We elected you to be a leader, Mr. President. Now would be a good time.

Last Night’s Oval Office address on the catastrophe in the Gulf was not a great example of leadership on President Obama’s part. Sure, he boldly and quotably asserted that “our clean energy future is now.” Reading a quote like this out of context makes it seem like this was another one of those uplifting, brilliant, optimistic Obama addresses that he’s so good at, the kind that rallies an entire nation to his side; in reality, it was nothing more than a vague proclamation supported by a bunch of empty rhetoric and half-hearted suggestions for policies on how to get us to that clean energy future.

This was Obama’s opportunity to lay out clear objectives and goals for what the United States can do to wean itself off of fossil fuels, and, in the process, combat the dangerous effects of climate change. He could have talked about the need for a market-based cap-and-trade program to overturn the tide of global warming. He might have compared this disaster in the Gulf to the one five years ago, and said that more natural disasters like Katrina will happen, more often and with greater intensity, as long as we are still addicted to the gooey black stuff we see bubbling up in marshes and on beaches. But he didn’t. Instead, he hedged and weaved and didn’t really suggest any specifics at all. Here is an actual quote from his speech:

"Some have suggested raising efficiency standards in our buildings like we did in our cars and trucks. Some believe we should set standards to ensure that more of our electricity comes from wind and solar power. Others wonder why the energy industry only spends a fraction of what the high-tech industry does on research and development - and want to rapidly boost our investments in such research and development."

Some have suggested these things, Mr. President? Who is "some"? How about everyone in their right mind is suggesting these things?! Show a little backbone; endorse one concrete policy idea - or better yet, follow in the footsteps of some of your greatest predecessors, like Roosevelt and Truman, and come out in favor of a whole package of ideas. A New Deal for clean energy, something like that. In his entire speech, Obama didn’t even mention the American Power Act - the watered-down, pseudo-bipartisan climate bill introduced by Sens. John Kerry and Joe Lieberman last month.

Contrast the President’s wishy-washy “we could do this, or we might do that” address with California’s Democratic candidate for governor, Jerry Brown, who yesterday touched on the same subject. Brown unveiled an eight-point “Clean Energy Jobs Plan,” and to be fair, although many of his “points” aren’t actual policy ideas that the government could enact as a law, there are some real and major actions that could be taken to move California, and the nation, toward cleaner energy and away from oil.

For example, Brown proposes codifying in statute an existing Executive Order, signed by Governor Schwarzenegger, requiring all electric power utilities to generate 33 percent of their power from renewable energy sources. He wants the California Energy Commission to fast-track the permitting process for electric projects using cleaner energy. He says that the California Public Utilities Commission should provide monetary incentives for homeowners to upgrade and retrofit their homes to use less, and cleaner, energy.

Also on Brown’s list - requiring potential homebuyers to be given accurate and detailed information about a property’s energy use before they purchase; having the Energy Commission institute stronger appliance standards for consumer products like light bulbs, dishwashers, and so forth…

Brown, who at 72 years old and having several terms in elective office at various levels, doesn’t inspire nearly the passion or emotion of Obama’s most fervent supporters, is offering actual solutions for a real problem, not heated, overblown rhetoric. Perhaps Obama, who often seems to think that simply saying he will take care of a problem is tantamount to actually doing something about it, should take a lesson from Brown’s playbook.

All of this isn’t to suggest that I dislike, or have lost all faith in, President Obama. But I find myself doubting that he has the leadership skill necessary to tackle the bigger issue here - not the BP oil spill, but the transition away from fossil fuels and to a clean energy economy that absolutely has to happen sometime in the next decade or so if we are ever again to be a prosperous and peaceful society. I knocked on doors for Barack Obama; I pleaded with complete strangers, in person and on the phone, to vote for this man because I believed he had a leadership quality sorely lacking in our politics. I still believe that he might. But it’s time for him to prove it.

Money Can't Buy You Love... But It Sure Can Buy You An Election

A few important lessons to take away from Tuesday’s statewide primary election:

First, the dynamics of a race can change dramatically in the last 2-3 weeks of a campaign. Until sometime in early May, the conventional wisdom in the U.S. Senate Republican primary was that former congressman Tom Campbell was headed for a victory over former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina. Most polls had Campbell holding onto a 10-to-15-point lead. Fiorina lurched to the right, picking up endorsements from Sarah Palin, anti-abortion rights groups, and supporting gun ownership rights for suspected terrorists. The media took this as a sign that Fiorina was going to split the conservative vote with far-right candidate Chuck DeVore, thus benefiting the moderate Campbell.

Here, as is often the case with elections, the conventional wisdom – and the media – was wrong. It appears that very few moderates voted in the Republican primary; maybe there just aren’t any moderate Republicans left. (I hate to say “I told you so” – actually, I don’t – but it was I who said of Campbell, back in January, The man supports same-sex marriage and proposed a temporary hike in the gas tax last year to pay down California’s budget deficit; mark my words, he is not going to win a Republican primary.) Either way, Fiorina took home an easy 56 percent of the vote, much more than either of her two challengers combined; she now goes into the general election contest against incumbent Barbara Boxer stronger than ever.

The same rule – about the dynamics of a race changing as the race comes to a close – applies in the gubernatorial contest. April was Steve Poizner’s month; the state insurance commissioner had been running a distant second in the Republican primary, often 40 to 50 points behind Meg Whitman in opinion polls. Before April his candidacy was widely considered DOA; but then Arizona passed its controversial immigration law, Whitman’s ties to Goldman Sachs were exposed, and Poizner dumped some of his considerable personal fortune (which nonetheless pales next to Whitman’s) into the campaign. All of a sudden, the polls showed a much tighter race; Poizner appeared to be within 10 points of Whitman. Could he eke out a victory?

