Newsom cut the fire budget - then guess what happened (JOSH EDELSON/AFP via Getty Images)
Canada and California might be more than 4,000km apart — but their respective electorates have been forced to endure strikingly similar political torments. In both cases, seemingly glamorous, progressive leaders now find themselves under assault from electorates who remain in a highly surly and volatile mood. Both Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (who opportunistically called a national election last month based solely, it seems, on a few good polls registered during the summer) and Democratic California Governor Gavin Newsom (who is on track to survive yesterday’s extraordinary recall election with at least 60% of the vote) are nonetheless experiencing significant, and unexpected, voter discontent.
Even if, as it now looks likely, Newsom is not recalled, or Trudeau wins re-election, that we’re even discussing their downfalls indicates that both the “Golden State” and Canada, a country long known as the Scandinavia of the Western Hemisphere, are no longer political exemplars for the rest of the world. Instead, their governments now represent more of the same kind of political disappointments that have characterised Western liberal democracies for the past 40 years.
In Canada, polls suggest the Conservatives and Liberals are locked in a tight race, as many voters turn to the opposition Conservative Party, whose “blue-collar” policies under leader Erin O’Toole closely resemble those of Boris Johnson’s British Tories. Meanwhile, California, long considered one of America’s most progressive Democratic states, was almost confronted with the spectacle of a Republican governor, in the form of black Right-wing libertarian radio host, Larry Elder. The very fact that the recall vote got this far indicates that the “Golden State” no longer glitters with opportunity for all.
This month’s elections in Canada and California — preceded by 18 months of rolling lockdowns, job losses and Covid-related chaos — can roughly be described as a collective “Howard Beale” moment. Echoing Network, Paddy Chayefsky’s classic satirical black comedy-drama film, voters in both places are “mad as hell and not going to take it anymore”.
Even though vaccine mandates have been broadly accepted by the majority of Canadians and Californians, this compliance is increasingly transcended by contempt for their respective governments, which have failed to address a range of non-pandemic-related issues: from rising economic precarity (concurrent with the growth of the so-called “gig economy” and all of the attendant insecurities that come with it) to the fact that both places are being ruled by hypocritical, out-of-touch technocratic elites who are clueless about the everyday life for ordinary Californians and Canadians.
As far as Covid itself goes, despite some missteps, Canada and California have done relatively well in introducing measures to restrict the speed of the pandemic. Both have also secured relatively high rates of vaccinations; Canada now has a greater proportion of its population fully vaccinated than either the US or UK, while California ranks among the highest vaccinated among American states.
Despite their relative success stories, this month’s elections have unleashed longstanding grievances, spurred on by disgust with the perceived hypocrisy of the two administrations. In the case of California, Governor Newsom’s ill-timed visit to a Michelin-starred restaurant amid a Covid-19 surge last year sparked outrage, as did his admission that he was sending his own children to classes at a private school while most public schools remained closed.
But Newsom, despite his recall victory, has failed on a host of other issues — a number of which he shares with Trudeau. For instance, California is often heralded as a model US state in terms of decarbonising its economy. But the truth is that the governor’s push for renewables has degraded the reliability of the state’s electrical grid, resulting in multiple blackouts this year. These have occurred against a backdrop in which some of California’s Latino leaders have filed lawsuits to halt several climate-focused regulations due to their negative effect on low and middle-income Californians. Yet for many families it is too late: the ostensibly progressive state has the highest poverty rate in America and a level of income inequality that exceeds of all but five states.
Similar charges of sanctimony have had increasing resonance in Canada, home to a Liberal government that has consistently trumpeted its desire to move to net zero carbon emissions. Yet recently, this same administration has also taken the extraordinary step of promoting oil sands exports to global markets after it nationalised the Trans Mountain pipeline for CAD$4.5-billion — even though its former owner had cancelled the pipeline expansion because of fierce opposition from environmentalists, indigenous groups and the provincial British Columbian government.
