Tim Pool analyzes the California gubernatorial race, noting that despite Eric Swalwell's resignation over sexual misconduct allegations, new Emerson polling shows Republicans Steve Hilton and Chad Bianco leading Democrats Tom Steyer and Katie Porter. He argues Democrats orchestrated Swalwell's exit to split the vote but failed due to internal fractures caused by extremists like Hassan Piker and Steyer's radical proposals, such as imprisoning ICE agents. Ultimately, this alienation of moderate voters suggests the party's strategy has backfired, potentially driving California toward a Republican future despite current polarization. [Automatically generated summary]
One of the biggest stories in politics right now is the fall of Eric Swalwell.
A member of the House, he's now resigned, and the frontrunner to win the California governor's race on the side of the Democrats, he's gone.
A major scandal erupts with multiple women accusing him of seriously messed up things, including drugging them and then forcing himself upon them.
There's the thing even with Swalwell as the frontrunner, the top two contenders in California are still Republicans.
And we've got big news.
Swalwell is out, and the latest poll from Emerson shows it changed nothing.
Okay, here's how it works.
In California, they have an open primary for the governor, everybody runs.
The top two candidates advance to the runoff in November.
The only problem for Democrats is despite having the political majority, there's too many of them.
So when you break down the polls, there are two Republicans right now sitting at the top, first and second place Steve Hilton and Chad Bianco.
Eric Swalwell was rivaling Bianco, and Democrats had been begging someone to drop out of the governor's race so that their voters would split among all of the other Democrat candidates, boosting their numbers and hopefully launching someone into second place.
Thus, the race in November would be a Republican and a Democrat, and the Democrat would likely win.
So here's the working theory Eric Swalwell was a darling in the Democratic Party.
He was ascendant, a member of the House, frequently on TV.
Probably was going to be governor if the Republicans were out of the way, but they were not.
So he got stabbed in the back.
The theory goes that the people who released these stories and brought these women forward were not Republicans, but in fact Democrats, because they needed to get someone out of the race.
Again, hoping it would boost any other Democrat at least a little bit.
With Eric Swallow out of the race, in aggregate with all polling, Tom Steyer is now in second place behind Steve Hilton.
And that means when it comes to November, if it's these two candidates, Well, Steyer's going to win, but there's a problem.
Those polls included back when Eric Swalwell was still running.
So Emerson ran a new poll.
We've got more information, and guess what?
Surprise, surprise, it's still two Republicans on top.
So it's looking like no matter what the Democrats are doing, they can't seem to get over that edge.
I have to think it is because Democrats have gone plumb nuts.
Now, Over the past few weeks, there's been this big debate over whether or not Hassan Piker should be welcome in the ranks of the Democratic Party.
And many Democrats have argued he's too extreme.
He said crazy things.
He's a California guy.
And therein lies the big problem.
He does represent a large voting block for Democrats.
But people in California, even the liberals, probably don't want to vote for those that are pounding around with the guy who said that the U.S. deserved 9 11 and that the fall of the Soviet Union was the greatest catastrophe of the 20th century, which just blows people's minds.
But it's not just that.
It's the alignment of the Democratic Party.
Tom Steyer recently called for arresting ICE agents, a dramatic escalation from where Gavin Newsom is.
Certainly, there's a lot of people who probably would agree that ICE agents should be arrested.
I think that's kind of insane, by the way.
But I think most people, like middle of the road regular people, see someone like Steyer and think that's insane.
So, when it comes time to poll, they find Swalwell's exit means very little.
Now, to be fair, I want to be reasonable, it's just one poll so far, but it is interesting that we haven't seen that much of a change.
Tom Steyer is now tied with Chad Bianco, but slightly behind.
So, I say tied, but slightly behind, meaning at current, it's still going to be two Republicans who win this election and move to a runoff.
Come November, the great voters of California will get a choice between Republican A and Republican B. Not that I think it'll change all that much for California because they are still a Democrat majority in the House, their state House, and their Senate.
