As you read this Californians are going to the polls to decide the fate of the recall effort against Governor Gavin Newsom.

Yeah who am I kidding? Statements like that are a thing of the past. Californians have been voting for almost a month by now on this insipid recall referendum. The days of standing in line to dutifully cast one’s ballot are as quaint and old fashioned as going to the malt shop with your high school sweetheart to sock hop with all the cool cool cats. I mean you could do it, but you’re gonna get some odd looks from the vast majority of your fellow citizens.

Though the national media is focusing on the horse race of the recall, Californians are looking at this more as a referendum on how Newsom has handled the pandemic. And that’s been the most effective tool for Newsom. Don’t like how I mandated masks and vaccines and social distancing? Um, have you seen the death rate in places like Texas and Florida? Would you rather have that?

And it doesn’t hurt that the leading Republican candidate campaigns on how much “freedum” ™ those states have. Yeah guy, just keep singing that song, especially when your fellow conservative unvaccinated antivaccine radio talk show hosts keep dropping like flies.

Californians’ have come to realize Newsom’s handling of the pandemic is like that personal life moment when you realize your parents, who previously had been nothing but nagging kill joys, were actually pretty smart about life and things.

Remember back in the early days of the pandemic when the two “voices of reason” among the American political landscape were Gavin Newsom and that guy in New York, what’s his name? I don’t want to diminish the facts that brought down Sonny Corleone…er…I mean Andrew Cuomo but I can’t help but wonder how it is that two governors who were held in such high esteem just a year and a half ago were targeted for ouster.

And thus we come to how Repugnicants try to gain power in this country. They can’t win fair elections so they gerrymander districts, run recall elections, shout about election fraud, enact laws making it harder to vote, make voters fear their neighbors both in the physical and the international senses, and play to the uneducated and easily led astray. All for the benefit of the super wealthy so they can remain super wealthy and not be forced to settle for being reduced to just really wealthy.

And they really really hate the way California runs elections. Ballots mailed to every registered voter a month before the election? Ballots that can be mailed in, dropped off at secure drop boxes located in every community? Ballots that if you really want can be dropped off at polling locations on Election Day? Voting shouldn’t be that easy! Why if it were the entire adult population would vote! Can’t have that!

And for those who decry the notion of a mailed out ballot as being a blow to the concept of community (ahem….like I once was) let me just say that the world and the way we work in it has changed so the way we vote needs to change. It’s not the first time we’ve changed the way we vote. Once upon a time you had to be a white male over 21 who owned land in order to cast a vote. You also had to have the time to come in from your farm to the closest town and put an X by a name. And then you couldn’t legally go down the dusty street to have a shot of redeye at the saloon.

The world changes. Blacks, women, teens who have hit 18, all got the vote. Polling stations were set up in neighborhoods. Xs were replaced by pulling a handle, then punching a card, then touching on a screen. Bars remain open on Election Day in most communities. Life moves on.

Move on or get run over.

Shapiro Out