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Congress’s Democrat-on-Democrat hostage standoff, explained

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On the surface, the latest dispute between moderate Democrats and party leaders in Congress seems trivial. It’s about which of Biden’s two big bills will move forward first in the US House. Will it be the bipartisan infrastructure deal, which <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/10/senate-to-pass-bipartisan-infrastructure-bill.html">passed the Senate earlier this month</a>? Or will it be the coming <a href="https://www.vox.com/22577374/reconciliation-bill-biden-medicare-climate">Democrat-only “mega-bill”</a>, containing trillions in spending on health care, anti-poverty programs, climate, and more?
But the standoff — and a potential showdown this week — could have massive implications for President Joe Biden’s agenda.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi <a href="https://www.vox.com/2021/6/29/22554042/pelosi-manchin-infrastructure-deal-reconciliation">has said since June</a> that the mega-bill, in which progressives are placing their hopes for major change, must move forward before she’ll act on the far less sweeping bipartisan infrastructure deal.
But nine moderate House Democrats, led by Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), are now demanding that <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/08/22/reconciliation-can-wait-lets-do-infrastructure-first/">the order be flipped</a>. And they say they won’t support a budget vote this week unless their demands are met.
This is about much more than just timing, though. The fight is really about who will have the most leverage in shaping the still-unwritten mega-bill, which aims to enact much of Biden’s agenda in one fell swoop — and about whether it will pass at all.
Progressives have feared all year that, if the bipartisan infrastructure bill is signed into law, moderate Democrats might just decide to call it a day. That is, after all, the bill that Sens. Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin helped shape and deeply care about. The fear was that those moderates might end up killing progressives’ beloved mega-bill altogether, or very severely scaling it back.
That’s why Pelosi, spurred by House progressives, <a href="https://www.speaker.gov/newsroom/62421">announced in June</a> that until the Senate passed the mega-bill, the House would take no action on the bipartisan infrastructure bill. She was basically taking Senate moderates’ precious deal hostage, to make sure they’d play ball with progressive priorities. President Biden has given <a href="https://twitter.com/sahilkapur/status/1429856067681406984?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet">tacit</a> (and, initially, <a href="https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-business-government-and-politics-7f9226bb825fcf72f2fe5056d1e20ac4">explicit</a>) approval to this strategy.
The coming mega-bill will advance through a special process called budget reconciliation (which allows it to bypass the Senate filibuster, and pass with a simple majority). But to unlock that process, Congress first needs to pass what’s called a budget resolution. The Senate did that earlier this month, and Pelosi <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/11/us/politics/senate-budget-plan.html">called back the House</a> to do their part this week.
But then things hit a snag when some of Pelosi’s own moderate Democrats in the US House decided to take a hostage of their own. Rep. Gottheimer and eight other Democrats <a href="https://www.rollcall.com/2021/08/13/nine-centrist-house-democrats-threaten-to-oppose-budget-without-infrastructure/">released a letter</a> saying they would not vote for the budget resolution until the House passes the bipartisan infrastructure deal. That is: they’ve taken their own hostage, and are demanding Pelosi let the previous hostage go.
Democrats’ House majority is currently so narrow that, if four of their members defect and vote with Republicans, they can vote down a bill. So if Gottheimer’s group sticks to its guns, they could get their way. It is, however, possible that a deal of some sort will still be reached.
Of course, this isn’t just a petty squabble over who’s first in line. This battle is really about two groups — progressives and moderates — trying to maximize their leverage in shaping the coming, still-unwritten mega-bill.
Democrats <a href="https://www.vox.com/22577374/reconciliation-bill-biden-medicare-climate">have allotted $3.5 trillion for this bill</a> and have a rough plan for where it will go, but nothing is really set in stone yet, and many questions remain. Will the overall amount have to be cut substantially, <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2021/08/23/sinema-35t-spending-bill-506583">as Sinema is demanding</a>? Will plans to spend on various areas have to be jettisoned? If so, what will get the heave — subsidized child care? Universal pre-K? The expanded child tax credit? Expanded Medicare benefits? How will the climate portions of the bill end up when they have to go through Manchin’s Energy and Natural Resources Committee?
Both progressives and moderates want to try and maximize their leverage to ensure those and many more questions are resolved to their liking. And there are two ways to try and shape a piece of legislation. You can ask nicely, or you can play hardball — threatening that you’ll vote no if you don’t get what you want.
Anyone can make threats. The question is whose threats actually come off as credible. Generally, threats to kill a bill seem most credible from those who would have political reasons for doing so (<a href="https://www.vox.com/22339531/manchin-filibuster-bipartisanship-senate-west-virginia">like Manchin</a>, who represents a state Trump won by nearly 39 points), or those with a history of defying leadership (like the late John McCain on the Republican side, whom Sinema seems to be <a href="https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-az-state-wire-government-and-politics-6632b84d43dcd5f897dbaea36d780bbb">trying to channel</a>).
Typically it’s moderate Democrats who tend to be the toughest gets, holding out until the last minute. It’s often believed that progressives will just go along, because from their perspective, passing something — anything — is better than passing nothing.
But in this era of a polarized partisan Congress, politics is a team sport, with strong incentives even for moderates to support their president’s top legislative priorities. So sometimes, the moderates basically end up getting rolled. Leaders can cater to the base and gamble that moderates will cave in the end, perhaps with some minor face-saving changes, for fear of infuriating the base and making their party’s president look like a failure. (Whether this succeeds depends on the particular issue and the particular politicians it involves.)
Pelosi supercharged that latter dynamic by taking the bipartisan infrastructure bill hostage. For one, that’s a bill the moderates are most eager to pass, and that progressives don’t particularly care about. But even more importantly, Pelosi’s move means that Biden’s whole agenda depends on whether moderates and progressives can reach agreement on the mega-bill. So the moderates’ threat to kill it comes off as less credible, since they’d be making President Biden a failure.
That’s the theory anyway — though Sinema is trying to debunk it. Her spokesperson <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2021/08/23/sinema-35t-spending-bill-506583">told Politico Monday</a> that “proceedings in the U.S. House will have no impact” on her views about the mega-bill, and reiterated that its current spending level is too high.
In other words: keep the hostage as long as you want. She’ll wait.
 
 
source <a href="https://www.vox.com/22637828/pelosi-gottheimer-budget-resolution-reconciliation-infrastructure">https://www.vox.com/22637828/pelosi-gottheimer-budget-resolution-reconciliation-infrastructure</a>

vox Congress’s Democrat-on-Democrat hostage standoff, explained

On the surface, the latest dispute between moderate Democrats and party leaders in Congress seems trivial. It’s about which of Biden’s two ...

