American Politics VII: Virginia Reel

[Kilobugya]

No it’s not. It’s up to the President to decide if “a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces” is occurring.

When you have law that says "X can do Y in case Z" it's never, never up to X alone to decide what constitute case Z or not, or it would be granting power to do Y in all cases. That's a very basic principle of rule of law. The president may think it's a "national emergency created by attack", if the officer thinks it's not, he doesn't have to obey. He can be court martial-ed or judged for treason if he was wrong - but not if he actually was right. And in this case it's obvious it's not that actually obeying would be the illegal thing to do.

And you really think that the US actually cares about International treaties?

We were speaking of legality - would obeying be legal, would disobeying be legal ? In that regard, international treaties do matter more than laws. That US usually doesn't respect them in practice is irrelevant here.

[Thermodolia]

And if the President thought it was necessary to nuke China then he has the ultimate legal authority to do so. And he can just decide to do it and then let congress know later

That's not at all what the War Power Acts say. It doesn't say the President can do whatever he wants. It says (s)he can engage military action in three very specific cases only, and nuking China is neither. If you allow "anything Mr X thinks is mandatory" then you give to Mr X full dictatorial power. No law, no Constitution in a state of law can work that way.

If the President believes it's "national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces" and the officers believe it's not, then the officer can disobey, and it'll up to courts to judge who was right. The officer will be sanctioned if court considers he was wrong, not if the court considers he was right.

But the war powers act does say that it’s up to the President to decide if a National emergency is taking place. Not to mention that the US constitution states that the President has full authority over the entire military.

And yes an officer could refuse, the officer can also be removed from their authority by the President and placed under military custody as the constitution allows.

The US runs way too much on the honor system

[Kilobugya]

But the war powers act does say that it’s up to the President to decide if a National emergency is taking place.

It absolutely does not. It says the President can engage force if a national emergency (and not any kind of them, only one "created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces") exists. Not that the President as sole judgment into what constitutes such an emergency, at all.

Not to mention that the US constitution states that the President has full authority over the entire military.

By saying only Congress can declare wars it says the exact opposite.

And yes an officer could refuse, the officer can also be removed from their authority by the President and placed under military custody as the constitution allows.

Well, if the president really has all powers to do whatever he wants, then Biden can just decide that everything that was done is kosher But it's not how it works. An officer who disobeyed will be tried by a martial court or a civilian tribunal depending on the case, and it's up to the court to decide if he was right or wrong in refusing to obey, if the order was illegal/abusive (such a President ordering unilaterally a strike not in response to "an emergency created by attack...") then the court should dismiss the charges.

[Picairn]

War Powers Act. Which gives the President the authority to wage war and military actions for 90 days without congressional approval or authority. This includes nuclear weapons

Section 2(c) of the Act:

The constitutional powers of the President as Commander-in-Chief to introduce United States Armed Forces into hostilities, or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances, are exercised only pursuant to (1) a declaration of war, (2) specific statutory authorization, or (3) a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces.

So not really, the President can't just go "Let's nuke China!" and expects to be taken seriously. The WPA does not give the President the authority to declare war himself, but rather it says should the President ever commit troops to a war because of specific circumstances, elaborated by Section 2(c), then he must report to Congress. Additionally, he must consult Congress at all times before and during the commitment of troops, as well as that 60-day limit and 30-day withdrawal.

If he wants to nuke China then he needs to prove that China is preemptively launching nukes towards the US. Otherwise it is an unlawful order.

[The Jamesian Republic]

War Powers Act. Which gives the President the authority to wage war and military actions for 90 days without congressional approval or authority. This includes nuclear weapons

Section 2(c) of the Act:

The constitutional powers of the President as Commander-in-Chief to introduce United States Armed Forces into hostilities, or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances, are exercised only pursuant to (1) a declaration of war, (2) specific statutory authorization, or (3) a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces.

So not really, the President can't just go "Let's nuke China!" and expects to be taken seriously. The WPA does not give the President the authority to declare war himself, but rather it says should the President ever commit troops to a war because of specific circumstances, elaborated by Section 2(c), then he must report to Congress. Additionally, he must consult Congress at all times before and during the commitment of troops, as well as that 60-day limit and 30-day withdrawal.

If he wants to nuke China then he needs to prove that China is preemptively launching nukes towards the US. Otherwise it is an unlawful order.

