Sometimes a little Elder abuse is OK. At least when you’re talking about Larry Elder. Elder and his cohort of clowns were soundly defeated in the attempted recall of California Governor Gavin Newsom, who survived the effort without a strand of his perfect hair out of place. The entire recall was a waste of time and money in a system where we already have elections to decide who’s in office. But, even after being exhausted by the election of 2020, the golden state’s voters made it clear they had no interest in Californicating with any other leaders and soundly evicted the challengers from the Hotel California. The recall race was such a blowout that Steve Kornacki only needed one line of coke. And that’s a good thing, because prior to the votes being counted, Elder took a(nother) page out of the Trump playbook and claimed the election was rigged. But the shellacking was too extreme to stick with that line of BS. Gavin Newsom even won Orange County (and we know how popular the color orange is among the Trump crowd). So yes, Newsom won. And yes, exit polling suggests Californians view pandemic sanity as a good thing. But this all added more stress on a state that is already dealing with Covid and the fact that much of it is on fire. And in this recall, we all got burned. I’ll have more to say at the afterparty (which I assume is at the French Laundry).

+ Slate: Weirdly, a Vaccine-Skeptical Radio Host Was Not Voted the Next Governor of California.

+ American politics are about 3 things: Location, location, location. Just take a look at this map of yesterday’s voting patterns.