Adam Serwer on the all-American politics of cruelty

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The phrase “The cruelty is the point” achieved mantra status during the Trump presidency. It was coined by Adam Serwer, a writer at the Atlantic and a sharp observer of race and American politics.
Serwer <a href="https://go.redirectingat.com/?id=66960X1516588&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.penguinrandomhouse.com%2Fbooks%2F665171%2Fthe-cruelty-is-the-point-by-adam-serwer%2F&referrer=vox.com&sref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.vox.com%2Fvox-conversations-podcast%2F22637762%2Fvox-conversations-adam-serwer-the-cruelty-is-the-point" rel="sponsored nofollow noopener" target="_blank" has-subtag="true" data-cdata='{"rewritten_url":"https://go.redirectingat.com?id=66960X1516588\u0026xs=1\u0026url=https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/665171/the-cruelty-is-the-point-by-adam-serwer/\u0026referrer=vox.com\u0026sref=https://www.vox.com/vox-conversations-podcast/22637762/vox-conversations-adam-serwer-the-cruelty-is-the-point\u0026xcust=___vx__p_22401803__m_m-placeholder__s_s-placeholder__t_w__c_c-placeholder__r_r-placeholder__d_d-placeholder","subtag_max_length":50,"subtag_delim_length":3,"subtag_key":"xcust","subtag_data":{"id":"66960X1516588","xs":"1","url":"https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/665171/the-cruelty-is-the-point-by-adam-serwer/","referrer":"vox.com","sref":"https://www.vox.com/vox-conversations-podcast/22637762/vox-conversations-adam-serwer-the-cruelty-is-the-point","xcust":"___vx__p_22401803__m_m-placeholder__s_s-placeholder__t_w__c_c-placeholder__r_r-placeholder__d_d-placeholder"},"encode_subtag":false}'>recently released an anthology</a> of his writings during the Trump era, including his now-<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/the-cruelty-is-the-point/572104/">famous essay</a> on cruelty and Trumpism. The pieces in the collection span almost the entirety of American history and they touch on too many topics to summarize. But if there’s a unifying question, it’s this: What role does cruelty play in America?
Serwer’s answer is complicated but worth pondering. For him, individual cruelty isn’t really the problem. Sure, people can be cruel, but people can be lots of things, and a healthy society is more than capable of channeling our vices. Serwer’s argument is that the structure of American politics itself is cruel.
While Serwer recognizes that cruelty, over time, has been a bipartisan feature of American politics, he believes it’s now central to the Republican Party. This is not the same as saying individual Republicans are cruel; the point is that the GOP, as a matter of strategy, is incentivizing cruelty.
I spoke to Serwer for an episode of <a href="https://www.vox.com/vox-conversations-podcast">Vox Conversations</a>. We discussed the role of cruelty in American life as well as some of the challenges of making these sorts of distinctions. We also talk about why cruelty is so effective as a mobilizing device for the GOP at this moment, and why, no matter how hard we try, we’ll never get rid of it.
Listen to our conversation below or on <a href="https://apps.apple.com/us/app/vox-conversations/id1215557536">Apple Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/search/vox%20conversations">Google Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6NOJ6IkTb2GWMj1RpmtnxP">Spotify</a>, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
 
 
source <a href="https://www.vox.com/vox-conversations-podcast/22637762/vox-conversations-adam-serwer-the-cruelty-is-the-point">https://www.vox.com/vox-conversations-podcast/22637762/vox-conversations-adam-serwer-the-cruelty-is-the-point</a>

vox Adam Serwer on the all-American politics of cruelty

The phrase “The cruelty is the point” achieved mantra status during the Trump presidency. It was coined by Adam Serwer, a writer at the Atl...