Also nuking China means the end of the world.

[Kilobugya]

Also nuking China means the end of the world.

That's the kind of things which is so obvious that it never was actually written... "If the President orders you to end the world, you shall not obey."

[Thermodolia]

War Powers Act. Which gives the President the authority to wage war and military actions for 90 days without congressional approval or authority. This includes nuclear weapons

Section 2(c) of the Act:

The constitutional powers of the President as Commander-in-Chief to introduce United States Armed Forces into hostilities, or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances, are exercised only pursuant to (1) a declaration of war, (2) specific statutory authorization, or (3) a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces.

So not really, the President can't just go "Let's nuke China!" and expects to be taken seriously. The WPA does not give the President the authority to declare war himself, but rather it says should the President ever commit troops to a war because of specific circumstances, elaborated by Section 2(c), then he must report to Congress. Additionally, he must consult Congress at all times before and during the commitment of troops, as well as that 60-day limit and 30-day withdrawal.

If he wants to nuke China then he needs to prove that China is preemptively launching nukes towards the US. Otherwise it is an unlawful order.

The problem is that the law leaves what is a “national emergency” up to the President. So a sane and rational President might only say that getting nuked means it’s a national emergency but a guy who’s not so sane might say the exact opposite. That China existing is a national emergency.

The problem is that “national emergency” is not defined and is way too broad.

I’m not saying that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs is in the wrong, morally he’s correct. And I would have done the same thing.

However what I am saying is that he should have stepped down days afterwards because it sets the precedent for someone to actually take more control than he did.

[Kilobugya]

The problem is that the law leaves what is a “national emergency” up to the President.

But where did you see that ? It absolutely does not. It doesn't saying anything about what is a "national emergency", meaning that it's up to courts involved in settling any dispute to decide - exactly like there is any such vague expression in a law ("danger", "significant harm", ...).

The problem is that “national emergency” is not defined and is way too broad.

It's not even any kind of "national emergency" (which would be quite broad), but very specifically one that is created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces that's quite specific. It needs an attack, if there is no such attack, then the President is not allowed to strike first.

[Thermodolia]

But the war powers act does say that it’s up to the President to decide if a National emergency is taking place.

It absolutely does not. It says the President can engage force if a national emergency (and not any kind of them, only one "created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces") exists. Not that the President as sole judgment into what constitutes such an emergency, at all.

But it is. Because what constitutes an “attack” is up to the President. That “attack” could be as simple as the idea that China hacked our elections.

Not to mention that the US constitution states that the President has full authority over the entire military.

By saying only Congress can declare wars it says the exact opposite.

The President still has the authority to fire anyone and promote anyone in the military.

And yes an officer could refuse, the officer can also be removed from their authority by the President and placed under military custody as the constitution allows.

Well, if the president really has all powers to do whatever he wants, then Biden can just decide that everything that was done is kosher

Yes theoretically Biden can do that and pardon the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

But it's not how it works.

No that’s exactly how it works. The President is in charge. He alone can fire anyone below him.

An officer who disobeyed will be tried by a martial court or a civilian tribunal depending on the case, and it's up to the court to decide if he was right or wrong in refusing to obey, if the order was illegal/abusive (such a President ordering unilaterally a strike not in response to "an emergency created by attack...") then the court should dismiss the charges.

And until such a time that Officer is no longer in command as the President has the full ability to dismiss any person under his command. The President can fire people until he gets to someone who will do what he wants.

Again the US system relies to heavily on the honor system for it too work

[Thermodolia]

The problem is that the law leaves what is a “national emergency” up to the President.

But where did you see that ? It absolutely does not. It doesn't saying anything about what is a "national emergency", meaning that it's up to courts involved in settling any dispute to decide - exactly like there is any such vague expression in a law ("danger", "significant harm", ...).

That’s not how the US system works. In this case it’s up to the President to decide what is a “national emergency”. Welcome to the US, it’s a fucking crazy system that makes no goddamn sense

The problem is that “national emergency” is not defined and is way too broad.

It's not even any kind of "national emergency" (which would be quite broad), but very specifically one that is created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces that's quite specific. It needs an attack, if there is no such attack, then the President is not allowed to strike first.

And that “attack” could literally be anything. China could be declared to have attacked us because it’s harming our global standing or because some idiots believe it hacked our elections.