By the same token, Justin Trudeau, a leader who has long trumpeted his progressive credentials, has steadily seen that image erode, notably in the wake of the SNC-Lavalin scandal which provoked the resignation of two female cabinet ministers. Both ministers accused the Prime Minister of inappropriately interfering in a prosecution effort against the engineering company, which had been charged with fraud in connection with a series of Libyan business dealings. That one of the resigning ministers, Jody Wilson-Raybould, served as Canada’s first indigenous justice minister was a particular blow to the Prime Minister’s diversity agenda.
Yet Trudeau may have had plausible grounds for his actions: in the case of the controversial pipeline, Canada is still a heavily resource-based economy, and the fossil fuel industry continues to be a source of high-paying skilled jobs for the working and middle classes, especially in western Canada. And as far as SNC-Lavalin goes, it is a large, Quebec-based company employing thousands of Canadians in a province that is a key stronghold for the Liberals.
But while Trudeau at least has plausible grounds to explain his perceived hypocrisy, the same cannot be said for Newsom. The California governor may have survived his recall vote — but now there is no hiding from the very serious structural problems that have long afflicted his state. Indeed, as author Michael Shellenberger has persuasively argued, Newsom’s policies have actually made them worse: “Rather than put forest management on war-time footing, Newsom in 2019 actually cut the budget for forest fire prevention, which resulted in a full halving of the forest area treated for fire in 2020, all while accusing his political opponents of climate denial, and suggesting that the deployment of weather-dependent renewable energy will somehow address the state’s high-intensity forest fires.” Extensive fires have also played a significant role in the state’s rolling blackouts.
Likewise, California’s housing affordability ranks last among the 50 states with the result — as Shellenberger notes — that the number of homeless people in the Golden State “rose 31% over the last 10 years even as the number of homeless in the rest of the U.S. declined 18 percent. Where New York City shelters 95% of its homeless, California cities shelter one-third.” Meanwhile, Newsom acts like a helpless bystander, even though he has a Democratic super-majority in the State Assembly. Remarkably, new housing construction actually fell 10% last year, with just 100,550 new building permits issued, one-fifth of what Newsom promised when he was elected back in 2018.
That might explain why a solidly blue state started to contemplate a radical alternative to the incumbent governor. Larry Elder, a Black radio talk-show host in the state, a is pro-life cultural conservative who has explicitly opposed any minimum wage (let alone increase it). He has also come out against vaccine mandates, and has railed against critical race theory and transgender politics.
In Canada, however, conservative politics north of the border are somewhat more prosaic. The Conservative Party’s capable new leader, Erin O’Toole, has run a smart campaign and given voters a positive reason to vote Tory (in contrast to his hapless predecessor, Andrew Scheer). Evoking Boris Johnson’s successful 2019 election strategy, its manifesto features a new kind of pro-worker conservatism, at a time when most centre-left parties have increasingly abandoned working class interests in favour of launching progressive campaigns. Among its notable features are benefits for gig workers (who are largely exempt from adequate social coverage in the US), German-style worker representation on corporate boards and protections for pensions from corporate bankruptcy.
These are policies far more likely to engender support among middle and working-class Canadians than, say, proposals to support an LGBTQ agenda or linguistic “reforms” to abolish gendered pronouns. All of which has helped O’Toole’s Tories make headway in the election. While the most recent polls show an incremental movement back to the Liberals, they still point to a hung Parliament.
And so both Newsom and Trudeau have, in recent weeks, cast their political futures in increasingly melodramatic “life and death” terms. But such rhetoric — even if they win, as Newsom has — fails to address the central issue: namely, the shredding of a once sacrosanct social contract between the elites and the rest of us. No matter who wins these elections, the corresponding anger and social fallout that has resulted is unlikely to dissipate. From Canada to California, the people are “mad as hell” — and neither Trudeau nor Newsom seem capable of remedying that.
Marshall Auerback is a market commentator and a research associate for the Levy Institute at Bard College.
