Forfeiture and Appellate Court Discretion - What's an Appellate Advocate to Do?

In preparing for an oral argument later this month, I have found that several of the arguments involved concern whether a party forfeited an argument at trial by failing to make the argument in a motion.  Typically, if an objection is not made at trial, the right to appeal based on this issue is forfeited, and an appellate court will refuse to consider this issue.

I came across this footnote from People v. Williams, 948 P.2d 429 (Cal. 1998) while familiarizing myself with the relevant case law.  Regarding the court of appeal's consideration of a sentencing issue that had not been objected to a trial:

Williams claims that, under People v. Scott [citation] the Court of Appeal erred by undertaking to review the superior court's order at all.  We disagree.  In Scott, we held only that a party cannot raise a "complaint [] about the manner in which the trial court exercises its sentencing discretion and articulates its supporting reasons ... for the first time on appeal." [citation]  We did not even purport to consider whether an appellate court may address such an issue if it so chooses.  Surely, the fact that a party may forfeit a right to present a claim of error to the appellate court if he did not do enough to "prevent[]" or "correct[]" the claimed error in the trial court [citation] does not compel the conclusion that, by operation of his default, the appellate court is deprived of authority in the premises.  An appellate court is generally not prohibited from reaching a question that has not been preserved for review by either party.

I am curious about how or whether appellate advocates can use this reasoning in advancing arguments that may have been forfeited at trial.  While Williams states that this practice is not allowed, its prohibition seems significantly qualified since a forfeited argument could be the basis of the appellate court's decision.  It seems plausible that a party could advance a forfeited argument and cite Williams as saying that the reviewing court has the discretion to consider this argument.  In fact, even if there are other arguments that a party can make against forfeiture, it would seem silly not to point out that this discretion exists, so even if the reviewing court finds that the issue was forfeited at trial, they are reminded that they still have discretion to consider the issue.

This practical implication of the appellate discretion portion of this footnote seems to inevitably clash with the portion of the footnote that bars parties from raising forfeited issues on appeal.  In light of appellate court discretion, it seems like the stated prohibition on advancing forfeited arguments loses a lot of its power over limiting the arguments by appellate counsel.

I guess that I'll have to wait until oral argument to see how this gets resolved.  Can't wait.