Alas, Poizner’s brief comeback was not to be, and Whitman made a dramatic turnaround in May, amping up her media spending, nabbing coveted endorsements from prominent Republicans like Dick Cheney and Newt Gingrich, and shifting to the right, stealing Poizner’s momentum on the immigration issue. The jury is still out on how much, if at all, Whitman’s right turn will hurt her in the general election against Jerry Brown; but it certainly helped her take back the Republican race. It turns out those pre-April polls were the most accurate of them all; Whitman finished with a stunning 64 percent. Poizner, once considered a rising star of the state GOP, took just 29 percent. I’d be surprised if this hasn’t completely destroyed his career in statewide politics.

The second rule is that Los Angeles clearly no longer dominates state politics; for the moment, the power center of California politics is the Bay Area. All of the major-party candidates for governor, lieutenant governor, and U.S. Senator are either from, or identify as their political base, the Northern California region. Indeed, in the race with the most prominent North-versus-South dynamic – the Democratic contest for lieutenant governor – San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom not only defeated Los Angeles City Councilwoman Janice Hahn by more than 20 points, but won several Southern California counties, including San Diego, Santa Barbara, and San Luis Obispo. Only in Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties did Hahn’s vote total even exceed 50 percent.

Another new rule is that the Tea Party movement doesn’t do as well in large states, where campaigns usually cost in the several millions of dollars, as it does in smaller ones like Nevada. Here, the electoral results speak for themselves. In several prominent races, the candidate who most clearly identified himself as a Tea Partier pulled an embarrassingly low percentage of the vote, be it Poizner’s 29 percent in the gubernatorial contest, Sam Aanestad’s 30.5 percent in the race for lieutenant governor, senatorial wannabe Chuck DeVore’s 19 percent… Even in the campaign for attorney general, where the Tea Party had little or no presence that I’m aware of, the candidate backed by the Tea Partiers’ favorite congressman – Tom McClintock – came in a distant second, with 34 percent.

My personal favorite rule demonstrated by Tuesday's results is that money may be able to buy you a lot of love if you’re a candidate (Whitman, Fiorina), but not necessarily if you’re a corporation looking to use the initiative process to fatten your wallet. Pacific Gas and Electric, the state’s largest private utility, and Mercury Insurance, a large auto insurer, each spent millions of dollars to pass Propositions 16 and 17, respectively. Proposition 16 would have cemented PG&E’s monopoly on municipal power by requiring a two-thirds vote of the electorate any time a city or county tried to establish a competing public power company, like Sacramento’s SMUD; Proposition 17 would have dismantled state auto insurance regulations in such a way that would have benefited Mercury and other large insurers. For each initiative, the corporate proponents spent much, much more on advertising and media than their grassroots opponents; but in neither race were California voters fooled. Both 16 and 17 took less than 48 percent of the vote.

One rule that I previously thought to be written in stone in California politics – that any Republican who supports a tax increase is doomed to electoral failure – may have been upended this year. Abel Maldonado, the incumbent lieutenant governor who supported the February 2009 budget agreement that contained several short-term tax hikes, faced what was supposed to be a strong primary challenge from conservative anti-tax state Senator Sam Aanestad. Surprisingly, Maldonado, who was considered the Senate’s most moderate Republican by far before Governor Schwarzenegger appointed him lieutenant governor, pulled out a nearly 13-point victory over Aanestad.

Then again, in the race for state insurance commissioner, a little-known Republican candidate who spent less than $5,000 on his campaign and had absolutely no endorsements or establishment support whatsoever may have narrowly defeated a three-term GOP state legislator, Mike Villines, who voted for the same 2009 budget agreement. The race is still up in the air, as absentee ballots have yet to be fully counted, but challenger Brian Fitzgerald currently has a 10,000-vote lead over Villines, which a befuddled media is chalking up to Republican anger over Villines’s tax vote last year.

Ultimately, though, the election belongs to Meg Whitman. Whatever happens, both in the near and distant future, what we will all remember is the money. Something like $70 million of her own personal fortune was spent to win the primary alone; look for her to spend upwards of another $100 million on the general election. Whether she defeats Brown or not – and I fear for my state’s future if she does – we will remember the money. When all is said and done, and Whitman is thanking the volunteers for phone banking and going door-to-door, when she is attributing her victory to institutional support from GOP leaders like Mitt Romney and Condoleezza Rice, when her supporters boast of her scapegoating of undocumented immigrants as the reason for her victory, we will remember the money. For better or for worse, Meg Whitman has now changed California politics forever.

The Government's Going To Take Away Your Right To Watch "The Biggest Loser"

One of the peculiar things I’ve noticed about conservatives is that they tend to think the government – any government, federal, state, or local – has much more political power than it actually does. Yesterday’s New York Times column by former George W. Bush adviser N. Gregory Mankiw provides an excellent example of this phenomenon.

The purpose of Mankiw’s column is to analyze recent attempts by multiple governments across the United States to enact, or at least study, imposing new taxes on soda and other ultra-sugary drinks. Whatever your stance on this issue – and I recognize that it is more complex than a simple left-versus-right, tax-versus-no-tax, government-versus-market debate – Mankiw’s culminating argument is nothing short of absurd:

Taxing soda may encourage better nutrition and benefit our future selves. But so could taxing candy, ice cream and fried foods. Subsidizing broccoli, gym memberships and dental floss comes next. Taxing mindless television shows and subsidizing serious literature cannot be far behind.

