California Smackdown

The votes have been counted here in the Golden State, and, in an unprecedented result, all of the initiatives on the ballot in California's special election have been defeated. This is a resounding bitch-slap for Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who lobbied hard for Props 74, 75, 76 and 77, and I, for one, couldn't be happier about it. Arnold, who campaigned last year during the recall election (another unnecessary exercise in electoral manipulation, orchestrated largely by evil and cynical Republican operatives) as a bipartisan moderate, immediately took a sharp turn right once he got into office, and has lost a whole lot of support from all but the most rabid right-wingers in the past year. His choice of groups to pick fights with was curious, to say the least -- nurses, teachers, firefighters and cops. While that may have played well enough with his wealthy corporate backers, you don't win many friends among the hoi polloi that way. So it isn't really much of a surprise that the Terminator's proposals were themselves terminated. Good on Californians for seeing through his bullshit.

Though I did hold out some slim hopes that Props 79 and 80 -- dealing with drug discounts and electricity regulation, respectively -- might have passed, I recognized that the mood of the voters was to just vote no on everything. They were demonstrating their displeasure at the idea of an unnecessary special election in the first place, I believe. What they were essentially saying was what The Editors at The Poor Man put so succinctly a few weeks back: "Fuck a whole bunch of Arnold Schwarzenegger... He seriously needs to eat a bowl of dicks."

The voters in California have just buggered the Governator mightily and handed him a spoon.

And in other signs that 2006 and 2008 might be pony time for Democrats around the country, both gubernatorial races (New Jersey and Virginia) went our way. While this is but a modest victory for those of us who want Republicans out of power everywhere, it is a start, and could signal the beginning of the end for the evil Roveian empire. Perhaps this time next year we'll be crowing about regaining control of one or both branches of Congress, in a national bitch-slap of Preznit Torquemada and His Flying Weasel Circus.

We can only hope.

Fewer kittens were killed in this election than in many elections past, thankfully, and no kittens were harmed in the creation of this post. Let's keep the kittens safe in 2006 and 2008.