The absentee machines are starting to whir, the media buys will be next, followed by disorganized afternoon $25-a-head fundraisers, Antonio and Hillary, Oprah and Barack, Brulte and McCain, Rollins and Giuliani, and--with a new GOP primary rule replacing the "winner-take-all" system with one that awards three primary delegates for every congressional district--a lot of Ron Paul talking to militant transvestites on the coast and assault weapon owners in the desert.
California is going to matter in February. Nothing conclusive is going to come out of Iowa or New Hampshire.
Welcome to California, candidates.
Unfortunately, we're not ready. This wasn't the plan. The plan was for the Great Smiling Post-Partisan Governor to welcome you to his environmentally progressive and fiscally sound state, where trusted judges were to have drawn moderate voter districts and everyone would have a working health insurance policy. He was to squire candidates from both parties, frame wonderfully centrist platforms, and be for America the broker of the Future Fantastic. And Speaker Nancy Pelosi, having restored civil liberties and secured the peace, was to preside over the Best Woman Ever versus The Best African American Man Ever contest to see who would represent the Democrats and get to redecorate the White House in pastel blues.
But instead, to steal a line from Tom Waits, "everything's broken and no one speaks English," which, by the way--and this is going cause some of you problems--is fine by most of us, especially in the cities.
Welcome to California candidates.
What are you going to going to say to us? The war drags on. The world is full of hatred, assassination, chaos, and hunger. We've been bracing for LAX or DisneyLand to get hit. Our national debt is financing the growth of China, which is bringing the earth to its environmental tipping point, if it hasn't already. California itself is in deep feces. The structural deficit is possibly as high as $14 billion dollars. There is very little flexibility within the general fund. We will scrimp on education and spread more misery among the poor. We spend more on prisons than we do on the entire University of California and California State University systems. The Proposition 13 requirement that any tax increase has to be approved by two-thirds of the legislature makes it almost impossible to raise taxes. Ambitious plans for health care, education, water transfer, and transportation are hostage to the deficit. Political partisanship has come roaring back. We don't have a lot of trust or confidence in the legislature and state government. The only major political difference between this crisis and the previous crisis that fed the recall of Governor Gray Davis is that Governor Schwarzenegger has maintained a high approval rating, close to 60 percent. But in January, he will submit his budget, and his will begin to drop, too.
Welcome to California, candidates.
With the housing slump, higher gas prices, fires to the south, and oil spills to the north, Californians are gloomy again, which isn't going to help in the voting booth. A statewide survey in September by the Public Policy Institute of California, taken before the natural disasters and the bleak budget outlooks were published, revealed that 60 percent of the state's residents rightly predicted "bad economic times in the coming year," up ten percent from January. And 50 percent believed the state is headed in the wrong direction, a 13 percent jump since January." Even dumb hope, our Hollywood forte, has faded.
Welcome to California, candidates.
How about a chorus from Noel Coward's Cowardly Custard: "There are bad times just around the corner,/ We can all look forward to despair, / It's as clear as crystal / From Burlingame to Barstow / That we can't save democracy / And we don't much care. Good Luck. Welcome. And spend a lot of money. Please."