The Jeopardy hosting saga has become a cautionary morality tale

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In the end, Jeopardy executive producer Mike Richards was the face of the legendary quiz show for approximately one day.
After a year of guest hosts, some of whom were backdoor-auditioning for the job of permanent host after the death of Alex Trebek last November, Richards drew confusion and backlash when news broke on August 11 that he would be stepping up <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/jeopardy-set-to-announce-mayim-bialik-and-mike-richards-splitting-host-duties">to take the gig</a>.
In comparison with more prominent candidates like legendary Jeopardy contestant Ken Jennings and superfan <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/22557875/levar-burton-jeopardy-hosting-history">LeVar Burton</a>, Richards had zero name recognition outside Jeopardy viewers who’d watched him helm a few episodes as part of the show’s parade of guest hosts earlier this year. The casting news immediately spawned the Jeopardy in-joke “<a href="https://twitter.com/NickBossRoss/status/1423045827380092931">Who Is Mike Richards?</a>”
Though Richards has only been a Jeopardy producer for one tumultuous year, he’s a game show industry veteran who seems to have long-held aspirations of hosting a game show, any game show, himself. That ambition may have led him to pursue the chance to host Jeopardy once the opportunity presented itself.
But to a mostly unfamiliar public, Richards’s seemingly out-of-nowhere ascension predictably fueled a <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/jeopardy-host-frontrunner-mike-richards-alleged-history-of-harassment-discrimination">rising tide</a> of dissatisfaction and scrutiny, which then spurred discussion of trouble in his past. <a href="https://www.theringer.com/tv/2021/8/18/22631299/mike-richards-jeopardy-host-search-process-past-comments">The Ringer published an exposé</a> painting Richards as an opportunist with a history of making sexist, classist, and xenophobic remarks and detailing discrimination lawsuits made during his tenure at The Price Is Right. Very quickly, Richards looked unfit to continue the legacy of Jeopardy.
On Friday, August 20, he confronted that reality: Richards announced that he would be stepping down as host after a single day of taping the show — meaning the drawn-out search for a new permanent host to replace the late, <a href="https://www.vox.com/first-person/2019/3/20/18272876/jeopardy-alex-trebek">beloved</a> Trebek will continue a little while longer. Actress <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/23/media/mayim-bialik-jeopardy/index.html">Mayim Bialik</a>, who was a well-received guest host and had been slated to step in as a recurring host for occasional primetime episodes, will serve as the full-time host for now.
So: Who is Mike Richards, and how did he land, then lose, such a coveted job? His rise and fall feels almost scripted: A powerful man seems to override a fair selection process, then succumbs to scandal due to the skeletons in his closet. But this familiar story can tell us plenty about Jeopardy and its cultural role — and what might be next for the show itself.
Mike Richards became executive producer of Jeopardy a year ago, after the departure of longtime executive Harry Friedman at the end of the show’s 2019–2020 season. A jubilant <a href="https://variety.com/2019/tv/news/jeopardy-wheel-of-fortune-harry-friedman-mike-richards-1203318155/">announcement</a> about the switchover in August 2019 noted that Richards had programmed 4,000 hours of game shows during his career — a career that has seen Richards earn four Daytime Emmy awards and 19 nominations.
According to <a href="https://www.pepperdine.edu/magazine/2021/07/ahead-game/">an alumni profile</a> from Pepperdine University, the 46-year-old Richards began hosting a college TV show in the mid-’90s — The Randumb Show, described as “a weekly late-night sketch comedy talk show which won multiple college broadcasting awards.” Years later, Richards would revive a version of The Randumb Show in podcast form. But first, in 1997, as a new college grad, he leveraged it to gain an internship at The Tonight Show — and his career took off from there.
By the mid-aughts, Richards had moved from production assistant roles to hosting duties for reality shows like <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0460625/">Beauty and the Geek</a>. In 2007, he auditioned to host The Price Is Right before assuming the role of <a href="https://variety.com/2008/scene/news/price-names-executive-producer-1117990000/">executive producer</a> instead. He has also reportedly auditioned to host American Idol.
These industry experiences, especially his intermittent hosting roles, might have made him a veteran primed for the Jeopardy job, but once he was named host, they also made him look insincere to many Jeopardy fans. As past Jeopardy champion Kristin Sausville <a href="https://www.theringer.com/tv/2021/8/18/22631299/mike-richards-jeopardy-host-search-process-past-comments">told</a> the Ringer, “[I]t looks like Richards just wanted to host a game show, any game show.”
Outside of his short tenure as a producer, Richards lacked an intimate tie to Jeopardy or a long-professed love for the show. This made him an outlier among the many guest hosts who helmed Jeopardy since Trebek’s illness and death. Popular guest host Ken Jennings is a Jeopardy legend, the most-winning contestant in the show’s history. NFL quarterback Aaron Rodgers, a lifelong fan, <a href="https://www.theringer.com/tv/2021/4/5/22368705/aaron-rodgers-jeopardy-guest-host-q-and-a">prepared for his stint</a> as host as intensely as if he were drilling for the Super Bowl. Fan-favorite Burton is a former Celebrity Jeopardy winner who’s been talking about his dream of hosting Jeopardy for nearly a decade.
Richards also came across to some viewers as a stand-in in other ways. As <a href="https://www.theringer.com/tv/2021/8/5/22611962/jeopardy-new-host-mike-richards-sony">reported</a> by the Ringer’s Claire McNear (a Jeopardy expert who <a href="https://www.twelvebooks.com/titles/claire-mcnear/answers-in-the-form-of-questions/9781538702321/">published a book</a> about the show in 2020), Richards may have pushed his way into guest-hosting the show earlier this year by seizing on a planned host’s scheduling conflict that the Ringer described as “minor.” In other words, Richards may have come up with a more-or-less artificial reason for him to take a spin as an emergency guest host, as if he were doing the show a favor by rescuing it from a crisis.
Regardless of how it came about, Richards’s perceived use of that temporary guest-hosting gig as a stepping stone to the permanent position looked like a power move. Richards seemed to be, in effect, crowning himself king.
Jeopardy was at pains to stress, in <a href="https://www.jeopardy.com/jbuzz/news-events/jeopardy-welcomes-mayim-bialik-and-mike-richards-new-hosts">a press release</a> issued <a href="https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ftLvZtE2NmQJ:https://www.jeopardy.com/jbuzz/tagged/mayim-bialik+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us">August 11</a> that was later deleted, that the decision to elevate Richards was made not solely by him but rather “a senior group of executives at Sony Pictures Television,” based on “research from multiple panels and focus groups as well as input from the show’s partners and viewers.” Still, it’s difficult to align that insistence with audiences’ <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jeopardy/comments/lpv887/jeopardy_recap_for_mon_feb_22_debut_of_mike/goeijuh/">general</a> <a href="https://www.seattletimes.com/entertainment/tv/news-that-mike-richards-might-be-new-jeopardy-host-met-with-resounding-meh-in-seattle/">ambivalence</a> about his hosting performance, as a brutal Morning Consult <a href="https://www.krqe.com/entertainment-news/poll-finds-jeopardy-fans-overwhelmingly-wanted-levar-burton-not-mike-richards-to-host/">poll after the announcement</a> suggests.
The whole situation smacked of opportunism — traits hardly befitting a program like Jeopardy. After all, the game show originally launched in the ’60s as <a href="https://www.history.com/news/quiz-show-scandal-fraud-jeopardy">a more honest alternative</a> to the scandal-laden trivia contests of the ’50s. In addition to the show’s “answer first, followed by the question” format serving as an antidote to more manipulative game show styles, Jeopardy has long generated a sense of unmatched community pride among its fans and contestants.
The show is a test of its audience’s intelligence and cleverness, and its egalitarian format makes it a microcosm of the American dream. The contest rewards anyone with a lot of knowledge and a little skill at making good bets, which is practically a template for how success in the US is theoretically supposed to work: On Jeopardy, we can see that fabled merit system reward nightly dividends.
The hosts are part of Jeopardy’s myth-making. In its decades-long run, the show has had only two main hosts — original host Art Fleming and longtime host Trebek, each with reputations that matched the show’s largely scandal-free record.
Given <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/media/jeopardy-mike-richards-journalism-media-claire-mcnear/2021/08/23/c91d090c-040d-11ec-a266-7c7fe02fa374_story.html">how leery many were</a> of Richards’s selection, it was all but a given that his reputation and past history would be highly scrutinized to make sure they could live up to the reputation of Jeopardy itself.