Setting aside the fact that taxes on junk and fast food, or subsidies for healthy diets and activities, are both legitimate ideas worth debating, Mankiw’s paranoid idea that a soda tax would somehow lead to the federal government taxing crap TV like Jersey Shore and subsidizing, say, the works of Philip Roth is one of the most egregious uses of the slippery slope fallacy I’ve ever seen. The main reason this is so beyond the pale is that, as Mr. Mankiw and so many other libertarian/free-market devotees seem to forget, we elect the government.

In order for the federal government to enact something so obscene as a tax on awful television shows, Americans would have to vote into office, in separate and distinct electoral contests, at least 218 members of the House of Representatives (a majority of the total 435), 60 members of the Senate (a three-fifths majority of the 100 Senators, since just about everything controversial is filibustered these days), and a President willing to sign such a policy into law. All of these elected officials – except for the ones who retire, who usually represent a small fraction of the total – would have to be held accountable by the voters at the next election. This is how public policy works in a democracy.

Of course, any such policy as Mankiw ominously hints “cannot be far behind” a soda tax would be challenged in court, and given that the Supreme Court under John Roberts has become such a hotbed of right-wing judicial activism, there’s a good chance that a Real Housewives of Wherever tax or a Michael Chabon subsidy would be struck down as unconstitutional.

What I’m getting at with my poor attempts to make pop culture quips is that there exist democratic safeguards against Mankiw’s ridiculous notion that the government is going to suddenly tax shows like Survivor or American Idol, the most important being that there is zero public support for such an idea, and it is the public that chooses the government.

This paranoia is among the most prominent fears of right-wing economists like Mankiw – the idea that “the government” or “the state” is going to enact some horrible, oppressive policy that will rob of us of all of the freedoms that we hold dear, and that there is absolutely nothing we will be able to do about it. Never mind that one-third of the Senate and 100 percent of the House of Representatives is chosen by the people in free and fair elections every two years, or that the President is elected once every four years, and limited to two terms. That policy is always coming. It's always just around the corner.

(P.S. Times blogger David Leonhardt has posted an excellent rebuttal to Mankiw. He doesn’t address the silly “the big bad government is gonna tax TV shows it doesn’t like” argument, but he does make a solid argument for some kind of public policy to reduce Americans’ intake of ultra-caloric beverages. Did you know that the annual national cost of obesity in the U.S. comes to $147 billion? That’s $1,250 per household. To paraphrase one of my favorite movies, Clerks, would you be willing to pay someone that much money to kill you every year?)

Joe Lieberman is a despicable human being.

I can forgive Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, who once upon a time was a Democrat (ha!), for his strong support of the Iraq War; lots of people supported it. Similarly, his vehement opposition to providing a public option for those who can’t afford private, for-profit health insurance may have been infuriating, but it was a legitimate position to take. As a Senator, it's his prerogative to publicly oppose, and vote against, any proposal with which he disagrees.

But today’s move – suggesting that terrorism suspects who are American citizens be stripped of their citizenship so that they can be denied their constitutional rights – is one of the most disgusting and appalling suggestions I have ever heard from a politician. I’m sorry Joe Lieberman wet his pants with fear when he heard that Faisal Shahzad, the wannabe Times Square bomber, was read his Miranda rights. I’m sure the guy’s never seen an episode of Law and Order and therefore has no idea that he has a right to remain silent and to have counsel present at his questioning, and that by informing him of these rights, the intelligence community lost access to vital information about, you know, the next idiot who's going to try and blow up a car filled with nonexplosive fertilizer from Home Depot.

If we’re going to go down this road, why don’t we just suggest that anyone accused of a crime who might have pertinent knowledge about other criminals be automatically stripped of his or her citizenship, so that he or she can be flogged, waterboarded, or held indefinitely at a Naval base in Cuba, until giving us the information that we need? Gang members, drug kingpins, Mafia lords – just think of all the noncitizens we could create!

Of course, if we strip them of their citizenship and they somehow manage to stay here, aren’t we just adding to the illegal immigration problem?

(P.S. I didn't even get into the fact that Lieberman's suggestion blatantly disregards the Supreme Court ruling, handed down over forty years ago, that the government cannot involuntarily strip an American of his or her citizenship. Court rulings are just one of the many constitutional protections built into our system of government that become irrelevant to Joe Lieberman when one pathetic failed terrorist gets read his Miranda rights.)

Meg Whitman: Anti-Labor but Pro-Labour?

British elections are coming up on May 6, and California's primary election is on June 8. Normally there isn't much cross-contamination between British and American politics, in large part due to the fact that the major parties here and there don't exactly correlate. Britain's Conservatives, for example, are to the left of most U.S. Republicans and even some conservative Democrats on issues such as the environment; the British Labour Party would be considered solidly left-wing by American standards. They're a member of the Socialist International organization; can you imagine U.S. voters electing a party affiliated with a group called Socialist International? Just their name encompasses two of the ideologies Americans tend to hate most!

Oddly enough, however, there is a California-British connection this year. According to the San Francisco Chronicle's Carla Marinucci, Meg Whitman was part of an elite group of business leaders enlisted to "advise" the U.K. Labour government on issues of globalization and trade a few years back. Fascinating.

Or not - realistically, in an increasingly globalized economy, American businesspeople advising the British government, whatever party happens to be in power, doesn't seem that out of the ordinary. But you can bet it will find its way into the Republican primary. Anyone care to take bets on how many more days it will be before Steve Poizner is linking Whitman to "a European political party affiliated with (cue ominous music) international socialists!"?? Let's see, it's Friday now... I wouldn't at all be surprised if StevePo's got those ads on the air by Wednesday. Let the betting begin!

