Editors’ Blog
Does The Recall Result Tell Us Anything About the Rest of Country?
It’s hard to make too much of the California recall. It is after all one of the most Democratic states in the union. The moribund state Republican party coalesced around a standard bearer whose top policy position may have been credible reports he pulled a gun on his fiance during a fight. The only conceivable way Larry Elder could have become governor is with very low turnout and a majority of voters deciding narrowly to recall Newsom and allowing Elder to slip through with like 35% of the vote.
But it doesn’t mean nothing.
Last night, TPM hosted a lively and illuminating discussion, with an impressive lineup of panelists, on redistricting, 2022, voting rights and the dire need for boldness from Democrats the next several months.
If you weren’t able to attend, you can watch below, but I wanted to take a moment to thank everyone who took the time to join us — we hope you got as much out of it as we did. And a special thank you to all of our members and those of you who contributed to the TPM Journalism Fund as part of your registration.
We’ll have another virtual event soon. Stay tuned.
Where Things Stand: TPM EVENT STARTS AT 6 P.M. ET 
Tonight, TPM is hosting a live virtual discussion on redistricting and the perhaps inevitable shift in House control post-midterms.
We’ve got an impressive lineup of panelist who will dig into, among other things:
Did Milley Think Trump Would Go Berserk?
We’ve got another Bob Woodward book that has exclusives that read as a bit too good to check. This has always been the thing with Woodward. Since his access has always been purported to be unlike anyone else’s he can have scoops that really no one else can confirm. And … well, that’s okay, apparently. This new book is – interestingly – coauthored by Bob Costa, also of The Washington Post.
The big revelations, at least in the early accounts, are tied to the action of Joint Chiefs Chair, Mark Milley. Milley was apparently afraid China and the US might stumble into a war around the 2020 election, with exercises around Taiwan and increasingly belligerent statements from then-President Trump. To defuse tensions, Milley allegedly twice called his Chinese counterpart to assure him the US was not planning and would not attack China. He did this once just ahead of the election and then again just after the January 6th.
Are We Going to Have a Vax Mandate Uprising?
I went a few rounds with TPM Reader EG over the last couple days over whether President Biden’s vaccine and test mandate will be the precipitating event leading to the breakdown of civil order in the US which now seems perpetually just around the bend. That’s not at all what I see coming. I’m all for the mandate. If anything I think Biden should be more aggressive. But I was curious that EG did see it unfolding this way.
In his view, the reports of an upstate New York hospital having to shutter its maternity ward because a group of health care workers had quit their jobs rather than be vaccinated is the leading edge of a coming wave. He sees hospitals having to reduce capacity just as COVID is filling ICUs in the fall. Then there are police, one of the least vaccinated of professions. He sees waves of police quitting their jobs, putting more pressure on efforts to tamp down on COVID-era crime surges and creating a pool of out of work LEOs ready to provide the muscle for future insurrections.
Where Things Stand: DeSantis Again Threatens Fines For Those Who Dare Defy His Deadly COVID Rules
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) is re-upping his main and, seemingly, only defense against those in his state who dare to buck his rules against COVID-19 mitigation measures: He’s threatening more of the little guys with fines again.
The Rest of the Story
The Washington Post has written up this story of an Alabama man who needed an ICU bed to treat a cardiac issue and none could be found for him in his home state. His home town hospital in Cullman, Alabama contacted 43 other hospitals in the state but none had room for him. He was eventually airlifted to a hospital in neighboring Mississippi where he died. The story garnered attention because his family included a plea for people to get vaccinated in Ray DeMonia’s obituary.
But there’s one detail about this story – or at least arguable tied to the story – that the Post doesn’t mention. Cullman, Alabama was the site of what the Alabama state GOP billed as the largest political rally in Alabama history just a couple days before DeMonia went to the hospital. The state GOP claimed 50,000 turned out for the rally in Cullman. Few if any seemed to be masked.
Remembering 9/11 Before ‘9/11’
So here we are 20 years later. I saw someone ask a couple days what was your most mundane memory from 9/11. I realized I don’t have any mundane memories from that day. This isn’t to say my day was especially traumatic, especially compared to so many others. I wake up to the TV I had left on to CNN the night before (I was single at the time) and see the first tower on fire and trying to make sense of it. Not in some deep existential sense – I was half asleep. What am I seeing? Then the second tower gets hit. (I’m still not certain if I saw the second tower hit live or a replay from a few moments earlier. I think it was the former but it’s all a jumble.) Then I’m talking to my then girlfriend in her office on Capitol Hill on instant messenger who’s telling me ‘we’re next, we’re next’. Then they get a call to evacuate. My most jarring memory from that day was seeing military vehicles on the streets of Washington, DC, something that seemed simply unimaginable. I don’t remember what kind precisely, some kind of APC, I think. Not being moved from one place to another but on patrol.
In some ways that was the most jarring thing for me. After getting my initial bearings I went outside to make sense of what was happening to report on it. I was still trying to make sense of what any of it meant. I had literally just rolled out of bed, remember. Seeing military vehicles patrolling the streets of the American capital. I understood deeply and intuitively that that meant something terrible and unimaginable had happened.
In the twenty intervening years I’ve become mostly accustomed to seeing national guard troops in fatigues carrying automatic weapons in train stations. If you’re old enough to remember, this was simply unimaginable before 9/11.
Biden’s Vax Mandate is Good Politics In Addition to Good Public Health
President Biden’s new vaccine mandates are not only good public health. They’re good politics. We hear constantly how we’re divided as a country, polarized into two roughly equal camps. On vaccinations though that’s not true. Epidemiological vaccination rates are not the same as electoral vaccination rates. Already an overwhelming percentage of adults are vaccinated. Roughly 65% of Americans over the age of 18 are fully vaccinated and over 75% have had at least one shot. What’s more, the older you are the more likely you are both to be vaccinated and to vote. So if anything that 65%-75% benchmark understates the voting majority of the already vaccinated.
If you’re vaccinated, requirements and mandates don’t seem burdensome. In fact they seem to have widespread support since the vaccinated, who make up the overwhelming majority of the country, are losing patience with the voluntarily unvaccinated who they blame (rightly) for keeping us stuck in the pandemic. Biden spoke for a lot of Americans yesterday when he said: “We’ve been patient, but our patience is wearing thin, and your refusal has cost all of us, so please do the right thing.”
Where Things Stand: Proud Boys Leader Is Hung Out To Dry
Ooof, you can’t make this stuff up.