After <a href="https://variety.com/2021/tv/news/mike-richards-jeopardy-host-alex-trebek-1235034673/">the news broke</a> in early August that Richards was in talks to assume the role of host, media outlets began <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/jeopardy-host-frontrunner-mike-richards-alleged-history-of-harassment-discrimination">reporting</a> on several decade-old lawsuits involving Richards and allegations of sexism.
<a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/price-is-right-model-wins-393521/">One suit</a>, filed by former The Price Is Right model Brandy Cochran against the show’s production team in 2010, saw Cochran win $7.7 million in damages after the court found the production team had discriminated against her and then fired her for getting pregnant. Amid other allegations, Cochran said that Richards, then one of the show’s producers, refused to interact with her on set after implying he should have fired her before her pregnancy announcement. She also claimed Richards had pushed for the models to wear skimpier clothing onstage and had made derogatory comments about women in swimsuits.
In <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/price-is-right-lawsuit-pregnancy-discrimination-293805/">another lawsuit</a> filed alongside Cochran’s but later dismissed, The Price Is Right model Shane Stirling alleged that Richards joked that he’d fired five other models, only to be left with the one who had gotten pregnant.
Richards denied the allegations in court in 2012, and then <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/jeopardy-host-frontrunner-mike-richards-brushes-off-price-is-right-lawsuits-in-staff-memo?ref=author">denied them again</a> this month, sending an internal memo to staff in which he insisted, “The way in which my comments and actions have been characterized in these complaints does not reflect the reality of who I am or how we worked together on The Price is Right.”
Richards’s reputation took another hit, however, as the resurfaced lawsuits joined with other unsavory comments that McNear uncovered for the Ringer. These originated in a 2013 podcast titled The Randumb Show, recycling the name but not the format of Richards’s original college sketch show. The podcast and all of its 41 episodes were deleted from its hosting platform on August 17, but as reported by McNear, many of them featured Richards voicing a litany of controversial opinions.
In one episode, he referred to “booth babes” — women who cosplay and promote products at industry conventions — as “booth whores,” among other epithets. In other episodes, he made jokes drawing on harmful anti-Semitic stereotypes, prompting the <a href="https://twitter.com/ADL/status/1428446674574188546">Anti-Defamation League to call last week for an investigation</a> into his history.
In still more episodes, he mocked people on food stamps, welfare, and anyone who takes money from the government. He also dropped disparaging remarks about Haiti while discussing his guest’s apartment complex: “Does Beth live, like, in Haiti? Doesn’t it sound like that? Like, the urine smell, the woman in the muumuu, the stray cats.”
The Ringer noted that several times on the podcast, Richards praised figures like American Idol host Ryan Seacrest and Survivor host Jeff Probst — who, he claimed, have “actually made the world a safer place for what I like to call the ‘skinny white host,’ like [frequent game show host] George [Gray] and I. Which is, you’ll take a chance on someone that you don’t know.” Richards seemed to be implying that such hosts would make it easier for an unknown white man to be considered for future hosting gigs.
When it came to naming a new host for Jeopardy, Sony’s decision committee didn’t appear to want to take a chance on anyone but Richards. The only exception was offering a recurring slot to Bialik as the host of occasional primetime specials. (In the wake of Richards’ departure, Bialik will now serve as <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/23/business/mayim-bialik-jeopardy-host.html">Jeopardy’s interim full-time host for at least 15 episodes</a>.)
As late as the day before he stepped down, with backlash still growing, Richards <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/mike-richards-adl-1235000199/">went to work</a> filming the new season, which was set to begin airing on September 13, 2021. He even <a href="https://www.theringer.com/tv/2021/8/18/22631299/mike-richards-jeopardy-host-search-process-past-comments">responded</a> to the Ringer’s investigation with a lengthy apology.
“It is humbling to confront a terribly embarrassing moment of misjudgment, thoughtlessness, and insensitivity from nearly a decade ago,” Richards said in a statement. “Looking back now, there is no excuse, of course, for the comments I made on this podcast and I am deeply sorry.”
Perhaps if Richards hadn’t already been widely perceived as a disingenuous crown-snatcher, his apology might have gone over better. Instead, within days, he was out.
On Friday, August 20, Richards announced through an official statement given to the Ringer’s McNear from Sony that he would be stepping down and that the studio would relaunch its search for a new host.
While many fans reacted to the news with jubilance, others were wearied at the thought of another protracted search for a new host. It’s unclear whether Sony will draw from the existing pool of now-seasoned hosts it has courted all year or whether it will look further afield.
In either case, the rounds of guest-hosting will resume for now. And because Richards was only declared host for a week — and only spent one day actually taping new episodes — the schedule shouldn’t experience much, if any, delay.
Many fans seem firmly behind LeVar Burton becoming Jeopardy’s next host, with celebrities including <a href="https://twitter.com/VancityReynolds/status/1428796230545645568">Ryan Reynolds</a> stepping in to comment on his fitness for the role. Other guest hosts have been the targets of scorn from fans because of their own less-than-stellar histories. As Daniel Feinberg <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/mike-richards-jeopardy-hosting-debacle-critics-notebook-1235000610/">wrote for the Hollywood Reporter</a>, “Selecting somebody with Richards’ background of ambitious ickiness was an affront to Alex Trebek’s legacy of fundamental decency, but I’m still more offended by what Dr. Oz’s guest run did to the show’s legacy of intellectual honesty.”
Meanwhile, while Bialik was a popular guest host, <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/mayim-bialik-faces-calls-step-down-jeopardy-host-after-mike-richards-departure-1621598">backlash did arise</a> against her selection alongside Richards, due to her <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/jeopardy-host-mayim-bialiks-ugly-history-of-shaming-weinsteins-victims-and-being-an-anti-vaxxer">history</a> of making anti-vaccine statements, along with <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/13/opinion/mayim-bialik-feminist-harvey-weinstein.html">a 2017 New York Times op-ed</a> on Hollywood sexual misconduct in which she warned women in the industry against behaving “flirtatiously” and “having others celebrate your physical beauty.” She later <a href="https://www.vulture.com/2017/10/mayim-bialik-apologizes-for-controversial-weinstein-op-ed.html">apologized</a> for the op-ed, but that hasn’t stopped Jeopardy fans from escalating the push for her removal; since the August 23 announcement that Bialik will now be the show’s interim full-time host, social media attention has turned to further excavating her past.
Although it seems <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/20/business/mike-richards-quits-jeopardy.html">Richards will continue</a> in his role as Jeopardy’s executive producer, some fans have <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/calls-grow-mike-richards-step-down-jeopardy-executive-producer-1621991">called on him</a> to resign from that job as well.
The result of this sequence of events is perhaps a reminder that <a href="https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/Pride+goes+before+a+fall">pride goes before a fall</a>, or at least before scorned game show fans rummage through your past to prove you are unworthy of wearing Jeopardy’s crown. It’s also a reminder that Jeopardy’s importance extends beyond that of the average game show. Because the program combines intellectual curiosity with meritocracy in a way that makes geekery seem fashionable, Jeopardy stands as America’s most popular and culturally significant game show.
Its mostly scandal-free legacy, then, is a big deal — not only because the show is so popular, but because Jeopardy might just be one of the few cultural cornerstones that still unites Americans, one whose moral integrity and significance we can all agree on despite our many other differences. Throughout its decades-long run, Jeopardy’s biggest controversies have not been so large — such as complaints about <a href="https://www.today.com/popculture/jeopardy-contestant-addresses-critics-who-felt-he-was-too-arrogant-t218741">arrogant winners</a> or <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/5/2/18516852/jeopardy-james-holzhauer-record-winning-streak-hero-villain">card-shark contestant James Holzhauer</a>, whose mathematical gameplay was condemned by many fans as ruinous to the game’s spontaneity and fun.
The Mike Richards saga has threatened that legacy, and in its aftermath, with so much on the line, any future host will need to have a reputation that lives up to that of Jeopardy itself.
They’ll not only have Alex Trebek’s giant shoes to fill — they’ll have to convince the public that they deserve to wear them.
 