There’s a very revealing moment in Bob Woodward’s excellent book The Choice, about President Clinton’s 1996 reelection race, in which Clinton mentions to his press secretary, Mike McCurry, that he privately hopes Bob Dole will win the Republican presidential nomination that year. McCurry is confused; sure, Dole is the most sane and rational candidate, but that also gives him the greatest chance of beating Clinton in the general election. Therefore, shouldn’t Clinton favor a kooky right-wing nut like Pat Buchanan, or a monumentally unqualified hack like Steve Forbes? “Dole’s the only one that’s got any capability to do the job,” Clinton (allegedly) said. “Something could happen to me. We could have a major crisis that goes bad on us… and they (the voters) might throw me out on my rear end.”

It was very thoughtful and insightful of Clinton to feel this way, and in hindsight he was correct. Although he fell well short of defeating Clinton, Dole would not have actually been a terrible president; he certainly would have been superior to most of his GOP opponents, or to George W. Bush, for that matter. (Since that election Bob Dole has done Viagra commercials and his craziest opponent, Pat Buchanan, has come out against U.S. participation in World War II; if you had to choose, who would you rather have had in the White House?)

I worry that we’re in a similar situation today, leading up to the 2012 election. The current Republican frontrunner, so declared by the mainstream media and a handful of unreliable preprimary polls, is former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. There’s little question that Romney is a conservative, but by the standards of today’s Hannity-Limbaugh-Palin-led GOP, he just might not be conservative enough.

What he is, however, is somewhat qualified to be president – at least by the standards of his likely opponents. He’s a smart businessman, a bit of an intellectual (a rare and risky thing to be in the age of Glenn Beck and Tea Parties), and has demonstrated a degree of independent thinking unheard of in a party that is increasingly demanding strict adherence to right-wing ideological principles. I won’t even get into the comprehensive health care reform he championed and enacted in Massachusetts, and how that’s going to play out in the presidential race; but it’s unquestionably one of the most important and influential pieces of legislation signed by a Republican governor so far this decade.

Romney being a decent human being and a strong candidate (albeit one I still would not support, I must add), I am concerned that Obama and the Democratic Party leadership are going to do everything they can in advance of the Republican primaries to sabotage his chances of winning the nomination, in the hopes that a wingnut like Sarah Palin, Haley Barbour or (God help us all) Ron Paul runs away with it and then goes down in flames in the general election. Obviously, this would be a great strategy if it were guaranteed to work, but it isn’t. What Clinton apparently said in 1996 - "I want to have some confidence in the person I turn the keys over to" - applies doubly today. If Obama were to unfortunately lose in 2012, I would want, as an American, to have some confidence that whomever defeated him wasn't going to wreck the country, Bush-style.

Jonathan Chait has discussed this multiple times on his blog – the possibility that the economy might go into free-fall, or that Obama might get caught up in some personal scandal that, like Clinton, has no bearing on the job he does as president but could cost him votes nonetheless. If either of those things – or any other unforeseen circumstances – occurs, then we, as a country, could potentially be stuck with President Palin or President Paul. Is anybody prepared to take that risk? Are there any center-left Democrats out there like me who seriously disagree that Romney would be an exponentially better president than most of the kooks currently leading his party??

No, the best thing for our country would be for Romney to win the Republican nomination, probably put a token conservative (though hopefully someone more qualified to actually serve than Sarah Palin) on the ticket, and face off in a spirited (but hopefully unsuccessful) race against President Obama. At least that means the voters will have a choice between two candidates who actually know what they’re talking about.

In what I’m hoping the State political press will start calling “Three-way-debate-gate,” or maybe “Menage-a-Meg,” GOP gubernatorial frontrunner Meg Whitman has declined, or at least not yet said whether she’ll accept, Democratic candidate Jerry Brown’s invitation for a three-person debate between herself, Brown, and Whitman’s Republican primary opponent Steve Poizner. (Not surprisingly, Poizner has accepted – after all, what’s he got to lose? He’s 49 points down in the polls.)

The general reaction is that Brown’s invitation, offered during this past weekend’s state Democratic convention, was a smart tactical move. For one thing, challenging your opponent(s) to a debate always puts them on the defensive, and establishes you as an aggressive, confident candidate. However, no one really thinks it hurts your opponent if they either refuse to debate, squabble over the proposed rules for the debate, or delay their RSVP indefinitely. Voters just aren’t paying that much attention.

In fact, the thing that would hurt Whitman the most right now would be to accept Brown’s invitation, and debate both of her opponents. For one thing, she’s not as good a public speaker as either of them. I’ve seen Steve Poizner speak in person several times, and he’s a good, if not great, debater. At his worst moments, he comes across as that nerdy kid who got made fun of a lot in high school and developed a bit of a temper for it. At his best moments, whether you agree with him or not (and I generally don't), he displays a real knowledge of public policy and government, the kind more politicians wish they had.

As for Brown, few public figures, in California or elsewhere, are as entertaining or enjoyable to listen to. He peppers his speech with references to his past and to his record in government, makes oddball references to obscure European philosophers, and although he hasn’t offered many specific proposals yet, he rarely speaks in the kind of broad generalities Whitman is prone to using. He’s been criticized as something of an eccentric speaker, but absolutely no one would call him boring, or suggest that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

Whitman, on the other hand, sort of comes across in speeches as the stereotypical CEO who’s been surrounded by “yes-men” and had everything handed to her for most of her career. It’s not that she’s arrogant or condescending; quite the opposite. In order to sound condescending, you have to at least sound like you know what you’re talking about, and in your humble correspondent’s opinion, Whitman just doesn’t. (Plus, her tendency to begin every single sentence with the phrase "So, what I've said is..." drives me up the wall.) Putting her in a debate with two knowledgeable, entertaining, and (in Brown’s case) likeable opponents would only cost her.