Mauerback 
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SubscribeTrudeau called an election for no other reason than his polling suggested he would win a majority. With that, his govt would have no need to even pretend to share ANY power and he would control all parliamentary committees. He now faces the prospect of having kicked an own goal and returning to a minority position or worse, losing the election entirely. Greed, ego and a strong taste for power describes this mid-wit poltician
And Elder lost because of Democrat mail in ballot vote harvesting, deja-vu all over again.
This new line from the GOP is getting tiring. Every election defeat is now blamed on voter fraud
The results of the Maricopa forensic audit will be presented in an Arizona Senate hearing this coming Friday. Pre-empting this are the results of a voter canvass carried out by volunteers who knocked on 4,500 doors in Maricopa and asked how many had voted from each household and in what way. It found that 34% of residents interviewed who were recorded as not voting said that actually they had voted. It also found that 5.6% of mail in votes received from visited households came from people who did not live there at the time of the election.
https://planetb-media.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/523975266-Final-Election-2020-Grassroots-Canvass-Report.pdf
There’s a seriously dangerous situation building up, I think. You can only stuff so many ballots, “harvest” so many votes, and bus in so many non-citizens to the polling booths before people lose all faith in their democracy. In a country as heavily armed as the US, that’s a problem.
The vote harvesting as done is not illegal – it is getting great numbers of on foot door knockers and important members in the community to get people to take mail in ballots, mark them as advised, collect them and so on.
Getting the disinterested who would never bother going to the polling place because they are ignorant of everything, and useless citizens politically – and legally ‘Harvesting’ their votes because the mail in system, coupled with agenda driven, soros funded, workers, makes it possible – is a terrible PRACTICE. Voting should not be easy..
Remember, some ignorant person who does not even know the election issues has the same vote as the most informed.
We await some national policy that bans vote harvesting and mass mailings.
The practice of vote harvesting depends on having a party apparatus. It therefore benefits the two main parties who are competing against independents and outsiders. That in turn makes the political Establishments unanswerable to the electorate with the predictable consequences of incompetence and corruption.
Trudeau is a hypocrite through and through. Touting himself as the flag bearer of progressive values, his record is ridden with scandal. SNC-Lavalin, WE Charity, scandalous outing at Aga Khan’s private island, bogus diversity preaching, the list goes on. I hope we can come out as a strong-willed and united people, and show the Liberal Government that enough is enough.
Good comments below, as usual, helping me understand the article better (the author cannot openly challenge “woke” academic nonsense). As someone who hopes that the establishment trend away from reason can be reversed, I clutch at some straws of good news in the article. However, if the author reads these comments, can I ask him two things: why is it somehow radical for Mr Elder to “rail” against critical race theory and transgender politics, when open-minded people can see they are simply bonkers; and why is it somehow “plausible” (nice word) for Mr Trudeau to do things clearly in Canada’s interest on energy and defending an important Canadian company – to my mind it is simply hypocritical (nasty word, intentionally) since it is directly against what he says, says, and says again.
If Newsom wins, he will be a perfect example of voter stupidity.
So demoralisingly true.
he will be a perfect example of the soros army of workers getting the useless to vote via mail in ballots.
He reminds me of a snake oil salesman…. And not a very good one either.
I would take issue with the efficacy of Covid-related lockdown policies. There is little evidence that stringent lockdowns – unless introduced at a very early stage in areas where complete isolation is possible (Iceland, New Zealand…) these measures appear to have largely failed to meaningfully reduce the spread of this virus. At best, they have prolonged the inevitable path towards herd immunity.
Regarding the vaccines, the jury is still out. It seems that for the elderly and vulnerable, they are a useful intermediary tool. For younger populations, there appears to be no benefit. They are doing little to slow down transmission and the risks of vaccine side effects are comparable to the risk reduction of virus infection itself.
Moreover, it has been credibly hypothesised that the ‘leaky’ nature of the vaccine encourages selective mutation when a vaccine is rolled out during a pandemic. Therefore, it may be the case that these vaccines are driving the evolution of new variants, particularly as (the mRNA) vaccines narrrowly target the virus’ ‘spike protein’.