It's going to be Democrats, but it will redirect some of that political energy.
Let's jump in to see exactly what is going on with the latest polling.
Even the New York Times saying Democrats are struggling to find a candidate.
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But let's start here with the New York Times.
Actually, no, that's not fair.
Let's start here with this post from Emerson Steve Hilton, 17%, up four points.
Chad Bianco, at 14 points, up three.
Tom Steyer, Jumping forward, four points.
Well, good for him.
He is still tied with Bianco, but it appears, based on the, if you break it down and get granular, he is slightly behind.
Javier Becerra is jumping up as well as Katie Porter.
We can see, unfortunately for Democrats, with the exit of Swalwell, none of them jumped up enough points to actually break into second place.
Holy smokes, man.
California may actually still have a Republican governor.
Okay, I'm going to tell you this right now.
I don't know which, I think Katie Porter's next on the chopping block.
These people don't want to drop out.
They want to win.
Eric Swowell didn't want to drop out.
Well, they knifed him in the back with this story, right?
Okay, well, now that it's not enough to get a Democrat over the edge, I have to imagine someone is going to be next.
You know, interestingly, I've heard a lot of great things about Matt Mahan, actually.
I don't know a lot about him, but people have said he's fairly moderate.
I respect that.
Katie Porter's got a sordid history.
I wonder if they're going to come out with stories and destroy her next, so she has to drop out.
You knock out Katie Porter, okay, okay, then you're going to get a Democrat in the top spot.
Here's the New York Times.
They say the California governor's race was supposed to give Democrats a chance to elevate a new party leader in the nation's most symbolically significant liberal state.
Instead, the contest to succeed Gavin Newsom has played out more like a series of unfortunate events, culminating with the demise of Rep. Eric Swalwell's campaign in a stew of sexual misconduct accusations.
Let's stop right there, New York Times.
Eric Swalwell wasn't accused of misconduct, he was accused of drugging and raping a woman while choking her.
Holy crap.
Talk about knocking a guy out of the race.
Are you entertained yet?
Now, these people are guys.
I'm not a big fan of the Republican Party.
I mean, I'm going to say, I think they're do nothing, boring, suit wearing stooges most of the time.
But Democrats, you know, I'll give them this.
They're infinitely more cool when they're drug abusing, leather jacket wearing lunatics as opposed to the stodgy, suit wearing, boring Republicans.
But, uh, I'd prefer the suit wearing guy who's going to do the job over the drug addict rapist.
I'm not saying Eric Swallow is a drug addict.
I'm just saying, like, they have been accused of these things, other politicians.
They say the state's most wide open race for governor in a generation had begun with the potential field clearing candidacy of Kamala Harris, the former vice president.
She was looking for her next step after losing the 2024 race.
But she ultimately opted against the race and instead is thinking about a third presidential bid.
She couldn't even get a single delegate in 2020, and she thinks she's going to run in 2028.
Yo, that would be nuts.
Some Democrats salivated with the possibility of a run by Senator Alex Padilla.
I think we call him Jose.
They say Jose Padilla.
Got the wrong name.
That went viral.
Do you remember that one?
One of the nation's most prominent Latino leaders, he passed.
An early frontrunner, Katie Porter, a former congresswoman, went viral for the wrong reasons with a new clip of a highlighted interview with a journalist and an old one of her berating an aide.
And two Democrats who ran for president with little traction in 2020 jumped in, Tom Steyer and Swalwell.
Then came the sexual misconduct accusations against Swalwell, including from a former aide and another woman who detailed unwanted advances.
This has been a bombshell, said former Senator Barbara Boxer.
A long time line of California liberalism.
We were tied a decade ago.
It is awful.
It is awful.
Now, Democratic voters in the state are left to sift through the remaining choices.
The filing deadline passed last month, who have mostly failed to capture either their attention or imagination or both.
