Gavin Newsom’s supporters are nervous

Desperation is never a good sign.

The clearest sign things are not going well for Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom is that his boosters in the press are now accusing his black gubernatorial challenger of being a “white supremacist.”

No one ever said desperation was pretty.

MSNBC conspiracy theorist Joy Reid, who has a history of writing extremely bigoted blog posts and then lying about them, said this week "it’s ironic" the leading Republican candidate to replace Newsom, conservative columnist and radio host Larry Elder, is "a black man."

"It just goes to show you that it is true that even people of color can be influenced by white supremacist narratives and fall victim to it,” she said.

Reid is not alone in accusing Elder of being a crypto-klansman. Los Angeles Times columnist Erika Smith wrote an entire piece recently, titled "Larry Elder is the Black face of white supremacy. You’ve been warned.”

“Few things infuriate me more than watching a Black person use willful blindness and cherry-picked facts to make overly simplistic arguments that whitewash the complex problems that come along with being Black in America,” Smith writes. “And throughout his career — as a radio host, as a talking head for Fox News and now as a gubernatorial candidate — Elder has made a point of doing just that, usually with a lot of taunting and toddler-like name-calling of his ideological enemies in the process.”

Smith continues, claiming she learned a long time ago to ignore people such as Elder, people who are “skinfolk" but "not necessarily kinfolk.”

“His candidacy feels personal,” she adds. “Like an insult to Blackness.”

“Elder mocks critical race theory,” Smith warns, “though I’m not sure he understands what it actually is. That doesn’t bode well for ethnic studies in California.” (Won’t somebody please think of the ethnic studies?)

“If he’s elected, the task force studying reparations for Black Californians would be toast,” she added.

Is this column counted as an in-kind contribution to Elder’s gubernatorial campaign?

More seriously, as if these racist scribblings weren’t evidence enough Newsom’s supporters are deeply nervous about losing the governorship, recent polling data also show nearly half of likely voters in California support recalling the current governor. Polling data also show Elder leading the race to replace Newsom.

Black Lives Matter Los Angeles co-founder Melina Abdullah says of Elder and his chances of becoming the next resident of the governor’s mansion, “He is a danger, a clear and present danger.”

“Anytime you put a Black face on white supremacy,” Abdullah adds, “which is what Larry Elder is, there are people who will utilize that as an opportunity to deny white supremacy. They say, ‘How could this be white supremacy? This is a black man.’ But everything that he’s pushing, everything that he stands for, he is advancing white supremacy.”

Democratic State Sen. Sydney Kamlager said, “I’m not interested in going back to Jim Crow because I want to have a black person as governor.”

On MSNBC, Reid warned an Elder administration would be dangerous not just for California, but the entire country.

“This guy would also, if he were governor, … [would also] be able to appoint the replacement if [Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California], for instance, were to retire,” the cable host said.

She adds, “So, this could also reverberate into Washington, D.C.”

If anything is ironic, it is that these leftists would slander a self-made black man, the son of a U.S. Marine, in order to prop up the ultrawealthy, white Democratic beneficiary of the Getty Oil fortune, who went from operating a chain of wineries, nightclubs, and cafés to becoming a career politician at the age of 29.

In fact, it almost smacks of white supremacy.

One might even say of Reid, Kamlager, Abdullah, and Smith that "even people of color can be influenced by white supremacist narratives and fall victim to it."