If this is true, then the current vaccination strategy may at best turn into an ever less efficacious cat-and-mouse game, requiring endless booster shots and proving ultimately self-defeating. At worst, it will be a catalyst to a much more deadly, much more resistant variant.
I know that this is a political article, and therefore the mainstream perceptions are what are at issue here (certainly none of the above is mainstream). But the author should at least consider the political risks these COVID policies entail, if they do not deliver the high standard of safety at a reasonable cost to liberty, the economy and over a reasonable period of time.
My theory is that general lockdowns are extremely expensive economically and don’t work as a universal policy, but probably reduce spread of the virus in two ways; less long-distance migration of the virus, and fewer incidences of an infected person in close proximity to numerous others in an environment conducive to infection.
It is evident that lockdowns have not stopped the virus spreading. Graphs show that where lockdowns were not used the pattern is pretty much identical. You cannot lockdown a virus once it is endemic in the general population.
Unless a reasonably fulfilling life is possible humans will tend to act out their fears and frustrations and to possibly support movements that are inherently destructive. Germany in the 1930’s is too much of a stretch but the policies of the ‘haves’ over the past 30+ years have culminated in a situation that is close to being irreversable . And after reading the global risk analysis report -now 6 months out of date- it is clear that social cohesion is steadily declining. Which together with environmental degradation, economic instability, loss of livelihoods, mass migration, epidemics etc etc confirms the reality that humanity is now in “slow train crash mode”. Sin is that which mitigates against the good (evil being the more conscious active aspect) – and the wages of sin are death ! I am not religious per se but it is a good metaphor. Another one – ‘the day will come when all your unwise decisions will get together and have a banquet in your honour”…
Yawn….
Is this really the sort of article worth reading on the insane state of California, And on the mad Lefty Trudeau?, And California’s wild recall vote (with a Black Front runner called a ‘White Supremacist’ by the LA Times, for running against a White guy) and general crazy ways; home of Pelosi and homelessness. – And is the forefront of the war between the Left and Right.
“LA Times Columnist Jean Guerrero: Larry Elder’s ‘White Supremacist’ World View Is a ‘Very Real Threat to Communities of Color’”
The Writer is a Bard College Associate though – (Mega Captured University) and gave the distance in Km between the places instead of miles, which I found annoying….
“Canada and California might be more than 4,000km apart”
But as they are a mere 1,000 Km apart I took his story with a grain of salt.
The description of a black man as a white supremacist is indeed bizarre. And I too wondered about the 4,000 Km. (From California’s Oregon border to BC’s Washington border is, I suspect, even less than a thousand Km.) Could the 4000 figure cited be the distance between the capitals of Ottawa and Sacramento? If so, that should have been clearly stated.
It just shows that the left is reality challenged.
‘Challenged’ is being polite. More likely, is ‘lost the plot’.
The obvious tell-tale sign that California is no longer ‘The Golden State’ is the exodus of population – the first time in its 175 year history. So much so that they’ll be losing a Congressional seat. Stay tuned.
On today’s Scott Adams podcast he noted that in August the California recall polls had it as too close to call i.e. around 50/50. But the September election has the Dems on a landslide at about 57%. This is really going to stoke the rigged electoral system conspiracy fires…
I am sure they will not need serious stoking. These days if a Trump supporter is defeated the default setting, in those who get their lead from shouty right-wing websites, is that the reason is electoral fraud tather than the usually more obvious one that the candidate didn’t do too well. The problem is that too many Republicans are scared of Trump, scared to confront this stupidity. The special vote audit in Arizona should have been completed by middle of May, to date it has done no more that sprtead lots of Ballot papers around and compromised the integrity of the voting machines. The special audit in Georgia seems to not be forgotten. Mike Lindell, the “My Pillow” man called a special conference on cyber election fraud and did no more than dump a load of data on a screen with no idea how to interpret it.