Meanwhile, Steve Hilton hitting it out of the park.
If you remove party, he's number one.
People like him.
I have a problem with putting political party on everything, to be honest.
You take a look at this.
If we just remove these tabs here, we have a list of names.
I actually think it would do this country a great service to bar political party from the ballot.
You get a paper ballot when you go in to vote, it lists names and nothing else.
No more down ballot party voting.
No more, I don't know who they are, I vote for someone based on party.
I think it's bad.
There was this funny story out of New Hampshire transgender Satanist anarchist won the Republican primary for sheriff because nobody else was running, I guess, and these people just Checked the box for Republican and then chose someone they otherwise would not have wanted.
That's their fault.
I think we've got a sickness in our political machine that results in stupid things like this.
The best candidate with the best plan should be winning.
But of course, it's all about party politics, my friends.
That's where we're at.
Now, I would be remiss if I did not provide for you as much data as possible.
And so, this is a favorite website, top2ca.com.
We're going to generate, based off of all the polls that we've seen so far, who the top two candidates are going to be.
And lo and behold, Tom Steyer is now in second place.
This is probability, not polling.
So the Emerson poll shows us that Tom Steyer is polling at 14%, just behind Chad Bianco.
So when they ask people, who do you want to vote for, they say at 14%, Tom Steyer.
Now, top two takes all of these polls and then breaks them down, aggregates them, and shows you the probability.
Tom Steyer is deemed to have a good probability to win.
The only problem is that these polls are old.
This was polling done when Eric Swalwell was still around, and now they forcefully removed his name.
Thus, we are getting a probability generator based off of polls that no longer exist.
With the presumption being just remove Eric Swalwell, here's what you get.
Well, that doesn't work because Swalwell votes are going to break out among other party members, or I should say, among other politicians.
The point being, some Swalwell voters might actually go for Steve Hilton.
The reason?
Swalwell may be a liberal, diehard, you know, wackaloon.
But he's not a Hassan Piker type Democrat.
He is not a fringe ultimate far leftist.
He's just kind of a lefty pro Democrat, say what he's got to say kind of guy.
Meaning he may actually get some votes from moderates who would prefer a Steve Hilton or a Chad Bianco over, say, a Katie Porter.
In which case, these probabilities aren't exact, but to be fair, it's one poll so far.
That's it, it's the latest.
It's interesting.
I don't know if this will actually hold out in the end.
I would be surprised, actually, if this stays the way it is.
I do think, more importantly, it may actually remain like this for a while, these polls with two Republicans on top.
But you know they're going to knock out one of these other Democrats.
I mean, I got to be honest.
I think Katie Porter is not long for this campaign.
She got scandals already, and there's a lot of people that don't like her.
There's a lot of people that may want to say goodbye and just help Tom Steyer make it to that next bit.
The Hill reports that Swalwell's exit upends the California's governor's race, according to a poll.
But as we can see, not that much has changed.
But it is fair to point out, and again, I try to keep balanced on this one.
The odds of a Democratic lockout in California, California's governor's race, have shrunk dramatically.
It is still good for Democrats that Eric Swalwell got to boot.
Now they've destroyed his life and his career.
Holy crap.
I suppose one could argue he did that to himself.
But wait.
There's more.
NBC News.
Senator Ruben Gallego alleges Eric Swalwell lied and betrayed him, says he never saw inappropriate behavior.
Gallego chaired Swalwell's presidential run, something like that.
Right now, let me tell you about DC scuttlebutt behind the scenes.
They are saying that Ruben Gallego has a bunch of accusations himself.
Now, I don't know if that's true.
I'm just a DC guy, right?
We're essentially in the DC metro, kind of.
I'll put it like this.
When I grew up in Chicago, You drive an hour west, you're in the Chicago suburbs.
Now we're an hour west of D.C., and people are like, Well, you're not really in D.C.
Okay, okay, well, I'm close enough.