Both can legally be determined to be an “attack”

[Michel Meilleur]

The problem is that the law leaves what is a “national emergency” up to the President.

But where did you see that ? It absolutely does not. It doesn't saying anything about what is a "national emergency", meaning that it's up to courts involved in settling any dispute to decide - exactly like there is any such vague expression in a law ("danger", "significant harm", ...).

The problem is that “national emergency” is not defined and is way too broad.

It's not even any kind of "national emergency" (which would be quite broad), but very specifically one that is created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces that's quite specific. It needs an attack, if there is no such attack, then the President is not allowed to strike first.

Ngl, I kind of find funny that whole dance around you're making given our own national policy of literal nuclear warning strikes, lmao.

[San Lumen]

https://turnto10.com/news/local/elorza- ... or-in-2022

A huge and surprising development out of Rhode Island. Providence Mayor Jorge Elorza won't run for Governor or any statewide office next year. He is term limited as governor next year.

Elorza was widely expected to challenge incumbent Daniel McKee in the primary.

[Tarsonis]

Many of you never saw how a nuclear war with China would go down, and it shows.

[Forsher]

This was already non-timely when I found the discussion so I decided I wouldn't bother trying to post what I wanted to say promptly. It's about First Past the Post voting.

That is first past the post. The US is just used to two to three options for most offices which leads to majorities or strong pluralities.

But in places like the UK it’s entirely possible to win an election with just 20% of the electorate supporting you

No, it's not. FPTP is the way the electoral college works, where the winner is the first (and mathematically, only possible) person to get "past the post" (270 EVs). If no one makes it past the post, it goes to Congress to make the decision. This is distinct from plurality-wins, where you don't actually have to get the majority; you just have to come the closest. If plurality-wins were the rule for the U.S. Presidency, Andy Jackson would have been President in 1824. There are other races that work by FPTP, like for example the Georgia Senate races, where we had the run-offs that gave Warnock and Ossoff the win because nobody got a majority in the November general elections. But in some other states, a plurality of the vote is enough to elect Senators.

FPP is used in almost elections in the US. The electoral college isn't a good example of it because there's an actual post. In literally no other situation is FPP conceived with a post in mind:

In a first-past-the-post electoral system (FPTP or FPP; sometimes formally called single-member plurality voting or SMP; sometimes called choose-one voting for single-member districts, in contrast to ranked choice voting[1]), voters cast their vote for a candidate of their choice, and the candidate who receives the most votes wins (even if the top candidate gets less than 50%, which can happen when there are more than two popular candidates). FPTP is a plurality voting method, and is primarily used in systems that use single-member electoral divisions. FPTP is used as the primary form of allocating seats for legislative elections in about a third of the world's countries, mostly in the English-speaking world. The phrase is a metaphor from British horse racing, where there is a post at the finish line[2] (though there is no specific percentage "finish line" required to win in this voting system, only being furthest ahead in the race).

Also, even with three candidates you can get really low overall percentages.

Suppose you have 100 3 candidate elections where each electorate is the same size of 90 voters. For convenience, let's name the parties the candidates come from the Martians, Venusians and Saturnines. Now, you can have a 30/30/30 tie, right? But that also means you can win every single seat 31/30/29. So, if you win 31 * 100 votes, you have 3100 out of 9000 votes and 100 seats. In other words, with just 34% of the vote, the Martians won 100% of the seats.

Another absurd possibility is this. Suppose that happens in 51 seats (i.e. 51*31 = 1581 out of 9000 votes), but the remaining 49 seats have 0 voters for the Martians. This means that the Martians have won 51% of the seats, an outright majority, with just 17.57% of the vote.

Realistically stuff like that isn't going to happen, but you can get very ludicrous outcomes in real life. To switch from the UK to NZ in the late 1970s and 1980s, we can look at the elections generally thought to have inspired our switch to MMP:

• in 1978, National won 39.82% of the vote and 55.43% of the seats, while Social Credit won 16.07% of the vote and 0.01% of the seats (Labour won 40.41% of the vote and 43.48% of the vote). That's 96.3% of the vote to three parties.
• in 1981, National won 39.01% of the vote and 51.09% of the seats, while Social Credit won 20.65% of the vote and 0.02% of the seats (Labour won 39.01% of the vote and 46.73% of the seats). That's 98.67% of the vote to three parties.