 
source <a href="https://www.vox.com/22634196/jeopardy-who-is-the-new-host-mayim-bialik-mike-richards-scandal-levar-burton">https://www.vox.com/22634196/jeopardy-who-is-the-new-host-mayim-bialik-mike-richards-scandal-levar-burton</a>

vox The Jeopardy hosting saga has become a cautionary morality tale

In the end, Jeopardy executive producer Mike Richards was the face of the legendary quiz show for approximately one day. After a year of ...

What full FDA approval for Covid-19 vaccines really means

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Nearly nine months after the first Americans received their shots, the Covid-19 vaccine from Pfizer/BioNTech received <a href="https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-approves-first-covid-19-vaccine">full approval from the Food and Drug Administration</a> for people 16 and older on Monday. This could help increase the number of people willing to get vaccines and make it easier to compel those who are less willing — if health officials can cut through the mounting confusion around their efficacy, booster shots, and the threat of the <a href="https://www.vox.com/22547537/delta-coronavirus-variant-covid-19-vaccines-masks-lockdown">delta variant</a>.
Covid-19 vaccines from Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer/BioNTech, and Moderna have thus far been distributed across the US under <a href="https://www.fda.gov/emergency-preparedness-and-response/mcm-legal-regulatory-and-policy-framework/emergency-use-authorization">emergency use authorizations</a>. This form of limited approval allows the FDA to fast-track the distribution of drugs, vaccines, and medical devices during a public health emergency, like a pandemic.
Getting an emergency use authorization requires data from clinical trials showing that an intervention is safe and effective, but the bar for full approval is higher. Now, with 200 million people at least partially vaccinated, the FDA has effectively removed the asterisks from Pfizer/BioNTech’s mRNA vaccine.
“While millions of people have already safely received Covid-19 vaccines, we recognize that for some, the FDA approval of a vaccine may now instill additional confidence to get vaccinated,” said Janet Woodcock, acting commissioner of the FDA, in a statement on Monday.
Full approval grants the vaccine manufacturers permission to advertise their products and allow them to continue selling them after the public health emergency around Covid-19 ends. For doctors, full approval also allows them to use vaccines off-label, potentially as booster shots.
But perhaps the most significant change would be a potential boost in public confidence in the vaccines, amid a rising tide of confounding information. Full approval could serve as a valuable messaging tool and help close some of the lingering gaps in immunization across the country.
A significant share of unvaccinated people — millions of people, according to polling — say that full approval will increase the likelihood that they’ll get a Covid-19 vaccine. These individuals may be hesitating “because they know there will be much more data available at the time of an approval ... three times as much data on safety and three times as much data on effectiveness,” said <a href="https://www.citizen.org/about/person/sidney-wolfe-md/">Sidney Wolfe</a>, founder and senior adviser at the health research group at Public Citizen.
More employers may also be willing to require vaccines among their workers (some have <a href="https://www.vox.com/22599791/covid-vaccine-mandate-legal-joe-biden-supreme-court-jacobson-massachusetts-boss-employer">already begun to do so</a>). And full approval from the FDA could bolster support for these vaccines in other countries that look to the US agency for its rigor. However, to get the maximum public health value out of a full approval, messengers from the president on down to local doctors have to be ready to explain what it all means.
For vaccines, the FDA grants emergency use authorizations after it reviews at least two months of follow-up results for clinical trial participants who received the actual injection. For full approval, known in FDA-speak as a “<a href="https://www.fda.gov/vaccines-blood-biologics/development-approval-process-cber/biologics-license-applications-bla-process-cber">biologics license application</a>,” the agency wants to see six months of data to ensure there are no widespread problems or to detect adverse reactions. Both reviews examine safety and efficacy while also studying what the optimal distribution strategy might be.
In May, <a href="https://investors.pfizer.com/investor-news/press-release-details/2021/Pfizer-and-BioNTech-Initiate-Rolling-Submission-of-Biologics-License-Application-for-U.S.-FDA-Approval-of-Their-COVID-19-Vaccine/default.aspx">Pfizer and BioNTech</a> submitted their license application. <a href="https://investors.modernatx.com/news-releases/news-release-details/moderna-announces-initiation-rolling-submission-biologics">Moderna</a> began its application in June, and Johnson & Johnson said it will begin the process later this year.
With vaccines in general, almost all complications that occur tend to happen shortly after the vaccine is administered, often within a day or two. Most <a href="https://www.vox.com/22158238/covid-19-vaccine-side-effects-explained">side effects</a> of the Covid-19 vaccines in the US tend to be mild or moderate, ranging from pain at the injection site to fatigue to fever. A <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7002e1.htm">very small number</a> of recipients reported severe allergic reactions shortly after their shots, which is why most vaccine clinics have a waiting period where they can monitor patients for 15 to 30 minutes.
But in clinical trials, some extremely rare complications can be hard to detect even among tens of thousands of people after following them for two months. In April, the CDC and FDA paused the distribution of the <a href="https://www.vox.com/22158238/covid-19-vaccine-side-effects-explained">Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine</a> after 15 people reported a rare blood-clotting disorder out of the 8 million people who had received a dose at that point. After investigating, regulators concluded the benefits of the vaccine far outweigh the risks and allowed distribution to resume.
Monitoring clinical trial participants over six months also yields more information about how long protection from the vaccine lasts and whether any subsets of the population are more vulnerable. And it presents an opportunity to see how well the vaccines hold up against variants that were not widely circulating earlier in the pandemic.
This additional information — not just from clinical trials but from wide-scale distribution — helps the FDA identify any risks and better tailor its recommendations for use of the vaccine. Full approval also requires inspections of vaccine production facilities, looking at how the shots are made and how they’re packaged to ensure that production is consistent.
“That’s a much larger package of data, and that in itself means it takes much longer” to review, Wolfe said.
The licensing process for vaccines usually takes about a year. By granting full approval to the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine just four months after the companies applied, Covid-19 vaccines have broken yet another speed record.
One caveat is that the full vaccine license only applies to the specific age groups included in a given clinical trial. The original trials mainly included adults, and Covid-19 vaccine testing in younger children has only recently begun, so the FDA has fully approved the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine for use in adults 16 and older. Children 12 to 15 can continue to receive the shot under the emergency use authorization that was already in place.
At this point, the majority of adults in the US have received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine under an emergency use authorization. The spread of the delta variant has increased the rate of new vaccinations, which reached more than a <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/01/28/960901166/how-is-the-covid-19-vaccination-campaign-going-in-your-state">million doses in a day</a> on August 19, but the rate is still far below the April peak of more than 4.4 million doses per day. There remain pockets of the country where fewer than half of all eligible people have been vaccinated, and these regions are driving the rise in new Covid-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths.
There are several factors that <a href="https://www.vox.com/22587443/covid-19-vaccine-refusal-hesitancy-variant-delta-cases-rate">divide the vaccinated from the unvaccinated</a>, including political affiliation, race, income, and age. The reasons these people cite vary, such as a lack of access, a belief that Covid-19 isn’t that serious, and concerns that the vaccines have not been fully vetted.
According to polling from the <a href="https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/poll-finding/kff-covid-19-vaccine-monitor-june-2021/">Kaiser Family Foundation</a>, almost one-third of unvaccinated people said they would be more inclined to get a shot if it graduates from an emergency use authorization to a full license. Full FDA approval could mean a lot for this last group of people.
But convincing people to get shots is not the job of the FDA; that falls to other public health messengers, and they have to be prepared to seize the opportunity. “It can have a modest effect or be a game changer, depending on how it’s handled,” said <a href="https://www.kff.org/person/drew-altman/">Drew Altman</a>, president and CEO of the Kaiser Family Foundation. “It’s a question then of what the president does, what state and local public health leaders do, what the experts on television do.”
It’s not clear that people who cite the lack of FDA approval as a reason for not getting vaccinated are genuinely concerned with regulatory procedure or whether that’s just a proxy for general hesitancy. There’s also widespread confusion about the approval process: Kaiser’s polling also showed that at least two-thirds of US adults believed that Covid-19 vaccines already had full approval or weren’t sure about their regulatory status.
As for vaccine mandates, it’s already legal for private and public institutions to <a href="https://www.vox.com/22599791/covid-vaccine-mandate-legal-joe-biden-supreme-court-jacobson-massachusetts-boss-employer">require their employees and customers to get shots</a>. Companies like <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/28/business/google-return-to-office-masks.html">Google</a>, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/30/business/covid-vaccine-mandates-rto.html">Disney, and Walmart</a> have begun to require many workers to get Covid-19 vaccines. But full approval could tip more employers, airlines, event venues, and other institutions that are on the fence to impose vaccinate mandates.
“I would look for significant movement on the part of more employers after full approval comes down from the FDA,” Altman said.
Now that the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine is fully approved for people 16 and older, that doesn’t mean Moderna and Johnson & Johnson will stop distributing their vaccines under emergency use authorizations. While one of the conditions for granting an emergency use authorization is that there is no FDA-approved alternative available, emergencies like Covid-19 affect the calculus, the agency told Vox.
“For example, if the approved vaccine is only available in limited quantities, that vaccine may not be considered adequate to address the public health emergency,” said an FDA spokesperson in an email. “Another example would be if the vaccine is approved for use only in a limited population, then that vaccine may not be considered adequate to address the public health emergency for other populations.”
All the while, the dynamics of the pandemic are still changing, particularly with the surging <a href="https://www.vox.com/22547537/delta-coronavirus-variant-covid-19-vaccines-masks-lockdown">delta variant</a> of the coronavirus. While vaccines remain highly protective against severe Covid-19, delta seems to have increased the likelihood of <a href="https://www.vox.com/22575227/covid-19-post-vaccine-breakthrough-infection-cases">breakthrough infections</a>. <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7034e3.htm?s_cid=mm7034e3_w">Recent CDC data</a> suggests that the shots aren’t as protective for vulnerable people like older adults who were vaccinated many months ago.
To counter this, the FDA is now on the verge of <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/08/19/1028594715/covid-booster-shots-are-coming-heres-what-you-need-to-know">approving booster doses</a> for many Covid-19 vaccine recipients. Meanwhile, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has gone back to recommending face masks in some circumstances for vaccinated people.
For health officials, it’s a fine line to walk: reassuring people vaccines are safe and effective while also noting that precautions are still needed. Regulators like the FDA also have to balance the needs of an urgent public health crisis with taking the time to go through the proper procedures.
And there are tough challenges that will remain even after a vaccine gets the bright green light from the FDA. There are still parts of the US where <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/18/health/us-coronavirus-wednesday/index.html">vaccination rates remain stubbornly low</a>, and many unvaccinated people are not just hesitant but outright refusing to get immunized. Convincing these holdouts is difficult, but necessary, because as long as they remain unprotected, the virus will have ample opportunity to wreak havoc.
Update, August 23, 10 am ET: This article has been updated with the FDA’s full approval of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine.
 
