and yet it had been run by what was loose was mayor of san francisco and his governor had been run into the ground. i would love to see debate between these two governors, between a governor who has made his state drive and one who is actually take people out of his state. and if gavin newsom can explain how his policy would be just terrific, if rolled out on a nationwide level, i d love to hear that. you know, kara what was interesting to me about the soundbite with the bigger enthusiasm that gavin newsom said, yes, make it three hours versus joe biden we have to beg to do a presidential press conference. really a big difference there. i totally agree but i think that is actually dangerous if you are conservative because i think gavin newsom is a contender. if you look at the interview when it comes to hannity, membe they gaff he committed when he went to french laundry, very pensive laundromat restauran
bringing the magic, phil, about what happened in this race. i think the results and what we re seeing pretty revealing. yeah, no question about it. let s start with this baseline, going into this recall election if republicans or those supported the yes, the recall vote, wanted to win, they needed to walk a very, very fine line. and here is why. take a look just to start before we dig into the data. republican voters in terms of registration, once at 36%, now just 24% in the state. democrats have a two to one registration advantage in the state. if you want to see how the state has been going just over the course of the last couple cycles, gavin newsom back in 2018 very, very sizable victory. president biden, back in 2020, nearly 30-point victory. there s a big hill to climb. however, they thought it was possible looking at the polling the last couple weeks, perhaps there was a pathway there, democratic apathy, there was no pathway at all. look at where things stand, 79% and 2.5 mill
yeah. john, they re afraid right now. right? a lot of voters are afraid especially democrats as they re looking around the country at the status of coronavirus and even as you re seeing some good indicators, there s this kind of surge that we re the middle of that quite frankly we weren t necessarily expecting or certainly we were not hoping for. so i wonder what the lesson is here about covid being on the ballot and what we can extrapolate from that. well, i think newsom was very effective at saying this is about actually someone who can manage covid in a responsible and ideologic way. the great line the rebolellion the vaccinated. you re bringing donald trump into california. but i think there are a couple of other key lessons here. one very specific to california, it is ridiculously easy to get a recall on the ballot in california. republicans saw a way to do an end run around the general election where they have this
date and could begin calling and reaching out to voters and saying, this is how you vote. this is when you re going to get your ballot. this is what you need to do. and once that began to happen, at the same time that larry elder was rising in the polls, newsom had the perfect foil, he finally had a target in the election. my approach to the coronavirus and keeping you safe is totally different from this other guy. just talking to voters out and about and at rallies is a rebellion of the vaccinated, i think. you know, they a lot were very upset about what larry elder had said about mask mandates, vaccine mandates but also his claim that, you know, the science is not there about young people needing to get vaccinated which we all know is absolutely false. so a lot of people did see a real threat to their health and that ended up leading them to turn in their ballots, john.
antique vase. you can drop it and smash it in a million different pieces. and that s what we re capable of doing if we don t stand up to meet the moment and push back. the republican front-runner larry elder took a page from the trump play book in the last few days. he had suggested the outcome of the recall would be affected by shenanigans. last night, probably too late to matter, but last night he did let go of the big lie and he conceded. my opponent, governor gavin ne newsom. come on. let s be gracious in defeat. and by the way, we may have lost the battle. but we are going to win the war. all right. elder is already hinting at a run for governor in 2022. i want to bring in cnn s phil mattingly at the magic wall,