In many ways, the 1984 election looks like it might have been even worse, but that was a four horse race rather than the three horse type we're interested in (the largest three parties won a combined total of just 91.13% of the vote). However, I'm sure the thinking at the time would've been "at least the party with the most votes got the most seats. For reference: Labour won 42.98% of the vote and 58.95% of the seats, while National won 35.90% of the vote and 38.95% of seats, the NZ Party (which I've never even heard of) won 12.25% of the vote and 0% of the seats and Social Credit won 7.63% of the vote and 0.02% of the seats.

Just looking at this, the UK has generally not had quite so perverse a set of outcomes as those three elections. However, if I were to use a mean sum of squares measure of badness... (% seats - % votes)^2, sum across columns, take mean... then (a) the 1984 NZ general election is definitely not as bad as the other two, no matter how I tried to fudge the numbers, and (b) most of these British elections are worse. In fact, the three worst are as follows:



1931 has an asterisk because it must be said that some of the problems with these elections may relate to aggregations in the underlying table and/or specific aggregations mentioned in the link (and 1931 is one of the elections with a footnote). Similarly, I'm pretty sure the comparison with NZ is weakened due to those factors (which may suggest my MSS measure isn't as robust to the number of parties as I'd like). I know, in principle, not being timely means I have had plenty of opportunity to investigate this more thoroughly but as much as I'm theoretically interested in making equivalent tables, I haven't and don't think I particularly care to (if there's a fast way of doing it, I don't know it).

For those of you who might have read this and thought "Ah, proportional representation will fix this", I urge caution. You can get similarly absurd outcomes with MMP because of threshold effects, and if you end up with two dominant parties (a la NZ), they will still have no incentive to increase the level of representation/number of parties.

In terms of my proof for these claims, it should be noted that (1) the situation improved... depending on your perspective... either a little or a lot after the specials came in because Labour did manage to win a majority of the votes but the wasted vote % was still a MMP record and (2), if you read it, I believe that I subsequently found another substantial error (on top of those mentioned) with that code, which is why I never made a post about the final results (but I don't know that for sure... I think the problems occurred when I tried to deal with overhang).

At this point we'll return to hypotheticals because it's easier to consider spatial effects.

Remember how the second alien election had 51 close races that were eventually won by the Martians, plus a further 49 the Martians were irrelevant in? Well, let's do that again but more realistically.

In this version, the Martians are over-represented in 51 of the equal-ish sized electorates (100 RNG 27,500-32,500 sized electorates). More specifically, 80% of the Martian voters live in these 51 electorates but other than that they're pretty evenly distributed (so, you have either 17.5k or 2.3k Martians in an electorate, basically). The Venusians and the Saturnines are very (RNG) randomly located so sometimes there are a lot more Venusians than Saturnines (or vice versa) and sometimes there are roughly similar amounts... but there's never an even mix of Saturnines, Venusians and Martians in any given electorate even though there's about 1 million of each group. This is a bit like gerrymandering but not really (in a gerrymander, you usually try to shove all your opponents into as few almost all enemy voter electorates... rather than trying to have 2/3 of your own voters in each of just over half of the available electorates).

You'll notice a turnout column in the two tables. These aren't calculated using the same formulae which is, you know, not ideal, but I wrote this post several hours apart from finishing it and wanted to do a different kind of table at the second time of asking. However, in all cases, the turnout is related to the specific conditions of the fake electorate in question. The basic logic I used for all versions of my formulae was that (1) if you can't win, you won't vote, (2) if you think winning is a sure thing, you're less likely to turnout, and (3) if the electorate is competitive, you're more likely to vote. What this means in practice is that the Venusians and Saturnines have low turnouts in 51 electorates, the Martians are "overconfident" in 51 electorates but hardly bother to vote in the other 49 and in some electorates, the Venusians and Saturnines both turn out in high numbers. In some cases, I use 60% of the largest party's population share to determine whether or not voters try to win.*

(In order to obtain results, I discarded the notion that a Venusian might tactically vote for a Saturnine to try and beat a Martian. However, to a certain extent I sometimes have Martians behave as though they have to beat both groups in my crude turnout formulae.)