 
source <a href="https://www.vox.com/22628681/covid-19-vaccine-delta-variant-fda-approved-pfizer-moderna">https://www.vox.com/22628681/covid-19-vaccine-delta-variant-fda-approved-pfizer-moderna</a>

vox What full FDA approval for Covid-19 vaccines really means

Nearly nine months after the first Americans received their shots, the Covid-19 vaccine from Pfizer/BioNTech received full approval from th...

How California’s bizarre recall system could elect a Republican governor

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If you haven’t been following California’s recall election battle, you might scoff at the idea that Gov. Gavin Newsom is fighting for his political life — and perhaps even to safeguard Democratic control of the US Senate. California is a deep-blue state, after all; could a Republican really win?
But the strange design of California’s recall system, and Newsom’s strategy for navigating it, make a Republican win more plausible than might be expected. That’s one reason the conservative activists who started the recall effort are pushing to remove Newsom from office this year rather than waiting until the 2022 election: They believe they have a better shot of winning now.
The first question voters will see on the ballot: Should Governor Newsom be recalled? Voters get to answer yes or no.
The second question: If Newsom is recalled, who should be his replacement? Here voters are presented with 46 candidates (Republicans, Democrats, and others) — but not Newsom. Mail-in voting has already begun, and in-person voting will take place September 14.
Here’s where it gets bizarre. Newsom needs to win a majority of the vote to stay in office. If he fails to get that majority, his replacement can win merely by being the top-vote getter in a crowded field. Two <a href="https://emersonpolling.reportablenews.com/pr/newsom-clings-to-lead-in-recall-while-crime-becomes-a-top-issue-for-ca-voters">recent</a> <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1I50LLKPg-nOZdhn8Qa7zziU3i1MZl3SD/view">polls</a> have shown conservative talk radio host <a href="https://www.politico.com/states/california/story/2021/08/13/he-opposes-gun-control-the-minimum-wage-and-could-be-californias-next-governor-1389829">Larry Elder</a> (R) in first place with 23 percent of the vote — a small plurality that could still make him governor if Newsom loses the recall question.
It gets weirder. Newsom and top Democrats are specifically urging their voters to leave the replacement question blank. That makes sense as a political strategy: Newsom wants to frame the choice as between him and a Republican. But if Newsom loses the recall vote and many Democrats follow this advice, it will make it easier for a conservative Republican to get into office as his replacement, rather than a moderate Republican or one of the nine little-known Democrats in the field. Replacement candidates include 2018 GOP nominee <a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/08/recall-candidate-john-cox-served-legal-papers-during-debate.html">John Cox</a> (R), former San Diego mayor <a href="https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/joegarofoli/article/Faulconer-calls-out-Elder-to-grab-moderate-GOP-16396669.php">Kevin Faulconer</a> (R), celebrity <a href="https://kesq.com/news/2021/08/17/gubernatorial-candidate-caitlyn-jenner-tours-the-innovation-hub-in-palm-springs/">Caitlyn Jenner</a> (R), and developer/YouTuber <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/15/youtube-star-kevin-paffrath-is-democratic-leader-in-california-recall.html">Kevin Paffrath</a> (D).
A Republican win would have major implications for the state’s pandemic response policies over the next year (the governorship will be up for election again in November 2022). But the biggest consequence could be national: The United States Senate is divided 50-50, and the oldest senator is 88-year-old Dianne Feinstein (D) of California. If she were to die in office, as <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/09/18/100306972/justice-ruth-bader-ginsburg-champion-of-gender-equality-dies-at-87">octogenarians occasionally do</a>, California’s governor would choose her replacement — and a Republican governor could flip control of the Senate to Mitch McConnell’s GOP.
Democrats are optimistic that all of these challenges will be overcome, and that the fundamental partisan dynamics of California will reassert themselves and save Newsom. Most polls show Newsom narrowly leading on the recall question. But that outcome can hardly be taken for granted. In oddly-timed elections, weird things can happen, as Democrats learned when Scott Brown won a Massachusetts Senate seat in January 2010, or as Republicans learned from Doug Jones’s Alabama Senate seat victory in December 2017.
So there is a possible slow-motion disaster unfolding in California for Democrats — but there’s also still time for them to avert it, if they can communicate the stakes to their base voters.
The recall effort was launched by conservative activists who were generally dissatisfied with Newsom’s governance. The incident that got the most attention was Newsom flouting his own pandemic guidelines by <a href="https://www.foxla.com/news/fox-11-obtains-exclusive-photos-of-gov-newsom-at-french-restaurant-allegedly-not-following-covid-19-protocols">dining maskless</a> at the French Laundry restaurant last November, but conservatives also point to Newsom’s handling of the pandemic generally, the state’s <a href="https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/Californians-want-a-solution-to-homelessness-16391192.php">serious homelessness problem</a>, and a high level of <a href="https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-01-25/california-unemployment-fraud-11-billion-investigations">unemployment benefits fraud</a>. The motivation for the timing of this push, though, is likely that they think they have a better shot at winning in the recall than in next year’s ordinary election.
Now, in theory, the recall process is all about giving more power to the people so they can boot out politicians they think need to go. Who could be against that? But the devil’s in the details about just who “the people” happen to be, and how that choice is structured.
For one, to get the recall on the ballot, activists needed to meet a relatively low signature threshold: 12 percent of the voters who turned out in the last governor’s election. Even in a deep-blue state like California, 38 percent of voters backed Newsom’s GOP opponent last time around, so with the proper shoe leather and funding, that wasn’t a very hard threshold to meet.
Turnout is another issue. The nature of a recall means it’s an election that happens at an odd time, and oddly-timed elections can have a different electorate, in which those who are more fired up are more likely to turn out. So in practice, what the recall can do is give an impassioned minority of voters a chance at scoring an unexpected victory, due to low turnout from the less-engaged majority. (Though it doesn’t always work that way — turnout ended up being higher in the 2003 recall than in the governor’s election the previous year.)
The handling of the replacement candidates is also unusual because, unlike in typical elections, there are no primaries beforehand in which the field is sorted. So this time around there are 24 Republican candidates, 9 Democrats, and 13 others from third parties or with no party preference. With only a plurality necessary to win if Newsom loses the recall question, and no runoff, this poses the possibility that someone with a small slice of the vote would end up governor. This thrills conservatives, since a conservative candidate would have little chance of <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/gavin-newsom-larry-elder-governor-california-recall-lockdowns-taxes-crime-11628265859">winning a typical two-candidate California election</a>.
Another feature of the system takes away one possible choice from voters: Newsom is prohibited from appearing as a replacement candidate. That creates the strange asymmetry where Newsom needs a majority on the recall question to stay in office, but his replacement does not need a majority to be elected.
Put another way: If Newsom loses the recall question 51-49, and his replacement wins with 30 percent of the vote in a split field, would that really be what “the people” wanted? In that scenario, more Californians would have wanted Newsom than any one other candidate. Of course, it’s inherently tougher for a replacement candidate to get a majority since they have so much competition, but that only drives home how odd it is that these two differently-designed election systems are juxtaposed.