To go back to the subject of the “Hollow Victory”, it seems that Newsom polled two thirds of the vote. Doesn’t sound very hollow to me!
rail verb (2)
railed; railing; rails
Definition of rail
intransitive verb
: to criticise articulately one’s stupid opinion or ignorant view; used to undermine the criticism by suggesting there is something unreasonable or immoderate about it
The writer is from one of the universities most captured by the Post-Modernist Neo-Marxist Lefty/Liberals.
An increasingly ‘populist’ and popular Canadian candidate, Maxime Bernier, who represents a new party, The People’s Party of Canada (PPC), was ineligible for a podium at the recent lacklustre ‘leaders’ debate in Canada because his new party holds no seats. Ironically, he’s achieved much more air time and interest via social media in the last few days. Pollsters now have him anywhere between 7% – 11%, and in 4th place. The Washington Post did a profile on him two days ago. This will be capped by an up-coming ‘long-form’ interview with Jordan Peterson by week’s end on Youtube. Coincidentally, Mr. Peterson released an interview with Rex Murphy, a ’politically incorrect’ media pundit yesterday, and it has already been seen by 175K+ concerned Canadians. If Maxime gets that kind of boost between now and voting day on Sept. 20th, that could be a significant ‘wake-up call’ to the incoming minority government ~ be it Liberal or Conservative.
Spare the Air warning in the SF Bay Area this morning. They say it’s from the fires, but I suspect that it is newly amplified by so many of us doing a slow burn. And to think it seems like only yesterday I’d have described the film, Idiocracy, as a dystopian future fantasy.
‘Marching Morons’ the great dystopia (humorous but exactly on that line) book by Cyril M. Kornbluth is a must read right there with 1984 and Brave New World, and The Space Merchants.
California has 24% registered Republicans, down 10% since 2007. It’s not changing. The California voters, being the infantile people that they are, were just throwing a tantrum over covid.
Exactly. California will have to collapse before it will change and at that point I’m not sure there would be much left worth changing.
What party let in the ethnics from foreign countries who have made California predominantly Hispanic and overwhelmingly “progressive?”
Both. But only the Democrats benefited. The Republicans made themselves impotent.
Immigration is the only issue. Change the people and you change the nation. Everybody except brain-dead conservatives knows that.
You can cry about vote harvesting, stupid people and hypocritical, incompetent elites all you want; but if you’re not for a total immigration moratorium, then you are the goof who’s on the express track to oblivion.
Hispanic residents are not “overwhelmingly progressive,” in California. But the state’s many migrant-friendly policies and sanctuary municipalities have attracted waves of recent immigrants, straining education systems and health care. Low-income arrivals also affect state income stats.
Polls are for dogs as they say. I believe they’re wrong in Canada. No one remembers David Peterson, a former premier of Ontario. Affected by similar hubris and favorable polls he was devastated in the 1990 election to Bob Rae.
What basis is there for this article when around two thirds of California’s electors have voted to back Newsom? Isn’t this article just fake news?
California is missing Kamala Harris and her policy of using slave labour, aka prisoners whose release is delayed so that they can fight fires. Her arrival in the Oval Office cannot come quick enough. LOL
Much of CA is desert. Southern CA is essentially a fire pit, where homes are allowed to be built. The environment is built on fire renewal. In 2014 a Proposition Bond Issue was passed to build some new reservoirs. It passed overwhelming. To date nothing has been done. Not one inch of dirt moved. In part due to glacial permit process and in part to environmentalist obstruction. Newsom along with his progressive acolytes wanted to end carbon based electricity generation in the State. What did they do? The ended it and then bought carbon based electricity generation from other States…..Making the electrical grid, towers and wires even longer. Then the Public Utilities Commission cut the budget for clearing trees, brush and shrubs around those towers and wires…..Why? Do do some woke initiative’s. Forest mismanagement? You bet. Environmentalist with their, “don’t touch the forest policies” only have been allowing dead materials to build up on the forest floor creating more forceful, hotter and faster burning fires. In other words pouring fuel on the fire. As for the homeless issue?…Progressive polices have simply made it worse.