Gavin Newsom just got publicly humiliated. Newsom and group of elected Democrats in Sacramento have been campaigning for months to kill a ballot initiative called Prop. 36. Prop. 36 would rollback an earlier crime-related proposition called Prop. 47. If that sounds familiar that's because Prop. 47 is viewed by many as partially responsible for the rise in open drug use and rampant property crime California has been experiencing for the past several years. 

The effort to get Prop. 36 on the ballot was funded by a bunch of big retailers who were on the wrong end of California's crime problem. But from the start of this year. Newsom and his gang of Democrats set out to sabotage Prop. 36 first by negotiating to keep it off the ballot and, when that failed, by offering a bunch of supposedly tough-on-crime bills which they claimed would do exactly what Prop. 36 would do only better. Why try to pass the measure when we're willing to give you the results you want now? That was their pitch. 

The catch was that the Democratic bills contained poison pills which would automatically deactivate them if Prop. 36 were passed. Newsom signed these sabotage bills expecting they would drain away support from Prop 36 prior to the vote in November. How is that working out for him? I'm so glad you asked.

A poll released yesterday indicates that effort has been a complete and total failure. Support for Prop. 36 is overwhelming despite months of effort to badmouth it by Gov. Newsom.

The PPIC, which surveyed an array of November election items ranging from the presidential race to other state ballot initiatives, reported Wednesday that its polling conducted between late August and early September shows 71% of likely voters support Proposition 36, compared to 26% who oppose it.

Mark Baldassare, PPIC’s statewide survey director, said questions about Proposition 36 elicited high engagement from respondents and highlighted its across-the-board favorability.

“It’s an unusual level of support for a proposition,” Baldassare said. “We don’t use the term ‘overwhelming majority’ lightly around here. I was impressed by the level of support that you’re seeing across ideology.”

This is what you call a blowout. It's so bad that even Governor Newsom seems to have finally taken the hint. He announced today that he won't be campaigning against Prop. 36 anymore. He claimed he simply had too many other things to do, including getting Kamala Harris elected.

“I fear I can’t do everything. I’ve got, trying to get Kamala Harris elected President of the United States, trying to get through these 900 bills. I just pray, I really do, that people take a good look at Proposition 36,” he said. 

He later added that “it’s just a question of what you’re capable of doing, and then trying to address (homeless) encampments and everything else, we do a lot.”...

“I was wondering what state I was living in,” Newsom said in response to the survey. 

He called Prop. 36 a “real setback” but added that “it appears clearly that the public has a different point of view.”

The fact that he's not sure which state he's living in is his way of admitting that California seems to be changing. This is a tough-on-crime proposition and it's getting 71% support. He's probably not the only one surprised by that result.

You may be wondering why Newsom and elected Democrats would want to block the rollback of Prop. 47 given the problems California is having with drugs and property crime? Several theories have been advanced to explain this. One is that Newsom has long supported Prop. 47 (which passed in 2014) so rolling it back would embarrass him politically. 

Another possibility is that Newsom foresaw the possibility that a popular ballot measure on crime would bring a lot of Republicans and moderates to the polls in a year when Democrats are desperately hoping to take back the House. Maybe he decided it was better to give Prop. 36 supporters some of what they wanted now in a bid to keep them home in November.

Yet another possibility is that the ideologues in the party were concerned that Prop. 36 would bring back the era of mass incarceration just a few years after Democrats made great strides in emptying the prisons. That might present a problem for Newsom in his future run for President.

Whatever it was that motivated Newsom, this misguided, sabotage effort finally appears to be dead. Newsome was the face of it and and if he's backing away it's doubtful anyone else will try.

While seeing Newsom faceplant is always welcome, the more important point is that the left's criminal justice reform efforts are about to take another body blow. If you can't go soft of crime in deep blue California, you probably can't do it anywhere.