Like the other notable “direct democracy” feature of California politics — the state’s <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2020/11/6/21549654/california-ballot-initiative-proposition-direct-democracy">frequently-used ballot initiative and referendum system</a> — California’s recall system was created in 1911, during the Progressive Era. Contrary to the modern-day use of “progressive” as a term for those on the left, these capital-P Progressives were “an anti-party, anti-partisan, anti-special interest movement of reformers” in both parties, says Raphe Sonenshein, a political scientist at Cal State LA.
In California, Progressives were mainly concerned with corruption — specifically, the enormous influence of the Southern Pacific Railroad over state politics. But to build a “big tent” coalition to win power, these anti-corruption reformers sought allies. And one valuable ally was John Randolph Haynes, a wealthy doctor and investor who had an idiosyncratic interest in issues of direct democracy.
Haynes had studied direct democracy examples from around the world and from history, and he was taken with the idea that giving the people more power over politicians and lawmaking would improve society, according to an article by <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/41171809">historian John Allswang</a>. So he founded a group called the Direct Legislation League, and had already helped make Los Angeles the nation’s first city to give its voters the recall power back in 1903. (Voters approved it overwhelmingly, along with the ballot initiative and referendum reforms.)
So when a faction of California Progressives later launched an effort to take over the state’s Republican Party, they found Haynes’s money and organization helpful, and incorporated his proposals into their platform with little debate. Haynes “often seemed the only person in California who really cared about the initiative, referendum, and recall,” Allswang writes.
Progressive Republicans took over the state party and won the governorship, and they set about enacting their agenda in 1911. The legislature approved Haynes’s reforms and other sweeping changes, including women’s suffrage. Those reforms were put to a statewide vote later that year, and again won overwhelmingly. Haynes had put the idea on the agenda, but it was clear voters quite liked the idea of giving themselves more power.
The reasons for the specific design of California’s recall system are murkier. For instance, historian Tom Sitton says that the recall system Los Angeles created a few years prior allowed the incumbent to run as a replacement candidate. But when the state-level reform was drafted, a provision prohibiting that was included, and it’s not clear why the change was made.
The other notable choice was not requiring a runoff for the replacement candidate — letting a new candidate win with just a plurality. One possible motivation here is to save on money: A statewide election is expensive; a recall already adds one new costly election, and a runoff would add another. Another possibility, Sonenshein speculates, is that drafters may have wanted the recall process to be “as simple and quick as possible,” limiting “shenanigans” of any kind from the recalled incumbent.
The recall did not revolutionize state politics immediately. A few state legislators faced recall attempts in the 1910s, but then nobody successfully got a recall on the ballot again for another 80 years, when ideological conservatives embraced the tool to try and oust state legislators who’d taken positions they disliked.
But the person who first put a gubernatorial recall on the ballot was Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), who funded a push to oust the unpopular Gov. Davis in 2003. Issa’s key insight was that, with modern communication technology, the signature-gathering requirement was trivial as long as you were willing to spend the money to pay organizers. So he spent big, <a href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2003-may-06-me-recall6-story.html">intending to run</a> for the office himself. In a Hollywood twist, though, Schwarzenegger jumped in the race, and, knowing he couldn’t compete with Arnold’s celebrity, Issa <a href="https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/sdut-issa-says-arnolds-entry-pushed-him-out-of-recall-2003aug14-story.html">tearfully quit</a>.
In the end, 55 percent of voters opted to recall Davis. Among a crowded field to replace him, with over 100 candidates, Schwarzenegger won 48 percent of the vote. That wasn’t quite a majority, but another Republican candidate got 13 percent of the vote, so together well over half of voters wanted a Republican. And Schwarzenegger governed as a moderate, winning an easy reelection in 2006.
Newsom’s situation is different in many respects. He is more popular than Davis was at the time, and there is no formidable celebrity like Schwarzenegger in the race. (Caitlyn Jenner is running, but she <a href="https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2021/governor/ca/2021-california-governor-recall-election-replacement-candidates-7380.html">has not been doing well</a> in polls.)
But he still faces the inherently difficult challenge of winning a vote between “Newsom or not Newsom” — which is much more difficult than a typical election, when the choice is between one politician or another politician.
As a result, Democrats have tried to reframe that choice as being really about “Newsom or Republicans.” They made sure no credible Democrats entered the race as a replacement candidate (unlike in 2003, when Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante jumped in). The nine Democrats who did make the ballot this time are all little-known, with 29-year-old developer and YouTuber <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/15/youtube-star-kevin-paffrath-is-democratic-leader-in-california-recall.html">Kevin Paffrath</a> being the only one who’s gotten some attention.
Democrats are going even further in trying to draw a contrast. They’re <a href="https://www.politico.com/states/california/story/2021/08/09/newsom-urges-democrats-to-skip-recall-candidate-question-1389761">outright urging</a> voters to leave the replacement question blank, even though voting on it would not hurt Newsom in any way.
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Ballots for the radical right-wing recall will begin to be mailed out on Monday. Remember: vote NO on question 1, leave 2 blank, sign, date, seal & return. IT IS CRITICALLY IMPORTANT THAT WE ALL DO OUR PART TO DEFEAT THIS DANGEROUS POWER GRAB.
— Alex Padilla (@AlexPadilla4CA) <a href="https://twitter.com/AlexPadilla4CA/status/1426732916042838019?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 15, 2021</a></blockquote>
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The calculation seems to be that Democrats don’t want anyone thinking about a second choice or a backup plan. They want the election to be a choice between Newsom and Republicans, and they think this message will most effectively communicate that choice.
But it’s not advice that actually makes sense for individual voters, who are being asked to voluntarily forfeit their say over who the next governor would be if Newsom loses. Do they really want to hand the state over to Larry Elder, <a href="https://www.politico.com/states/california/story/2021/08/13/he-opposes-gun-control-the-minimum-wage-and-could-be-californias-next-governor-1389829">a far-right conservative</a>, rather than Paffrath, who is at least a Democrat, or <a href="https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/joegarofoli/article/Faulconer-calls-out-Elder-to-grab-moderate-GOP-16396669.php">Kevin Faulconer</a>, the former San Diego mayor who is a moderate Republican and at least has governing experience?
And if large numbers of Democrats do abstain from the replacement question, the math for a Republican victory gets even easier — again, since only a plurality win is necessary.
It’s hard to avoid the suspicion that state Democratic leaders might prefer, if Newsom loses, to have a deeply conservative Republican in the governor’s office, who would be easier to beat in 2022.
But Democratic voters who care about the state’s governance over the next year — or about whether the US Senate remains in Democratic hands — might think it best to fill out the whole ballot, to have a backup plan. Just in case.
 
