September 17: Midterm Implications of Big Recall Win Are Mixed
Pouring over the details of the gubernatorial recall election in California, some significant patterns emerged, as I noted at New York:
The overwhelming defeat of the effort to recall California governor Gavin Newsom was a big victory for a Democratic Party that has had its troubles lately. With the margin of victory for the “no on recall” campaign roughly doubling the already-robust advantage shown in pre-election polls, the earlier scare that the recall threw into the ranks of the Golden State’s dominant party dissipated entirely. With about three-fourths of the expected vote now counted, “no” leads “yes” by a 63.8 to 36.2 margin (which could get even larger if the usual pattern of last-cast mail ballots leaning Democratic manifests itself once again).
The “no” vote was remarkably close to Joe Biden’s performance in California in 2020 (he won 63.5 percent). Given the extreme partisan polarization that underlay the recall vote (exit polls showed 89 percent of self-identified Republicans voting “yes” and 94 percent of self-identified Democrats voting “no”), that means the partisan patterns of the presidential race were reduplicated to a remarkable extent in a non-presidential special election, where Democrats often experience a “falloff,” particularly when they control the White House (and in this case, the governorship). That’s great news for California Democrats, and not a bad sign for Democrats nationally, who are bracing for the midterm losses the “White House Party” typically suffers.
But in assessing the implications of the results, it’s important to look back at what happened down ballot in California in 2020, while looking ahead to the most critical 2022 battleground, the fight for control of the House. Of the 13 net House seats Republicans gained in 2020,
four were in deep-blue California. There is no likely path for Democrats to hang onto House control in 2022 without flipping some or all of those lost seats in one of their strongest states.
Precisely because of the reduplication of the 2020 patterns, there’s really nothing about the recall returns that suggests Democrats are sure to claw back some House seats in California. Two of the four seats Republicans flipped in 2020 (with Asian-American women Young Kim and Michelle Steele as candidates) were centered in Orange County. While “no” won in Orange, the recall race there was closer than the Biden-Trump contest of 2020. A third battleground seat was the one Republican David Valadao won in a very competitive section of the San Joaquin Valley. The recall improved on Trump’s 2020 performance in every county in his district (e.g., Trump won 55 percent in Kings County, but “yes” on recalling Newsom won 63 percent). These results could reflect an intensifying alienation of this heavily agricultural area from Sacramento’s environmental and water-supply policies. Or it could reflect a drop-off in Latino turnout that could spell disaster for Democrats in close 2022 races. Either way the recall numbers should give pause to Democratic optimism about midterm House races.
One study of 2020 returns in California showed Latino turnout trailing non-Latino turnout by about 10 percent. One mail-ballot tracker for the recall showed the turnout gap between Latinos and non-Latino white voters swelling to 20 percent. Youth turnout for the recall was also terrible, exit polls suggest. Yes, these are constituencies that are difficult to mobilize in special elections. But that’s also true of midterm elections, which is a problem Democrats in California and elsewhere need to solve.
The bottom line is that Newsom won the Democratic and Democratic-leaning elements of the California electorate by strongly encouraging partisan polarization via his lavishly funded campaign. This was the obvious smart strategy in this heavily Democratic state. It’s less clear the same strategy will work wonders downballot for Democrats in 2022, which they probably will not have a big financial advantage and shifts in public opinion away from the presidential winner may have settled in, as they did for the last three presidents. Even if Democrats hang onto their monopoly of statewide offices and their super-majorities in the state legislature, any failure to make progress in House races could contribute to the much-dreaded moment when Californian Nancy Pelosi hands over her gavel to Californian Kevin McCarthy, and the Democratic trifecta that gives Biden a chance to implement his agenda comes to an end.
Norm?
Norman?
Norman Rogers?
*Warning – Possible Troll Alert*
I think more people need to get off their lazy behinds and really look for a job. The Toledo Blade (Ohio) on Sundays has over 4 full pages of jobs, with more than 1 entirely in the medical field. Of course these jobs take an education and some hard work to get which many people don’t want to do. Why do so many people think they should get paid a great wage for doing nothing? Socialism didn’t work in the Soviet Union and it won’t work here. Our country was based on you get what you work for, not making others give you something you don’t deserve. I have gotten my first raise in 10 years so something must be starting to get fixed from 8 years of depression in jobs.
This just out, from Citizens for Tax Justice, an outstanding nonprofit group that has been monitoring the tax code for progressivity for decades now:
DO FAT CATS PAY LOWER TAX RATES THAN WORKERS?
A May 8 analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, released today by Citizens for Tax Justice, shows that the federal tax code has
become so skewed in favor of investors over workers that personal taxes on earnings are now two-and-a-half times greater than personal taxes on
investment income.
The analysis shows that total federal personal taxes paid on wages now average 23.4 percent, while federal personal taxes on investment income now average only 9.6 percent.
The press release is available on CTJ’s website at
http://www.ctj.org/pdf/earnpr.pdf .
The full ITEP analysis can be found at http://www.itepnet.org/earnan.pdf .
(end of CTJ communication)
Edwards in his two Americas speech worked in this theme about this Administration favoring wealth over work in its tax and other economic policies. Most Americans, based on polling results, already know that this Administration favors the wealthy in its tax policies. And that seems not (yet, anyway) to have coincided with the sort of hue and cry one would have hoped for in light of such an outrageous reality.
