Votin' Day Post Mortem

The Republican gubernatorial candidate who made a point of being neither a conservative nor pro-life, who thought she could buy herself a state with a her money - she spent $140 million of her own money, who when she was a CEO shipped thousands of jobs overseas, and who couldn't be bothered to vote here or anywhere else for a quarter of a century or so lost the election. My heart is not broken.

The other ex-CEO, the one who wanted to buy herself a senate seat, lost also. This result is somewhat more unfortunate as she seemed to be pro-life. As Dr Pournelle pointed out, she took some conservative stands but made no positive attempt to appeal to the conservative base. She wouldn't touch the tea party folks with a ten foot pole. And it's very hard to buck the Democratic machine in this state, bankrolled as it is by the unions, with its forced labor "volunteers" and truly admirable (if you're a Democrat) get-out-the-vote system. A Republican candidate needs to court its base not ignore or insult it. So we get another six years of Barbara Don't-Call-Me-Madam Boxer.

The treacherous Maldonado doesn't get to be Lieutenant Governor. But, alas, the loathsome Gavin Newsome does. The Dems won all the other statewide offices and all of our local offices, too. The attorney general's office is still in some doubt according to the Times but at the moment that ludicrous woman from San Francisco is ahead.

Proposition 19 which was meant to legalize marijuana and prohibit any private discrimination against the potheads got squashed like a bug. That was something of a surprise. Our polling place had a couple of pro-19 space cadets wandering about trying to figure out how to get a ballot and what to do with it once they got it. (Hmmm. Well, maybe not so surprising.) As for the rest, there may be some relief from the gerrymandering, depending upon what the "independent" commission does. Some of the taxing props went the right way, a couple not.

Oddly the California voters decided that we don't need any more jobs in the state. The economy must not be as bad as the papers say.