Then there’s the fact that a three-way debate would almost certainly turn into a gang-up on Whitman. Sure, Brown would speak generally about not repeating the failed Republican policies of the Bush-Schwarzenegger years, but he’d concentrate most of his fire on Whitman specifically. Similarly, Poizner would no doubt trade barbs with Brown, on the extreme off-chance that he wins the June primary and has to face Brown in the general election, but it’s a sure bet he’d spend nearly all of his time attacking Whitman. Why would you want to subject yourself to this if you were Meg?

Whitman is the “rising star” of California politics right now, and both Brown and Poizner are just dying to get in some hits. You can bet they’d both go after her (non)voting record; Brown would attack her for proposing a repeal of the capital gains tax, which the Sacramento Bee helpfully reported would benefit Whitman herself, considerably; Poizner would attack her from the right on immigration.

If Whitman has any sense of self-preservation about her, what she’ll do is politely decline Brown’s invitation, noting that it’s both inappropriate and unprecedented for a multiparty debate in advance of the primaries, and invite Poizner to one or two more debates before their June 8 contest. Meanwhile, she should commit in advance to a series of debates with Brown after the primary election. No one really cares how she does against Poizner anymore; he’s all but out of the game at this point. But facing Brown – or facing Brown and Poizner together – could really hurt her, and with poll numbers as high as hers, there’s nowhere for Meg to go but down.

Today’s Tea Party protest at the State Capitol was a pretty mild affair compared to previous ones I’ve seen – there were very few signs advocating, for example, violent revolution against the federal government, or suggesting that Barack Obama was not born in the United States (a view held by a disproportionately large percentage of Tea Partiers), or comparing high-ranking Democrats to Adolf Hitler. Accusing the President and Congress of Marxism, socialism and communism are all still acceptable, of course, but it's good to see the Tea Partiers accept that Nazism might be a stretch.

On the contrary, there were dozens of people walking around with voter-registration and initiative signature petitions, and most of the speakers were exhorting their listeners to get out there and vote, as opposed to, say, urging them to "take up arms" in their battle against everything Obama. I don’t know how many of the TPers trying to overturn California’s landmark climate emissions law knew that they were shilling for powerful Texas oil companies in the process, but kudos to them for at least getting involved. It’s more than you can say for most Americans.

Indeed, there seem to be signs that the Tea Party is becoming less and less insane by the day. Earlier this week, organizers of today’s protest in Pleasanton disinvited Orly Taitz from speaking at their event.

Taitz, for those of you who don’t know, is the nutcase who heads up the Birther movement alleging that Barack Obama is not a natural-born U.S. citizen, shouts instead of talking, and is running for California secretary of state. Hey, Orly – when the folks who dress up like Ben Franklin, have no idea that Medicare is a government-run program, and carry around signs portraying Nancy Pelosi as Pinocchio are calling you a weirdo… wow.

Adding insult (read “sanity”) to injury (read “craziness”), two high-profile Republican candidates for the U.S. Senate – Carly Fiorina and Chuck DeVore – have disavowed Taitz’s theories completely, each one boldly asserting Barack Obama’s legitimacy to be president.

Fiorina, via a spokesperson, had the cojones to own up to her belief that “President Obama is absolutely eligible for the presidency and is a natural-born United States citizen.”

And DeVore, the self-proclaimed “Tea Party candidate” in this race, “strongly disapproves of Orly Taitz and the crazy theories she continues to advance.”

This is strong stuff, considering that the Obama-was-born-here view only holds sway with about four in ten Republicans, and a similar number of Tea Partiers.

Maybe the biggest news in this story is that this is actually considered news in today’s America – that a group of conservatives, including two candidates for office, have accepted that the President of the United States was actually born here and that this isn’t all just some clever Kenyan/Russian/Chinese/Iranian/Venezuelan hoax.

Not that this has caught on with all GOP politicos – in the same article linked to above, neither the vice chair of the California Republican Party nor a prominent State Assembly candidate from the East Bay (and current mayor of San Ramon) would say where they believe Obama was born.

Here’s my question, though – do they really believe that crap about us landing on the moon?

Sure Enough...

As if to prove my point in yesterday's post about Meg Whitman limiting herself with regards to those "solutions" she's so sure she's got for California, eMeg gave (gasp!) a press conference at the California Republican Party convention today, addressing her ideas for the budget crisis. Among them? No overall spending cuts to education, $4 billion in tax cuts, and reducing state spending by $15 billion over four years through reducing inefficiencies and waste. (All of this info is courtesy of John Myers, at KQED Public Radio.)

Guess what, Meg? Education spending represents 40 percent of the general fund budget; I don't want to cut it any more than anybody else does, but good luck chipping away at a $20 billion shortfall otherwise. Cutting taxes to the tune of $4 billion - about 0.2 percent of state GDP - won't do squat to create jobs or jump-start the economy, but it will drive up the deficit by another $4 billion or so.

And as for those spending cuts - never mind the question of whether there's $15 billion in "waste" in the state budget to begin with (there isn't). Meg, my friend, sit down. The deficit is $20 billion this year alone. And unless the economy rebounds faster than one of my sinus infections, it will probably be in the $10 to $15 billion range, annually, through the middle of this decade. So $15 billion over four years ain't gonna bring us back to black, as Amy Winehouse would put it. (I tried to say "back in black" so as to make an AC/DC reference, but it just doesn't sound right, does it?)

Wait a minute, I've just run some numbers in my head (the best place to do math, I find) - if she's going to cut taxes by $4 billion per year, that comes out to $16 billion over four years. That's a billion dollars more than she's proposing to cut in spending. Which brings us right back to square one, deficit-wise. Actually, square one plus another billion dollars, give or take.

Hey, media - you wanna stop taking this lady seriously already?

