Take Toys. Leave Sandbox. Go

Take Toys. Leave Sandbox. Go Home - Arnold won, and won big.

The Democrat party in California has been given a rebuke that may, possibly, foreshadow the one the party is going to get nationwide in 13 months.

The left of the blogosphere is not happy about it.

I went through some of the foremost, and other, lefty blogs to survey opinion.

"The Daily Kos" says:

In the end, it doesn't look like it was close. Arnold is the new governor of California.

For six months.

Puh-leeze. Stephen Green had the best response to this:

Will there be a recall petition against Arnold? You bet there will be, just as there has been against every California governor since, approximately, the Mesozoic Era.

And yet this is the first time it's worked. If nothing else, voter fatigue will scuttle any further such effort going anywhere beyond Democrat die-hards.

But the die-hards are out there. Kos prints an email from a correspondent that signifies the denial some of these people are in - my comments are inset in italics:

Democracy is a funny business. [Those peasants sure pull some fast ones when you aren't watching them, don't they?]

A robust majority of likely voters disapproves of Gray Davis. Still, Davis would probably win a head-to-head contest against Schwarzenegger, Bustamante, McClintock or anybody else on the ballot today.

How can this be? [Read: "I'll do anything to avoid facing the facts facing me right now]

...Davis probably prevails in a Condorcet election, or an IRV election, or a "Cajun primary" election, or a traditional party-nominee general election. Davis probably wins any election except today's election. [Read: I'm going to toss out unfalseable, unproveable hypotheses and wonky fantasies until I feel better]

Understandable from a site run by a guy who works for Howard Dean ,perhaps.

We move on. Calpundit's Kevin Drum starts out reasonably enough, taking on Kos' whine:

With all due respect, can I beg everyone to please not go there? Trying to mount a recall against Arnold would be bad for California, bad for the Democratic party, and only distracts attention from the bigger task at hand: electing a Democrat to the White House in 2004. It's time for the circus to stop.

This is one time that we should accept defeat graciously [That's Calpundit's strike-out] and turn our attention to more important things. Remember, anger is only useful if it's focused and channeled on something worthwhile, and recalling Arnold isn't it. Let's not blow it.

So far so good. But read the comments - it's scary. There are people out there who believe with a straight if beet-red face that:

• Bush dragged Gore to court in 2000
• Gore won the recount - every recount
• That Republicans play dirty tricks - but Begala and Carville were boy scouts.

And of course, through it all - fear, paranoia and hatred of George W. Bush, along with a creeping realization that yesterday's election was a major shot in Bush's arm. Which it was.

Howard Dean's campaign blog is, as Hewitt says, in deep denial:

"Today's recall election in California was not about Gray Davis or Arnold Schwarzenegger. This recall was about the frustration so many people are feeling about the way things are going. All across America, George Bush's massive tax cuts for the wealthy are undermining state budgets, causing cutbacks in services and increases in local property taxes. Were recalls held in every state, it's quite possible that 50 governors would find themselves paying the price for one president's ruinous national economic policies.

Right. That's why Californians not only elected a governor that largely mirrors Bush's "ruinous" policies, but voted him in by a landslide.

Josh Marshall is apparently drowning his sorrows, and hasn't posted on the results as of 2:30AM.

Atrios (once again - liberals, what is with the pretentious noms de plume?) asks the same question we Republicans were asking on election night, 2000:

Hey, maybe he won, but the media could have waited...you know.. until F*****G ONE PERCENT OF OFFICIAL RETURNS WERE IN. Just to pretend.

...jokes aside, this is really serious. I mean, they may truly have enough information to make this call - I have no idea - but I have *never* seen an election called when zero percent of the returns were in, particularly an election with so many absentee ballots. What the hell?

I'm not in denial here, I'm quite ready to accept the Gubernator, but this is about responsibility in an issue that the media spent years agonizing about.

The comments on Atrios are as manically-depressed as on CalPundit's site.

"Hesiod"- a man who veritably defines "moonbat" - is just plain above it all:

:COUNTERSPIN CHALLENGE: OK. I'm willing to be convinced that the voters of California are not the biggest idiots on Earth. If you voted for Arnold, post a comment on this thread. Explain why you did. And don't tell me things like "Gray Davis and Bustamante sucked."

Explain why they "sucked," and then tell me how Arnold is going to be BETTER. Please be specific on that last point, by the way.

Back up all your claims with quotes or links, if possible.

And...please no pie in the sky baloney about how Arnold will "shake up the system," or "get things done" in Sacramento. "Reasons" like those PROVE my theory that the voters are a bunch of ignorant knuckleheads.

"Davis Lost because Voters are Stupid!" Please, Democrats - run with this!

Oliver Willis' post on the subject combined small doses of denial ("Arnold is a movie star. End of story.") with some common sense:

The California GOP is Still Lost In The Woods
They needed Arnold Schwarzenegger and a gubernatorial recall to win a major seat in the state. Unless Arnold works a miracle, the next governor will be a Democrat and the state will remain firmly in the hands of the Democrats, alleged 60% GOP notwithstanding. President Bush, however, is advised to spend as much money in that state as possible.

Which was on the plan, I'm sure, in any case. The key point being, it might even be worth spending; California, along with Minnesota, could conceivably generate some serious votes, even electoral ones, for Bush next year (Minnesota being rather more likely, which is why yesterday's election was so interesting.

Finally, the barely literate fellow behind "Rushlimbaughtomy":

Out of the frying pan and into the fire: Grey Davis was by all accounts a miserable governor, but the major problems in the State of California were not his doing. Enron was more responsible for the problems than Davis, but the people of California were fooled by Dan Issa, Bill Simon, Pete Wilson, and the remainder of the Republican corporate machine into the belief that their candidate for Governor would be the 'answer' to the problems caused by Enron.

The disconnect between reality and imagination in California is apparent in the election of Governor Gropenator. Style won over substance - myth turmped truth - money & corporatism bought people.

I'm not sure which is funnier - reading another "If Californians were as smart as us..." screed, or reading it from this particular writer, whose dalliance with literacy would seem to be occasional and unsuccessful (read the blog, you be the judge).

So. This is what we face over the next 13 months. Take a deep breath...

UPDATE: Reynolds quotes Weintraub.

Davis in his concession speech showed class, congratulating Schwarzenegger and promising to cooperate with him during the transition. But his supporters were angry and nasty and in no mood to concede anything.

I understand the bitterness, but I’m disturbed by its depth. Several of the Democrats I spoke to were in strong denial about the message sent by the voters, the message being that they, and Davis, have been poor stewards of state government. They see this is an isolated event, a venting, that will quickly pass while they fight to maintain everything they have done the past five years. My gut tells me they are wrong, that there is something deeper here, a desire for fundamental change in the way the state does business and in the way politics works, or doesn’t work, in California.

Although he's linking to a great piece by Weintraub, Reynolds has the money quote:

I suspect that national Democrats will respond to this by becoming still more bitter and shrill, that being the response that we've seen to other reverses lately, which won't help things either. But maybe not.

Well, the response from the blogging left does nothing to shake that idea.

So far.

Posted by Mitch at October 8, 2003 06:03 AM