California’s Governor Newsom is unpopular. The French Laundry incident in which the state boss was caught violating his own lockdown rules helped trigger the recall effort, but was the result of growing anger by small businesses and workers at a system that treated Hollywood productions as “essential” while shutting them down. 

Newsom is in office because he’s a Democrat. In a one-party state, which is what California in the age of ballot harvesting and illegal alien ghost districts has become, that’s more than enough. But being the recipient of support from Hollywood, Silicon Valley, and assorted lefty pressure groups, doesn’t make him popular.

And few would say that California has done a good job of handling the pandemic.

Newsom’s recall strategy has followed two lines.

1. A rapid reopening of his own lockdowns

2. A campaign playing the victim while claiming that recall proponents are extremists

The one-sided publicization of threats is a cynical strategy in a time when everyone who is prominent in public life receives them. And Newsom’s attempt to smear recall proponents as extremists is an equally cynical national Democrat strategy being applied to a local political battle.

Tellingly, it’s not a defense of his administration.

Accusing your critics of being extremists is a desperate move by the hack at the head of a failed administration. But a Newsom recall doesn’t address the real problem which is that a Democrat one-party state is wallowing in extremes of incompetence and corruption. Newsom just happens to be its current public face.

California is no longer in the hands of elected officials accountable to the public. Instead, it’s run by special interests, lobbies, and pressure groups who use hacks like Newsom as their public face.