Some comments on Meg Whitman, who faithful readers know I don’t much care for. Part of it might be that I’m a state employee, and state employees have been her favorite punching bag throughout most of her campaign. (Immigrants, another favorite scapegoat for conservatives, are thus far being mercifully spared Whitman’s ire, which is more than can be said for her 50-points-down-in-the-polls “opponent” Steve Poizner.)

The notoriously press-shy Whitman – who may have made political history yesterday when she invited a group of reporters to an “open press” event and then told them, once they arrived, that they were no longer welcome – sat down for an interview with San Francisco Chronicle columnist Debra Saunders. I go back and forth on Saunders; she calls herself a “San Francisco conservative,” which I guess is somehow different from a normal conservative, except that she still seems to believe climate change either isn't happening, or isn't serious enough to do much about. Good on ya.

But to her credit, she got eMeg to sit down and actually talk about the issues. Well, not so much the issues as her biography. According to Saunders, the big question about Whitman is, “Can she govern?” Never mind that there’s already an easy, one-word answer to this question (hint: it’s two letters, starts with “n,” and rhymes with “go”). Saunders falls into that age-old trap of assuming that someone with corporate management experience is somehow capable of running a government. I’m not the first one to say this, and I’m sure I won’t be the last, but it’s important for people to know that running a business and running a government are not the same thing, and someone who is good at one is not necessarily going to be even remotely good at the other.

For one thing, Whitman herself acknowledges that she has “not directly negotiated with unions” in her business experience. That alone ought to disqualify any business leader who’s running for governor of California, whose hundreds of thousands of state employees constitute one of the most powerful interest groups in the history of American politics. If you have no idea how to deal with unions, good luck trying to cut the state workforce by 30,000 jobs.

I was also more than a little dismayed by Whitman’s boast, in her co-written (read: ghostwritten) memoir The Power of Many, that she “can go into virtually any kind of business, analyze the situation and come up with an effective plan to solve problems and achieve goals.” For one thing, coming up with a plan wouldn’t be her job as governor – negotiating a plan with enough of the 120 members of the Legislature for it to pass both houses would be. That’s what Jerry Brown plans to do, anyway.

And as for that “effective plan” eMeg insists she can come up with, it doesn’t help if you purposefully wall off a number of possible solutions – or components of solutions – to the problems your business or government is facing. Pledging to oppose tax increases, promising to increase education spending – these are both costly decisions to make, especially before you’ve even been hired by the company. Can you imagine a candidate for CEO of a corporation that’s bleeding money by the billions proclaiming, before they even take office, “If you elect me CEO of this corporation, I promise I will not raise any of our products’ prices. I also promise to increase Research and Development spending.” No way; any responsible business leader has to consider every possible option “on the table,” as does a responsible political leader.

Then again, Whitman does boast of having thought up “a method to save hours of food preparation time by washing potatoes in dishwashers.” That’s what California really needs; someone who can wash our potatoes quicker. How about when Jerry Brown becomes governor, he appoints Meg Whitman as State Potato Washer? Assuming she agrees not to take a salary. Times are tight, after all.

These Times We Live In

I know it’s been quite some time since your humble correspondent updated (what? I’ve been sick, gimme a break), and I’ll in the coming days, but this little ditty caught my eye and I just couldn’t resist commenting on it.

So, unless you’ve been living under a rock, you may have heard that a conservative Republican state legislator, Roy Ashburn, recently came out of the closet. After being caught driving drunk in Sacramento. In his state-provided vehicle. Having just left a gay bar. With an unidentified “male companion” in the car. And having spent his entire legislative career voting against every possible law that could grant even a shred of dignity or equality to gays and lesbians.

So, that’s fun. Sort of makes you think of that ancient Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times.”

Never mind Ashburn’s political future. He crossed the aisle to vote for tax increases last year, which means his career in the Republican Party is over, plain and simple. Coming out as an open homosexual isn’t even the nail in the coffin; the coffin’s already met its nail quota, with some left over to spare.

What I’m interested in are the reactions of Ashburn’s constituents. A brave San Francisco Chronicle writer ventured into the heart of his district, in Bakersfield, where I’m sure a Bay Area news reporter feels right at home, to ask everyday folks what they thought of their state senator. Generally, the reaction was favorable, and by “favorable,” I mean that no one particularly seemed to want to tar and feather the man.

Interviewed in a bar, 68-year-old country singer Bad Blake - err, Mel Lawrence - gave Ashburn credit for voting “more or less, along Kern County lines.” Good to hear that voting along Kern County lines means opposing same-sex marriage, civil unions, health benefits for domestic partners, and hate crimes legislation.

In the same bar – I’m guessing over a shot of Jack or a can of Pabst, but the article doesn’t specify – a 29-year-old former marine named Vince Edwards admitted that he was “just prejudiced against gays. I’m just not comfortable with them.”

All I want to know is: what’s Vince going to say to his children and grandchildren in 40 years when gays have full equality everywhere in the United States? Is he going to be the mid-21st-century equivalent of that racist old grandpa every other white family seems to have? Are his children going to read what Dad said in the newspaper (not that future generations are going to have any idea what a newspaper was) with pride? This guy couldn’t even bring himself to (lie and) say that he’s okay with gays, just not with same-sex marriage or adoption, a refrain that seems to pop up a lot in conservative areas. No, he straight up admitted to being prejudiced against them.

I appreciate your service, Vince. But it doesn't excuse your bigotry.

Wondering what happens if healthcare reform doesn’t pass?

At this point no one knows what the future of healthcare reform is. On the one hand, the President seems as committed as ever to passing a bill, however imperfect, and preferably soon; on the other hand, the President’s advisers insist that reform “can wait a while,” which surely represents the death knell for any meaningful bill. Either way, the price of not acting is pretty high.