And we got friends.
We got friends in the Beltway who are saying Gallego is going to get in trouble next.
There's no way he did not know about what was going on.
Here's the story from Newsweek ICE agents face prison under new proposal.
Democratic California gubernatorial candidate Tom Steyer has unveiled an immigration platform that includes proposals to bolster the state's ability to prosecute and potentially imprison ICE agents.
In a policy outline published on Substack on Tuesday, Steyer said California should fight fire with fire and take on ICE the same way we took on the mob.
Well, let's just read what he said.
He says, I've made it clear ICE must be abolished.
ICE is acting like a criminal organization carrying out indiscriminate racial profiling and using violence, intimidation, terror, and the murder of Americans to extend Trump's rule by fear.
I'm just going to pause real quick and say, I live in the real world.
I. I'm, you know, they call me a milquetoast fence sitter.
They say, pick a side, Tim.
The truth is my side.
I think Trump has done some pretty good things.
I think he's got some great accomplishments.
I think he's done some pretty bad things.
I think the Iran war is, on the surface, pretty risky.
Now, if the underlining effects persist, meaning China's detriment, securing Cuba, all of these things, it is ultimately good for the United States.
But as it stands right now, we got high prices and confusion.
So, I will just say this.
It's hard to know exactly, but I'm not going to sit here and scream Trump is Hitler and that we should abolish law enforcement agents.
I'm a reformer, not a revolutionary.
Now, Tom Steyer is making a big bet on the far left.
And I am begging, I am begging Democrats to stop.
We had Mark Moran on the show the other day.
He was running as a Democrat, moderate guy, willing to engage with us.
I actually agree with him on some of his policies, disagree with him on others.
And I said, I wish the Democratic Party was doing this.
Because then we can have a discussion on our differences.
Instead, they're doing this.
Bro, you come to me and say, Tim, ICE is going a little too far, okay?
Now you can say what you want to say about Pretty and Renee and talk about how those shootings were bad.
And for that, you want to pull back a little bit.
And you know what?
I can respect that argument.
People should not have died in these ICE operations the way they did.
Now we've got problems of riots, protests, culture war stuff.
I hear you.
I want that to go away.
I'd love to go back to the good old days.
I, you know, I'm going to say this.
Maybe people don't want to hear it, but when I was younger, I was so upset because people only cared about sports.
They wouldn't pay attention to politics, and I just didn't get it.
Bad things were happening.
Why won't you stand up and help make things better?
Oh boy, do I regret that.
Why did I ever send that out into the ether?
Let's pull it all back.
Guys, please go watch football.
And political content apparently is declining.
So I suppose I can't complain.
You know, I will feel the facts of it the same way.
But I do think when only the people who truly care are engaged and the people who truly don't care are not engaged, things are probably better.
I don't know for sure.
What I can say right now is a lot of people who have no idea what's going on are getting involved, going to the streets, and they're causing problems.
So anyway, let me bring it back to the main point.
If you come to me and say, Tim, listen, I understand we should enforce immigration law.
Two people died.
We should pull back a little bit, reassess.
I'll say, well, that's reasonable.
It is reasonable.
I mean, two Americans that were protesting died, and we can make arguments about how they played out and whether the shoot was justified or not.
But it's fair to say we don't want Americans dying.
We don't want dudes in armor going around in vehicles.
We don't want overly aggressive tactics, but we do want our laws to be enforced.
Well, I consider y'all to be a violent extremist group.
You're threatening state sanctioned violence against federal law enforcement agents for literally doing their jobs.
Then, okay.
You should be in jail too, I guess?
Is that really the direction we want to go?
Man, I don't want to play that game.
I really don't.
As governor, I will do the following five things.
First, I will go after ICE's modus operandi.
I will give the state attorney general the authority to hold ICE's leadership accountable for violence.
I will appoint and fund a special investigative unit and work with the attorney general.
