After months filled with speculative hand-wringing, deeply embarrassing moments of ass-showing, and at least one Kodiak bear, California voters went to the polls on Tuesday, handing incumbent Gov. Gavin Newsom a decisive victory, bringing to a close a quixotic recall election that had become a cause celebre among the dumber corners of the MAGA-verse.
There are, of course, lessons to be learned from the wildly unsuccessful conservative attempt to install a Republican governor in the country's most populous state. The GOP's ability to exploit California's ridiculously permissive recall laws, forcing Newsom to waste time and a whole lot of money — some quarter of a billion dollars at least — is a prime example of how the very systems designed to improve state politics can be manipulated for partisan purpose. That conservatives spent weeks setting the stage to preemptively claim a "rigged election" shows how much former President Donald Trump's refusal to accept his electoral loss has become the template for Republican candidates moving forward. Political scientists will undoubtedly pour through turnout data and exit polling to determine which candidate's message resonated most strongly with which voting bloc.