In some ways this probably doesn't seem so bad. Yes, the Martians have a majority of seats with just 39% of the vote but, on the other hand, they actually have more votes than either of the other parties. Yet, it's when you look at everything else in this election that huge concerns should be emerging. If you care, I've spoilered that stuff.

The average and median populations, turnouts, gaps and margins all relate to the spatial distribution. With roughly similar numbers of voters, each party must necessarily have similar averages in each of the 100 electorates. The median, however, shows the effects of having 17,000 Martians in 51 electorates and roughly 30,000 in all of them (range, median and average all show this)... it necessarily forces the median for the Martians to be around 17,000 (by definition of the median), whilst simultaneously meaning the distribution of Venusians and Saturnines is all over the place (hence, the range approaches the theoretical maximum value of 32,500 in size).

A similar pattern is revealed in the other cases.

The average turnout for the Martians is lower than for Venusians and Saturnines because there are 49 electorates where the sub 3000 Martians have no hope of winning so, by the rationale I outlined above, they don't even bother voting. But the median turnout is much higher because of the other 51. And this pattern is reversed for the other two parties since in 51 electorates they're not able to win. The overall turnout for the parties (votes/total pop) shows that the quasi gerrymandering means Martian voters are much more likely to show up... there are simply far more races where they can win.

I'm not sure how meaningful "gap" is. I used it to help create the turnouts, it's "party of interest's population in an electorate - the combined population of the other two parties". It follows the same patterns for the same reasons.

The margin is the difference between "winning number of votes" and "second highest number of votes". It's calculated conditioned on the electorates that each party won. And it follows the same patterns for the same reasons. Note that 30000-17000 = 13000, which would suggest the Martian margin should be around 4000 if all the other voters were from a single party and 10,500 if there was an even balance. I haven't investigated this at all (and I'm not at all intuitive about these things) but I'm fairly confident that the confidence factor I used for representing overconfidence would help explain that. Consider an electorate of medians. That'd have a distribution of people in the region of 17000,7000,7000 (which is 31,000) and 7310, 2030, 2590 votes. That would create a margin of 4720 (which is about half way between the median Martian margin and the median overall margin). Coincidence? I have no idea.

In this next table, much of the above discussion is still true. However, this time I fudged the distribution of Venusians and Saturnines in the 49 Martian minority electorates so that they're approximately more even. In other words, so that the races are more competitive. Because of how I did this, the exact distribution of people in these electorates was changed. (The orientation of the table is changed because I'm lazy... ctrl-d, ctrl-r.)

This time around the Martians still have their majority, but now they don't have more votes than either of the other two parties. This is almost entirely down to the increased competitivity but there's probably some impact from my scatterbrained approach to turnout because in all cases my turnout formulae are related to competitivity.

The conclusions I want you to take from this are threefold. Firstly, "when elections are competitive, FPP can be at its most perverse". Secondly, "apparently crazy edge case scenarios from toy examples can be broadly recreated without too much difficulty in more realistic examples... which, in turn, resemble actual elections". And, finally, we return to the original motivating point "three horse races are entirely capable of producing idiotic outcomes, too".

That being said, with a two horse race, I'm pretty sure close elections are better (if you ignore wasted vote).

*To take an example... here's Electorate 45. This should also give an idea of the crudeness of how I did the turnouts.

[Forsher]

It certainly wasn't a coup, but the military unilaterally decided that it has the power to decide upon exceptions to the legality of the civilian government. Even if it's not a coup, that is the ideological basis for a coup and a very dangerous precedent.

This is the literal opposite of "following orders".

The military are not supposed to follow illegal orders (even if those orders are legal in the country they serve) and nor should they be expected to be mindless drones, anyway.

It's a little thing called the Nuremberg Trials that matters here not the US Constitution, nor American judges following whatever idea popped into their head most recently.

Okay... how is this still a relevant comment? Has the thread not talked about anything else in the twenty or so pages I skipped?

[Punished UMN]

Yeah, and more American servicemen have been convicted for disobeying orders that were illegal than have been convicted of war crimes they were ordered to do. You're missing the point either way: the military isn't the institution that decides if an order is constitutional or not. They're not supposed to decide on the exception, that's the job of the courts.

So are you suggesting that the military follow orders and pull the trigger and wait for the courts to decide later?