The Urban Institute and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services have run some numbers on what healthcare in America will look like by the end of this decade if the status quo is maintained. (And make no mistake, the Republicans obstructing the bill in Congress prefer the status quo to any reform proposals currently on the table. If they take back either House of Congress in 2010, or the presidency in 2012, healthcare reform will be completely and utterly dead.) Their findings, and more, are discussed at length in an excellent piece by David Wessel in, of all places, The Wall Street Journal. Here’s what they project:

- The percentage of national GDP (a.k.a. national wealth) spent on healthcare will jump from 17.3 percent in 2009 to 19.3 percent in 2019. So that’s an extra two dollars for every hundred spent that we, as a society, will be spending on healthcare within the next ten years. In case those numbers need to be driven home, think of however much you spend on healthcare now. Then add to that amount $2 for every $100 you earn.
- The percentage of uninsured people will rise from 18.4 percent to 20.1 percent of the population. Yes, one in five citizens of the wealthiest, most powerful country in the history of the world will be without health insurance, and most of that increase will come from middle-class adults, not poor people or children (or seniors).
- That’s because the poor (especially children) and seniors have public options (familiar phrase, eh?) like Medicaid and Medicare. The percentage of poor people and children receiving public healthcare will rise from 16.5 to 18.3 percent. Even more frightening – the total amount the federal government spends on Medicare and Medicaid combined will increase from about $725 billion to $950 billion by 2014. That’s a 30 percent increase in less than five years, and we, the taxpayers, will be on the hook for that. Remember that Republicans hate voting for taxes, so that extra $225 billion or so will likely just be added to the deficit if the GOP controls Congress and/or the White House. (Also remember that that increase is only between now and 2014; it will keep going up, probably at faster rates, after 2014 if the status quo is maintained.)

I don’t need to tell you, Dear Reader, that the reform proposals put forward by the Democrats in Congress (take your pick between either House’s version, since either one is preferable to the scenario I’ve just outlined above) would bring down the rapidly rising cost of healthcare, cover somewhere between 60 and 70 percent of the uninsured (click that link and then select "Coverage"), and reduce the federal deficit by over $100 billion (click on "Cost" and then "Net decrease in the Deficit") over the next decade. No, I doubt I need to tell you any of those things, but someone sure as hell needs to tell the Democrats in Congress.

Ezra Klein has a great piece in his blog (which I recommend everybody read on a daily basis) on how the problem lies not with the Democrats’ ability to pass healthcare reform – reconciliation, overcoming a filibuster, etc. – but with their will to do it. I’ll let Ezra have the last word on this one, since he’s better at this than I am:

If 51 Democratic senators and 218 Democratic congresspeople are dead-serious about passing a bill, they can, and will, pass a bill. ... Democrats can pass this if they want to. The project now is not learning the Senate rules but steeling Democratic spines. … This is the closest this country has ever gotten to passing a universal health-care bill, and a critical mass of congressional Democrats have chosen this as the moment to freeze up. They need to be slapped back to reality.

Let the slapping begin.

I like Gavin Newsom. His forceful stand on behalf of equal rights in 2004 remains one of the most courageous things I've ever seen a politician do. This is the guy who earned the wrath of millions of Californians and Americans by introducing us to the radical idea that two men or two women could marry one another and live happily ever after, pissing off even his city's former mayor, and California's most popular political figure, Dianne Feinstein. So why did he act like such a spineless wimp during his debut appearance on The O'Reilly Factor the other night? Bill O'Reilly crudely insulted the City of San Francisco and inaccurately blamed the entire phenomenon of budget deficits solely on liberal policies, and Newsom... pretty much sat there and took it. (The clip is available here.)

What, I wonder, was Mayor Gavin thinking when he let Bill-O claim that California's $20 billion budget shortfall is attributable exclusively to the actions of the Democratic-controlled State Legislature? Watch the clip. When Newsom feebly protests that California has had a Republican governor for the last six years, O'Reilly shuts him down by claiming that Arnold Schwarzenegger "doesn't have any say over what the Legislature does." Never mind that Bill's statement is shockingly false; the Governor submits the annual budget and signs it into law, and has the line-item veto power that allows him to strike out individual spending items he disagrees with. Gavin doesn't correct Bill on this, nor does he point out that, in his first month as Governor, Schwarzenegger blew a permanent $4.2 billion hole in the state budget by overturning Gray Davis's Vehicle License Fee increase. How about the $1.7 billion in corporate tax breaks Schwarzenegger signed into law as part of the 2008-09 budgets? Nada from Newsom, yet again.

As for the larger issue, O'Reilly's claim that "liberal governance simply doesn't work," and causes huge deficits, Newsom would have been well within the bounds of logic and reason to point out that, up until 2009, the largest deficits in American history had all been signed into law by conservative Republican presidents - Reagan and both Bushes, to be exact. Those deficits, he might have added, were caused by massive increases in defense spending and large tax cuts skewed overwhelmingly to wealthy taxpayers and corporations - both of which are policies supported by conservatives, not liberals.

Even more shocking was Gavin's meek response to Bill's degrading and purely emotion-based attacks on San Francisco, a lovely city which has twice elected Newsom. In response to O'Reilly's ranting about "panhandlers everywhere," Mayor Gavin correctly points out that the city has over 10,000 fewer homeless people living on the street than it did when he was elected six years ago, thanks to initiatives like Care Not Cash. Still, though, he lets Bill-O continue to rant. Not once does he forcefully interrupt O'Reilly to say, "Look, Bill, you're not backing up these statements with evidence. I'm giving you indisputable facts about what San Francisco has done to improve its homeless problem under my leadership, and you're making wild claims that are not supported by the numbers. I mean, have you even been to San Francisco lately?" With all due respect to Bill O'Reilly (oh wait - there is no respect due to this scumbag, that's right), I have been to the City plenty these past several years, and when I go there now I notice far fewer homeless people than I did when I grew up in the Bay Area.

