmer-of-hope news: The White House seemingly no longer contends that President Biden supports the filibuster, and he’s reportedly ready to start working the phones to get this bill passed.
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- Disgraced former president Trump, the uncontested leader of the Republican Party, went so berserk after losing the election that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staffs had to call his Chinese counterpart twice (once before the insurrection, once after) to assure him that the U.S. had no intent to nuke China and that the government here was stable.
- In the second installment of The Facebook Files, we learn that Facebook knows that Instagram is a source of widespread anxiety and depression, particularly among teenage girls, but downplays its toxic effects in public and refuses to release its research on the issue to academics or lawmakers.
- Former Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) and former Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA)—the authors of the 2010 financial reform law—want President Biden to reappoint Jerome Powell to chair the Federal Reserve, rather than replace him with Lael Brainard, as some Wall Street critics would like him to do.
- His majesty Joe Manchin feels “strongly” that Democrats should impose work requirements on Biden’s expanded child tax credit if they extend it in the Build Back Better Act.
- In other centrists, House Democratic centrists are trying to weaken Build Back Better provisions that would allow the government to negotiate pharmaceutical prices for Medicare beneficiaries directly.
- Justice Stephen Breyer says the recent Supreme Court decision abandoning Roe v. Wade was “very bad” but not political, proving once again that lacking good judgment is no impediment to serving on the nation’s highest court for decades.
- In other self-owns, pandemic-related supply-chain problems have forced the British government to delay imposing Brexit-related border controls on E.U. goods, even as the E.U. has forged ahead with its own checks on British goods. “They talked about taking back control, but they are letting products into Britain without any controls at all,” chortled one E.U. diplomat. "That’s fine with us.”
- Comedian Norm MacDonald has died of cancer at age 61.
- There’s strong circumstantial evidence that Nicki Minaj’s cousin’s friend cheated on his fiance, contracting an STD that caused his testicles to swell, then blamed the swelling on his coronavirus vaccine, accidentally setting in motion a new, global anti-vax conspiracy theory.
- Cows are as easy to potty train as toddlers, which is potentially good environmental news?
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Pandemic-related emergency spending did an extraordinary job staving off another great depression, though the political consequences of it could prove to be perverse. A new Census report shows that poverty in the U.S. fell sharply in 2020 despite historic job losses, after accounting for transfers from the federal government. Poverty would’ve increased without the government aid provided in the CARES Act, but instead dropped from 11.8 percent to 9.1 percent, lifting 8.5 million people out of poverty. That’s the good news. Wonderful, even! The bad news is that most provisions of both the CARES Act and the American Rescue Plan were temporary, and will expire before the pandemic and economic downturn are over. The Build Back Better Act could cement these anti-poverty gains long-term, but in the meantime, the public will perceive poverty to have fallen under the party that bungled, downplayed, and fanned the pandemic, then risen under the party that took it seriously, even as the opposition helped Delta variant spread like wildfire, slowing the public-health and jobs recovery.
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In 2021 mental health is finally a thing, especially as people are not feeling like their normal selves. Let’s support one another and talk openly. Whether or not therapy is your thing, knowing it’s available and affordable is important, for you or perhaps a loved one.
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It’s always a good time to invest in yourself, because you are your greatest asset. See if online therapy is for you by heading to BetterHelp.com/crooked for 10% off your first month.
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