Down To the Wire In California

The outcome of the California recall election seems such a foregone conclusion - Davis out, AH-nold in - that the morning editions of today's Yahoo and AOL news pages don't even mention it. (To be fair, this may be in part due to the latest military madness in the Middle East.) There is still hope for an acceptable outcome (which I define as "ANYONE BUT ARNIE!"). One possibility is that Gray Davis could fend off the recall, as support in favor of it is diminishing. It may be diminishing too slowly in too little time, however, to prevent his ouster. The other possibility is that people will take a second look at Arnie's misogynistic practices and his friendship with Kurt Waldheim and realize that maybe, just maybe, an Austrian bodybuilder is not the right guy to run America's most populous state - and vote for someone else. (Like Gary Coleman! :-D)

Incidentally, an article in yesterday's New York Times noted that if Schwarzenhauer-Hasenpfeffer-Doktor-Pepper-Wattever is elected governor of California, it could allow moderate Republicans to gain control of the state party and help it flourish, possibly placing California in play for the 2004 presidential election and helping them win other statewide offices. I'm not too sure about that . First of all, conservatives still control the national party. In California, in fact, many in the Orange County reactionary crowd are merely holding their noses and voting for Arnie because their preferred candidate, Tom McClintock, can't win, and the Republicans, like any political party, want a winner. Second, Arnie will be bringing in the old Pete Wilson crowd if elected. Pete Wilson was no more conservative than Arnie is, but he's almost as despised as Davis, largely for supporting anti-immigrant policies - like Arnie does. (How can Arnie be governor of a state with a large Chicano population, anyway? I mean, that whole Aryan thing. . . .) Thirdly, if the California economy continues to sputter - and if the rest of country sputters along with it - that's not going to help Bush very much in his bid for re-election and California's 54 electoral votes. In the meantime, Arnold Schwarzenheimer-Blut-und-Eisen-Achtung-Baby-Aw-Idunno will actually have to do something about the state's ailing economy and budget deficit, and there's not much he can do right away even if he does know what's going on.

Then, anything can happen. I mean, if the Chicago Cubs can win their first World Series in 95 years . . ..