Fourth, I will bring those detained and kidnapped by ICE back home by creating a much larger and stronger immigration legal defense infrastructure in our state.
I just want to point out that a bunch of these guys are pedophiles.
But some former liberal who complains on the internet.
You give me a moderate Democrat, and I will be happy to host those debates, and I'd consider voting for him.
Fetterman, I actually really like Fetterman.
I don't like his voting pattern.
I do like the rhetoric, but rhetoric only goes so far.
I think Fetterman's been fantastic, and I'm actually pretty impressed.
Lord help us, can we get rid of these wackaloons who are saying they want to defend people like Abrego Garcia, who's accused of beating his wife or whatever, and human trafficking?
Guys, if you want to defend a dude who was a fry cook who flipped burgers and got deported, you will win favor among people.
If the Democrats came out and said, yeah, yeah, yeah, deport the bad guy, then what's the argument?
This guy is a fry cook.
He's been here for three years.
He came here illegally.
Then the response is, okay, well, we have to have deportation.
We have to have our laws enforced.
But if you wanted to argue for amnesty to a certain degree, you don't get it when you defend.
Rapists, murderers, drug traffickers, human traffickers, pedophiles, et cetera.
Now, I'm not going to advocate for amnesty.
You know why?
We've done it too many times.
And every time we do, they come back 10 years later and say, Can we do amnesty again?
At a certain point, we have to say, Stop.
Just stop.
Okay?
We can't keep just saying, Come in here illegally, and 10 years later, we'll rubber stamp you.
That being said, I think it's a fair point.
If Tom Steyer came out and said, I respect Trump and ICE for going after cartel members, traffickers, criminals, they're bad guys.
I don't respect the storming of a restaurant to arrest a guy who's flipping burgers causing panic.
Then my argument would be well, it's hard to argue.
I mean, to be honest, I argue that Donald Trump's ICE enforcement should have been dudes in khakis and polo shirts calmly walking in to the guy and saying, Sir, you're going to have to come with us.
Now, in the event that the only infraction is illegal entry, I believe that should be the way it is.
But it is true, we have seen attempts at enforcement that have been heavy handed.
I am not saying I disagree with ICE going after these criminals.
When they go after the worst of the worst, the rapists, you better believe they're going to have armor and guns and they're going to go in there and do the job like cops.
And I respect that.
And I encourage more of that when they're truly the worst of bad guys.
But I'm done with this argument.
If you came here illegally, the law needs to be enforced.
Not only was there incalculable harm done to every single country under its banner child prostitution, skyrocketing suicide rates, life expectancy plummeting, but America was no longer contested around the globe.
And it is precisely because of the end to that multipolarity.
That we saw accelerated neoliberalism that is devastating every Western nation right now.
Democrats should go on his show and stand up for democratic values.
Homeboy not only said, not only defended the Soviet Union, to be fair, To be fair, he said it's collapsed as a catastrophe because of the after effects, which I will explain in a second that he is completely wrong about.
I would love, I would love, Michael Malice, where are you?
Michael Malice, who was born in the Soviet Union, who now lives in this country, maybe he can explain to Hassan why it's good there's no more Soviet Union.
But I digress.
Look at this Democrats have a Hassan Piker problem.
They seem not to know what to do with their uber lefty streamer influencer with millions of followers, to engage or not to engage, to campaign.
Or, if Penny doesn't exist, that's the question.
In recent days, Piker has doubled down on his claims that Israel is worse than Hamas and declared the collapse of the Soviet Union was one of the greatest catastrophes of the 20th century.
Last month, he took part in a propaganda mission to Cuba.
In November, he was in China promoting all the Chinese Communist Party's good works.
Lord have mercy.
They go on to say, and yet Piker is being defended by some of the most prominent voices on the American left, including most recently Ezra Klein, who has penned a column originally headlined, Hassan Piker is not the enemy.
I believe they, did they change the headline there?
Because I think the New York Times changed it.
