Gavin Newsom is fighting for his political life as he faces a recall election next month with declining support among Californians. But just last week, the Newsom campaign breathed a sigh of relief when learning that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris would visit California to campaign for him to turn out the “no to recall” vote on Newsom’s behalf.
While California is one of the bluest states in the union, Democrats thus far aren’t sufficiently excited by Newsom to turn in their ballots. Among likely voters, it is now roughly a coin flip as to whether Newsom is recalled. And if Newsom is recalled in California’s two-stage recall process, then the next governor will almost certainly be a Republican, as Newsom will not be on the replacement ballot.
The Biden-Harris announcement should be great news for Newsom, yes? Well, perhaps not so great, or even not so good, at least not nearly as good as it would have been as recently as last month. Or even earlier this month, before Americans became painfully aware of our horrendous exit from Afghanistan.
The potential loss of California’s governorship to a Republican would be devastating to the Democratic party, so it is not surprising that the national party has tapped its heavyweights to fight the recall. The decision to seek help from Biden and Harris follows an ineffective ad campaign that featured Senator Elizabeth Warren speaking on Newsom’s behalf.
But Warren was an incredibly odd choice, having received only 13 percent of the vote in the state’s Democratic presidential primary last year. And the Warren ad doubled down on the Newsom campaign’s existing strategy, which is to paint anyone who signed the recall petition as an extremist given to white supremacy, as anti-vaccination, and as a lover of all that is Donald Trump.
In what would otherwise be terrific news for Newsom, Biden will instead arrive in California—if he still does arrive—as a damaged surrogate for the governor, having presided over what can only be called a completely botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, followed by a press conference earlier this week in which he failed to take any responsibility for perhaps the most poorly executed foreign policy decision in recent memory.
Straining to read from the teleprompter, Biden argued for 20 minutes about our failures in Afghanistan, how there would never be a good time to leave, and that the debacle that has unfolded before us is to be blamed on Trump, the former Afghani president, the Afghani military, and even the Afghani people.
And after the press conference, Biden predictably refused to answer any questions, and for good reason. All the questions would have been about the chaotic withdrawal, one that he missed even days before the Taliban ran roughshod over province after province. And he would have had no legitimate answers to those questions. Because there aren’t any, at least none that would place our poorly executed withdrawal in a better light.
Politically, it is obvious Biden would do whatever he could in Monday’s press conference to blame Trump, who negotiated a deal with the Taliban before he left office. But the Trump deal required the Taliban to cut ties with terrorists, including al-Qaeda. A United Nations report from last spring indicated that this requirement had not been satisfied, and Biden’s own team had been investigating Taliban compliance since Biden first took office in January. And lack of compliance on the part of the Taliban certainly means there was no reason for Biden to feel the need to honor his predecessor’s agreement.
What about the lack of performance from the Afghan military? The failure of Afghani security forces to engage is clearly an important reason why the Taliban consolidated power so quickly. But the security forces were heavily dependent on foreign (mostly US) contractors for maintenance of equipment, training, and support. Nearly all those contractors left last month. For whatever reasons the Afghan military had not learned to be independent after so many years, it is nevertheless very shortsighted to have not expected what happened when such crucial support personnel were removed. Why remove such key personnel if we wanted the security forces—69,000 of whom gave their lives during the war—to be able to perform?
If Biden still finds the time to visit California, he will not be the popular president that is needed by Newsom to thrill crowds and turn out the vote. And if Harris visits instead, well, she seems to have all but disappeared in her job as vice president. At this point, Newsom may well be on his own, unless he can somehow convince Barack Obama to come to his aid.
But Obama has been very selective in offering his support, particularly to struggling politicians. And Obama doesn’t have nearly as easy a target now as he did last fall, when he campaigned as much against Trump as he did for Biden. This time, the target will be African American Larry Elder, the leading recall candidate, who grew up very poor in South Central Los Angeles, and who has succeeded enormously despite the challenges he has faced in his lifetime.
If Newsom is to avoid recall, he must make the case himself by pointing to his accomplishments since he took office in January 2019. But he has not done this. And less than a month before the recall election, every voter should ask themselves why we haven’t heard about those accomplishments from the governor who is now running for his political life. And who is running out of time to salvage his governorship.