I liked Edwards’ frame on this. It is a relatively easy to explain values-based statement which seems to resonate better with a broader portion of the public than others I’ve seen used to get at the same point. It is harder to attack with the class warfare line and lends itself better to putting a human face on this issue.
Frank, it is possible to determine the approximate “value” of the “jobs” being created if you take a look at the full report put out by the Bureau of Labor Statistics at http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.tl4.htm.
When you look at the numbers being offered, what you will find is that of those 288K net new “jobs”, 60.1K are in Temporary Help Services and Business Support Services (shorter version: temp jobs) and another 29.8K are in Services to Building and Dwellings (groundskeepers in other words). You will find another 36K in Accomodations and Food Services (about 80% in Food Services and Drinking Places) and another 16.8K in Ambulatory Health Care Services (home health aides in other words). So, just add up these numbers (142.7K total) to see that about 50% of the new positions are in immediately identifiable minimum wage jobs. I haven’t even teased out the other minimum wage jobs contained in the list yet but they can be identified (what percentage of Nursng and Residential Care Facilities positions aren’t minimum wage in your estimation, for example?).
I’ll let you draw your own conclusion about how sustainable Dubya’s growth projections are. Take a look at the BLS report for more detail.
ALERT: John Zogby has placed an article on his website in which he predicts, based on current polling numbers and history, that John Kerry will win the election. His arguments are quite similar to those espoused on this website…
Where are all these new jobs? I am highly educated and skilled, and I’ve been out of work for a year. It’s been ages since I’ve even had an interview.
Is there any way to tell if the new jobs are actually lower paying sector jobs? I smell a rat.
The problem with the Repub/CNBC line about how the economy is improving is that it is based on aggregate statistics. As the public rightly perceives, things aren’t getting be4tter for ordinary people. The tax cuts, while nice sounding in the aggregate, went mostly to 1-2% of the population. New jobs, ok, but no one is saying how much they pay. If they are at Wal-Mart, it isn’t good enough. Corporate profits may be up, but they aren’t being spread around. The public understands that gasoline is going up, interest rates are going up, inflation is going up, wages aren’t going up, and good jobs are still disappearing. As someone upthread said, Bush’s economic policies are succeeding, but the result is bad for 98% of the population.
In my field, information technology, over 900K jobs have been lost since 2001, and since January, 15K have been added.
This is supposed to cheer people up?
Democrats need to understand that, on the economy, Bush has not “failed.” He’s succeeded in what he is trying to do. The only problem is that what he is trying to do, is only really good for about 1% of the population. Bush is trying to shape an economy in which there are tremendous productivity gains, but no wage gains, and guess what we’ve got? Duh!
Perhaps voteres are waking up to the fact that we have embraced an economic policy with the moral equivalence of throwing a huge drunken party complete with booze, dancing girls, and a rented ballroom, then charging it all to our children. . .
Well, probably not.
The most important changes for an optimistic economy are wage growth, control over health care and insurance costs, and secure retirements. Allowing these to be dictated by employers like Bush seems content on doing will only drive more pessimism and insecurity and doubt. The party that wins public support for the economy must raise the federal minimum wage, especially for full time workers, and keep it indexed to price inflation. Sen. Kennedy made this important proposal that should be tacked onto any bill that Republicans use to eviscerate the middle class! Middle class and working class workers can’t pay their bills and mortgages and health care costs, let alone save for retirement of Bush’s ludicrous Health Savings Accounts. Bush is incredibly out of touch and REFUSES to see the error of his ways. Why do Republicans seem to only care about GDP growth, not stagnant wages? about newly unemployed numbers, not those out of work for years and years? Kerry is the only one who understands and aims to help average Americans.
No amount of priveledge can take away the fact that Kerry has the best ideas! And no amount of cowboy antics and acting chumy with voters can take away the fact that Bush’s policies have emasculated most workers who don’t earn, say, $100,000 a year and have only helped the superrich!
The jobs numbers aren’t good according to BushCo’s econ team. An average of 306,00 jobs/month, thanks to tax cuts. At least they outpace population growth again though.
It’ll go away eventually. It lags, of course. I don’t think there’s any doubt at this point that the economy, and particularly the job situation, will be considerably better by this time next year. I used to be afraid that it would improve quickly enough to help Bush, but I’m nearly positive that there’s not enough time at this point. Thank god.
I suspect that SSJPabs is correct about a time lag. Especially given the competing news this week.
I think the key indicator of the economy for most people is “when do I expect my next raise, and how big will it be?” And right now, I now a _lot_ of people for whom that indicator is very negative. Anecdotally, nearly everyone I talk to (including, unfortunately, my own employees) is clear that there will be no raises this year, and unless things change radically, next years’ are likely to be small, too.
This contrasts very, very clearly with memories of the second half of the nineties, where raises (and even bonuses, remember those?) were regular and decently-sized, if not better.
From my reading, no matter what the numbers, the one major thing this recovery has not produced, and doesn’t seem likely to produce, is any real wage growth any time soon.
So for most people, the recovery is not real on a personal level. Everyone is happy that there isn’t any inflation (unless you’re trying to buy a first house), but there certainly isn’t any sense of hope that things are getting any better.
Well I suppose it took a lot of time for the lack of jobs to really impact the public perception on economics, it might take a while for that to be too.
I’m too close to these things, too informed. I honestly admit that I have little in common with the average public in reactions to these numbers.