It was originally Hassan Piker is not the enemy to This is Why There's No Liberal Joe Rogan.
Let's talk about the Soviet Union and why it's good that it collapsed.
First, outside of any individual nation, two powers, a multipolar world, nuclear armed and on the verge of blowing each other up and wiping out the planet, that's bad.
Now, generally speaking, unipolarity is better as we don't have to fear nuclear annihilation at any moment.
So, the collapse of the Soviet Union, for us in the United States, it was great, and it meant the threat of nuclear war had abated for the most part.
However, what he goes on to say is that, yes, but afterwards people were committing suicide and there was child prostitution.
Indeed.
I can certainly say that the Soviet satellites are doing way better.
They have democratic institutions.
They're very happy.
They're prosperous.
Life is better.
During this Cold War, there were proxy wars, tens of millions being massacred and slaughtered.
So, yeah, it was good.
The Soviet Union, who's responsible for what did they earn?
Something like 30 million dead?
Probably a good thing.
How about the Holodomor?
How about when they intentionally seized the food from Ukrainians and starved them to death because they said the Russians are more important genetic people than the Ukrainians?
This is what the Democratic Party has to offer right now.
Now, to be fair, to be fair, the Democrats have been pushing back.
They have been saying they don't want to campaign with this guy, and I am all about it.
Now, I've defended Hassan Piker in the past.
I'll tell you why.
You got these anti Trump grifters.
Literally, all they can say is that Trump is bad.
It's mind numbing.
Like Trump is bad sometimes, sure, but not literally on everything.
Democrats tend to be fairly bad, like what we're seeing.
Tom Steyer, the front runner in California, we're going to put ICE in jail.
Oh, shut up.
Now, to be fair, the Democrats that have come out against Hassan Piker, I respect.
But what I say about Hassan is that if you watch his show, and I do sometimes peek in on what he's talking about, I'd like to know what people think.
You take a look at his YouTube channel, you can see he talks about a variety of subjects.
The dude has opinions on issues.
I disagree with those opinions, I think he's very wrong.
But I can respect that he's actually talking about things, unlike a lot of these people who aren't talking about anything.
They just hate Trump, or at least they think hating Trump will get them clicks.
The Democratic Party is insane and has been for some time.
But I assure you, I assure you, hear me, Democrats, if y'all were capable, just capable of coming back to the regular Earth, to good old planet Earth, you'd get your votes back.
Now, I'll tell you this, you know, Dave Smith made a great point.
The current Democratic Party has shown itself to be unworthy of our votes.
I'm paraphrasing.
He says, I'm not going to go vote Democrat and give them the White House or anything like that.
Fair point.
He said he wouldn't vote for either party.
The Republicans largely do nothing.
That's why I don't feel any concern when I vote Republican.
Maybe you might get some good things.
Now, are they going to pass the SAVE Act?
No.
Are they going to pass anything meaningful that people want to see happen?
But if you had Democrats that were just normal, that's why I like Mark Moran.
He was a good guy.
We disagree on a lot of things, we agree on a lot of other things.
I'm like, great.
Have people look at Bill Maher.
Lord, Lord help me.
If Bill Maher was running the Democratic Party, I'd probably be voting Democrat.
I'm a moderate.
So I can say this.
If Bill Maher's worldview was the center of what the Democratic Party represented, they'd win everything.
They would win everything.
Joe Rogan would be telling his audience, we're voting for these guys.
Bill Maher does not like Donald Trump.
That was always allowed.
When I sat down with Bill Maher and I said, I've heavily criticized you over the past couple of years, and he chuckled and said, You're allowed to be wrong.
And I laughed, That's the way it should be.
But Bill and I, we agreed on a lot of things.
Bill said that hate crimes are a thought crime policy.
He pushed back on Seth Green when they were talking about why Trump is the thought police guy.
And Bill Maher's like, No, I mean, the Democrats made this liberal doctrine.