I just got one that I’d been waiting on since I turned in my tax return. Did somebody at the IRS return from vacation, or something?
Wish we could, not a lot we can do about the Calabama contingent.
JoshL
3910
I’d like to believe if we put on the ballot “if the governor is recalled, the lt. governor becomes governor” it would pass. I mean, that’s the lt. governor’s entire freaking job.
ShivaX
3911
If nothing else you should do it because I suspect this is going to keep happening until you do.
It was an idea that couldn’t exist in reality imo. Sure being able to recall a governor isn’t a bad concept. I’d love to be able to recall mine right now. But the reality is that it was too easy to do and people are going to exploit it for partisan political bullshit. Making the Lt Gov become Gov would take that out of the equation and still leave an option to get rid of a truly terrible Governor.
Alstein
3913
Recall should just replace with the Lt.Gov, or be a jungle election.
Timex
3914
The notion of a recall is itself dumb.
If you get elected, you get to hold office until the next election, unless you actually commit some impeachable offense.
ShivaX
3915
The whole California direct democracy has been nothing but a clusterfuck since the beginning near as I can tell.
Indeed. Part of the compact of electing officials is that we do this so that they may make decisions to the greater good in the long run that may be unpopular in the short term. California’s recall rule essentially creates a system that essentially tells a chief executive to NOT make any decision with short-term popularity deficits that creates a long-term good.
Which is, honestly, insane. And in its own way undemocratic.
Dejin
3917
I concur. I hate those stupid propositions. An awful lot of them are either some industry group is trying to flimflam the voters or some rich dude has a bee in his bonnet.
Alstein
3918
There’s room for direct democracy initiatives, but CA’s system somehow is insane and fails.
That said, Republican legislatures just ignore the will of the people whenever they can. Pure fascists with no regard for rule of law.
Matt_W
3919
I like MA’s system, where the legislature has to vote on an initiative before it becomes law. That seems reasonable. Any system where the public can legislate directly from the voting booth is awful.
I don’t mind a recall system, but it needs to be sane. The Lt. Governor should obviously be the new governor, be able to appoint their new Lt, and no recall should be able to target them both simultaneously. It would remove any political motivation for the recall.
It’s cool if he wants to hit the pause button just long enough to kill the filibuster and pass voting rights and women’s rights reform bills. I’m down with that.
Just a bunch of bullshit reasons to justify his opinions. He’s concerned about “runaway inflation”? National security issues related to the withdrawal from Afghanistan? Whatever, dude.
I guess that Schumer and Pelosi have to hold hands and pass the two bills — the bipartisan one and the reconciliation one — at once. It’s the only way to keep leverage over Manchin and Sinema.
Alstein
3924
The left has also made it clear that they won’t pass the tiny bill without something added on, and they also have veto power.
They’ve negotiated down from $15bil already.
If there is a deal that passes anything close to what is in the reconciliation bill and anything close to what is in the bipartisan bill, the left will not block it. They don’t have any practical, usable veto power over a deal like that, and they know it.
Alstein
3926
They’ve agreed to the reconciliation bill. They’ve said this is as far as they’re willing to support paring it down (my guess, they’d support a bit more)
The Squad and Manchin will both negotiate in good faith. Sinema’s the one you have to worry about.
Timex
3927
The problem here is that only Manchin really has anything to lose from such negotiations.
The members of the squad don’t have any political skin riding on the outcome. If they succeed in passing a huge infrastructure bill with everything in the universe in it, they’ll be re-elected. If they fail miserably and pass nothing at all, they’ll still be re-elected, because they are in ultra-safe districts where their political brand is largely based on being firebrands.
Members of the squad lack incentive for compromise, I think.
