Today, Gavin Newsom will beat back a recall election and remain governor of California, and it doesn’t look like it will be particularly close. For the sake of the state and as a signal to national Democrats, though, that cannot be the end of the story.
American democracy has become polluted with circumstances where one party can win control of the executive branch without a majority of voters, or use our system’s multiple veto points and idiosyncrasies to block majorities in Congress from setting policy. In a country with a high barrier for constitutional amendments, or a state with unified Republican control and the wherewithal to draw gerrymandered maps that maintain it, this becomes a frustrating and intractable problem.
But California isn’t like that. Democrats have massive registration advantages and a supermajority in the legislature. They don’t have to settle for an absurdity like the recall rules we’ve become so familiar with over the past couple of months.
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