Their voters, many Trumpified and defined by a hatred of Democrats, are “full of passionate intensity” (to borrow a line from Yeats). Many Democrats and independents, by contrast, may hardly pay attention to the recall or go to the polls. His backers must focus somnolent or distracted Californians on what a Republican governor would likely do to the state if Newsom were recalled. Imagine, then, that the state’s senior U.S. senator, Dianne Feinstein, age 88, retires, becomes incapacitated or dies during the tenure of a recall-elected Republican governor. The intensity of the right’s hatred of Newsom and all things Democratic will never be matched by an equivalent intensity of Newsom love.

Source: Los Angeles Times August 02, 2021 18:00 UTC