Because that is precisely how warcrimes happen. It is up to the individual to decide on whether an order is legal. That's why Lieutenant Calley was convicted; because he knew massacring Vietnamese civilians was illegal and yet carried out those orders.

Its definetly preferable to have somebody be court martialed for disobeying orders than having them follow those orders, commit an illegal act of violence, and then face the same court only with dozens of innocents dead behind them.

I'm saying that the US government has basically no remedy for troops who do not follow orders because they are illegal. If the court decides your order was legal, even if it isn't, you will go to prison for not obeying it.

You will recall that Lieutenant Calley only served a few days in prison and spent the remainder of his three years in house arrest despite having killed 400+ civilians.

[San Lumen]

https://www.abc10.com/article/news/poli ... e47b73a92c

Larry Elder says he will likely run for Governor of California next year. Elder was the leading candidate in the replacement vote for the recall.

[The Alma Mater]

https://www.abc10.com/article/news/politics/larry-elder-very-likely-run-again-2022/103-a2b96fba-72b8-468b-a976-80e47b73a92c

Larry Elder says he will likely run for Governor of California next year. Elder was the leading candidate in the replacement vote for the recall.

Who lost in a massive landslide in a recall election generaly perceived as a massive waste of money and who has that whole "article about suspect data being written before the data even exists" thing attached to him now...
Odd move.

[San Lumen]

https://www.abc10.com/article/news/politics/larry-elder-very-likely-run-again-2022/103-a2b96fba-72b8-468b-a976-80e47b73a92c

Larry Elder says he will likely run for Governor of California next year. Elder was the leading candidate in the replacement vote for the recall.

Who lost in a massive landslide in a recall election generaly perceived as a massive waste of money and who has that whole "article about suspect data being written before the data even exists" thing attached to him now...
Odd move.

If he runs he could very well advance to the general election and be a drag down ballot.

[Outer Sparta]

https://www.abc10.com/article/news/politics/larry-elder-very-likely-run-again-2022/103-a2b96fba-72b8-468b-a976-80e47b73a92c

Larry Elder says he will likely run for Governor of California next year. Elder was the leading candidate in the replacement vote for the recall.

Who lost in a massive landslide in a recall election generaly perceived as a massive waste of money and who has that whole "article about suspect data being written before the data even exists" thing attached to him now...
Odd move.

He's basically the de-facto leader of the California GOP.

[Alcala-Cordel]

https://www.abc10.com/article/news/politics/larry-elder-very-likely-run-again-2022/103-a2b96fba-72b8-468b-a976-80e47b73a92c

Larry Elder says he will likely run for Governor of California next year. Elder was the leading candidate in the replacement vote for the recall.

Who lost in a massive landslide in a recall election generaly perceived as a massive waste of money and who has that whole "article about suspect data being written before the data even exists" thing attached to him now...
Odd move.

He's so out of touch it's like he wants Newsom to win.

[Kowani]

The military removing the Commander-in-Chief from the chain of command and independently conducting foreign policy with a foreign power is an extraconstitutional seizure of power, regardless of it being limited, and regardless of how justified it was.

I have a question for everyone here. It's mostly a rhetorical question.

Given we didn't know about this until 9 months after the fact and everyone acted like things were fine...

How certain are you that Biden and Lloyd Austin are really in command?

I'm not saying they aren't, but how certain are you?

Something to consider.

we're no longer in afghanistan

[Kowani]

Drug price reform fails in the House Energy & Commerce committee after 3 Democrats voted no

one of these fuckers is my rep im going to go send some emails

[San Lumen]

Who lost in a massive landslide in a recall election generaly perceived as a massive waste of money and who has that whole "article about suspect data being written before the data even exists" thing attached to him now...
Odd move.

He's so out of touch it's like he wants Newsom to win.

The California GOP has been irrelevant for some time now. They haven't won a statewide office since 2006 and failed to reach 40 percent in any statewide office in 2018.

Like other state parties they've gone full Trumpist which means if Elder runs he likely advances to the general election and gets at most 35 percent of the vote.

[Untecna]

He's so out of touch it's like he wants Newsom to win.

The California GOP has been irrelevant for some time now. They haven't won a statewide office since 2006 and failed to reach 40 percent in any statewide office in 2018.

Like other state parties they've gone full Trumpist which means if Elder runs he likely advances to the general election and gets at most 35 percent of the vote.

Newsom has by this point won.