 
source <a href="https://www.vox.com/22617048/california-recall-gavin-newsom-larry-elder">https://www.vox.com/22617048/california-recall-gavin-newsom-larry-elder</a>

vox How California’s bizarre recall system could elect a Republican governor

If you haven’t been following California’s recall election battle, you might scoff at the idea that Gov. Gavin Newsom is fighting for his p...

Videos: Biden And Harris LAUGH At Reporters Asking About Afghanistan Mess

Both Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were caught on camera Sunday laughing at reporters who asked uncomfortable questions about the debacle in Afghanistan, prompting critics to ask, what is in any way funny about the situation?
Harris, who was AWOL for days after the fall of Kabul to the Taliban, is now in South Asia and was asked by reporters at an airport what the situation is with getting Americans out of Afghanistan.
The vice president burst into laughter again:
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Meanwhile, Biden laughed when asked to respond to a <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/afghanistan-troop-removal-biden-approval-opinion-poll/">CBS News poll</a> that found most Americans do not believe he is “competent, focused or effective” after the disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal.
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A separate <a href="https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/biden_administration/kamala_harris_voter_approval_of_vp_declines">Rasmussen poll</a> found that most Americans consider Kamala Harris ‘not qualified’ or ‘not at all qualified’ to run the nation:
<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img alt="" class="wp-image-103728" sizes="(max-width: 631px) 100vw, 631px" src="https://api-assets.infowars.com/2021/08/46873587-9917793-A_new_poll_shows_55_per_cent_of_likely_voters_believe_Vice_Presi-a-9_1629708288284.jpg" srcset="https://api-assets.infowars.com/2021/08/46873587-9917793-A_new_poll_shows_55_per_cent_of_likely_voters_believe_Vice_Presi-a-9_1629708288284-250x300.jpg 250w, https://api-assets.infowars.com/2021/08/46873587-9917793-A_new_poll_shows_55_per_cent_of_likely_voters_believe_Vice_Presi-a-9_1629708288284.jpg 631w" /></figure>
What the hell are these clowns laughing about?
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She’s laughing because she still can’t figure out how she got here.
— The Truth (@tomahawktruth) <a href="https://twitter.com/tomahawktruth/status/1429475909019389954?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 22, 2021</a></blockquote>
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If it’s the highest priority, why are you leaving?
— Kona (@Kona3660820) <a href="https://twitter.com/Kona3660820/status/1429487484094853129?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 22, 2021</a></blockquote>
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Think she'd be cackling if her family was stuck in Afghanistan?! Feckless is an understatement.
— dignlifensc (@dignlifensc) <a href="https://twitter.com/dignlifensc/status/1429496892233338880?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 22, 2021</a></blockquote>
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Hysterical her nervous laugh when it’s an uncomfortable situation is nauseating.
— Eric Sherman (@edaddydeuce) <a href="https://twitter.com/edaddydeuce/status/1429507858119471105?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 22, 2021</a></blockquote>
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Biden says US-led evacuation from Kabul is acceleratin= What a pathetic joke biden is!To laugh and snicker when a reporter tells him something about his pole numbers is SICK! Shows he does not care about Americans left behind! He sholud be over there- see if he laughs then!
— Lucky Lou (@Maphisto13) <a href="https://twitter.com/Maphisto13/status/1429749002006839300?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 23, 2021</a></blockquote>
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source <a href="https://www.infowars.com/posts/videos-biden-and-harris-laugh-at-reporters-asking-about-afghanistan-mess">https://www.infowars.com/posts/videos-biden-and-harris-laugh-at-reporters-asking-about-afghanistan-mess</a>

news Videos: Biden And Harris LAUGH At Reporters Asking About Afghanistan Mess

Both Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were caught on camera Sunday laughing at reporters who asked uncomfortable questions about the debacle in A...