Wow. The numbers are solid enough that all the wires are predicting the race – fifteen minutes after the polls closed.
Given Roger Simon’s and my support how could he lose??
Congratulations to Gov. Arnold and his team, and condolences to those who ran serious races and lost.
Now, we need to watch what Gray is doing with the shredders he ordered…
Seriously, it will be interesting to see if the core Jackie Goldberg wing of the Democratic party can rev itself up for the threatened Repeat Recall; I’d bet a lot that it will fail miserably (the numbers look like 59%+ “YES” and Arnold brushing 50%) and that just might be the event that marches the lemmings off the cliff and lets the rest of us work to build an effective Democratic party that actually delivers to the working people of the state.
Roger nails it:
What we are witnessing is the beginning—the early movement–in the death of the two-party system as we know it. This is a revolt of the pragmatic center. And that is a good thing for the American people because those parties and the media that feed on them have indeed become a form of nomenklatura. They depend on each other. They are the mutual gate keepers of an old and sclerotic bureaucracy from which their jobs flow in a system of patronage as elaborate as the Czar’s. No wonder watching CNN tonight I felt as if I were watching a wake. They are threatened by what is going on—as they should be.
…And just to complete the surreal flip, I was pulling for Cruz Bustamante. P. explains my reasoning, too.
How is this the death of the two party system? On the contrary, people took it as a Coke vs. Pepsi choice– if they were anti-Gray Davis, they could only vote for the anointed Republican candidate, even if he were a plastic action figure. The death of the two party system would’ve been if anyone exercised some critical thinking and had voted for an intelligent candidate.
A.L.,
Sorry, but Mr. Simon is on crack. The two-party system is alive and well, and will continue to thrive as long as this republic stands. Talk of an emerging one-party system (totalitarianism, much?) or of a multi-party system (fundamentally unstable under the Constitution) are just the pipe dreams of someone not versed in the political theory, practice, or history of the American experiment. Once American government has been fundamentally, structurally altered by Constitutional amendment (or the abandonment of the Constitution), talk to me again about the death of the two-party system.
Yeah, the death of the two party system. ‘Been hearing about that since G.C. Wallace in ’68.
I’m too young to have heard it in ’48, with Henry Wallace and Strom Thurmond, or in ’12 with the Bull Moose Party.
Sorry Sam, klaatu – the two-party system isn’t what we’re dancing over; it’s the current alignment of power in which (in CA) a few thousand elected, operatives, staff, and lobbyists basically are the entire universe when it comes to policy.
That world has been rattled a bit (admittedly not as much as I wish it had) but in that newly mobile environment a few things are about to come true; the ability of the Times and the political and media gatekeepers to define the debat is substantially weakened.
My own party- the Democrats – has been captured by a constellation of activists and operatives now for several decades; their grasp on the levelrs of power is about to be shown up as weakened; if they try to organize another recall, the levers will slip from their grasp, and they will be just another group of folks trying to define policy.
Me, I see an opening for “a Party of the Sensible”, and will be doing what I can to see that opening widened into a damn freeway.
A.L.
A.L.,
I dunno. I don’t see any room in American politics for “a Party of the Sensible.” After all, we already have one–the Republicans. 🙂 (Ok, cheap shot, I admit.) More seriously, who would oppose the “Party of the Sensible?” The two-party system will not go away, so if one of the parties is the PoS (my new name for it), what will the other one be?
The modern Democratic Party (particularly in California, but also nationally) has two choices: reform or self-immolation. Self-immolation would lead to temporary Republican dominance, until the natural balance of the two-party system reasserted itself (by the emergence of a new alternative, or a split within the Republican party). Reform is also a traumatic process, because it would mean dumping the nuts into the Green Party, which would translate into a temporary dip in support (you would probably pick up support in the long run from people who find the nuts disgusting right now).
I’m all for a sane alternative to the Republican Party. It won’t get my vote, but it would make the arguments more interesting. Things look great for my team, electorally, right now, but what concerns me is long-term intellectual viability. If you don’t have a smart and credible opposition with something to offer, you get ideologically flabby. Someday, I hope the Democrats will get back to “smart and credible opposition,” because they aren’t there now.
Hey, Sam, you’re right. I am on crack. And it’s not bad. Don’t knock it if you haven’t tried it.
So do you agree with A.L.’s take, or was it the drugs talking?