No, instead Newsom insists on kissing up to O'Reilly, even pathetically pandering at the interview's outset by claiming to watch The O'Reilly Factor "every night." Really, Mr. Mayor? What do you hope to accomplish by acting this way? Bill O'Reilly is a man who has repeatedly demonstrated his contempt for civil discourse and responsible journalism by shouting down and intimidating his opponents, or sometimes just making up lies out of thin air. (My personal favorite was when he cited economic statistics about a boycott of France from a publication called "The Paris Business Review" - which does not exist. At all. Anywhere.)

If Gavin Newsom hopes to have a real political future in California (and an item in today's San Francisco Chronicle hints that he may jump into this year's race for Lieutenant Governor), I'd advise him to rethink his media strategy a bit. It's not that he needs to shun or disavow the right-wing propaganda machine that is Fox "News" altogether, as some Democrats and liberals do. But he shouldn't suck up to it, either. He's better than that.

Sigh.

I had a beautifully written, articulate, gripping post written about how I hoped Congresswoman Jackie Speier wouldn't run for State Attorney General, as she was considering doing... and then she decided not to run. Thus negating my entire post. And depriving you, my readership, of several witty, insightful paragraphs. In a way, I'm even more upset with her now than I was when she was just considering running. (Just kidding!)

Well, what I was going to say (and which Jackie Speier apparently agrees with me on) is that as long as Congress is full of faux-Democrats like Chris Dodd and Melissa Bean threatening to block financial reform, rather than protecting the consumers and middle-class families who have been hurt the most by predatory lenders, credit card companies, and big banks, we need as many real progressives in there as possible sticking up for working Americans. And Speier has a record of doing just that. So good for her.

Nobody threatens Steve "Tattletale" Poizner. Nobody!

So the big news of the day comes from the gubernatorial race, which has thus far been pretty lacking in drama. Mike Murphy, campaign manager for GOP frontrunner Meg Whitman, apparently sent an email to rival candidate Steve Poizner’s campaign team, urging that candidate to drop out of the race, and threatening to spend upwards of $40 million to defeat him if he refused. Now, assuming the email communiqué is legitimate and factual, this isn’t that abnormal an occurrence in California politics, where even intraparty primaries are noted for their brutal, cutthroat quality; there’s a reason state political websites take names like Rough & Tumble and Fox & Hounds. Murphy’s mistake, however, was in assuming that Steve Poizner would just roll over like a trained dog upon receiving such an email.

(Full disclosure: my parents and I both worked, in a volunteer capacity, on Ira Ruskin’s successful 2004 campaign for State Assembly against none other than Steve Poizner. I met Poizner on a handful of occasions and, while I can't honestly say I "know" him, I had many chances to observe his political style throughout that campaign.)

No, Poizner has chosen instead to lodge an official complaint-of-sorts with a number of state and federal entities charged with enforcing or overseeing election laws – the Attorney General, the Secretary of State, the Chairman of the Fair Political Practices Commission, the U.S. Attorney’s Office, and no less than four FBI agents. No kidding; you can view the letter here, in PDF format. (As an aside, the irony is lost on exactly no one that the first person to whom the letter is addressed is Attorney General Jerry Brown, the presumptive Democratic nominee whom either Poizner or Whitman will face in the November general election.)

Now, let’s set aside for a moment the indisputable fact that, if Poizner’s charge is true, then Whitman’s campaign is in serious breach of anyone’s concept of ethics and probably also state election laws. What I’m curious about is the politics of Poizner releasing the email and formally lodging his complaint(s); what does he expect to gain? For one thing, barring a conviction for a serious crime, such as a felony, I’m pretty certain there is no authority under state law for anyone to disqualify a candidate from competing in an election, so there’s no chance Whitman could, say, be found in violation of political ethics laws and removed from the ballot.

No, it looks like Poizner’s just trying to boost his fortunes among likely Republican voters here. After all, he’s 28 points down in the latest Field Poll, and the election ain’t getting any further away. Whitman’s probably got the cash to bury even the ultra-wealthy Poizner with TV and radio ads, and much of the state political press has already dubbed “eMeg” the frontrunner, looking past the primary and speculating about a likely Whitman-Brown matchup in the fall. Poizner probably feels like his only hope left is to convince primary voters that Whitman is unethical, ruthless, obsessed with gaining power at no matter what cost, etc. – much like some of Barack Obama’s supporters did with Hillary Clinton in the 2008 Democratic race.

It’s possible this may hurt Whitman, but keep in mind that she could always just fire Murphy and disavow his attempts to push Poizner out of the race, much like she distanced herself from a racist city councilmember from Southern California this week; she moved quickly enough on that one that Democrats didn’t even have time to make it an issue. Here’s her opportunity to do the same. Hell, she could always fire Murphy and then rehire him if she wins the election (pause for excruciating laughter), like Obama did with Samantha Power.

So my conclusion is that this looks like a desperate grasp for attention by an increasingly desperate candidate who is running out of time to introduce himself to voters and convince them that he’s up to the job he’s applying for. True, Whitman isn’t up to the job either, not by a long shot, and between the two of them, I’d begrudgingly have to give Poizner the edge on competence, but the guy’s polling at 17 percent. My griping about polls aside, 17 percent (compared to Whitman’s 45 percent) is pretty damn low, and at this stage of the game only the severest possible scandal could damage eMeg enough for Poizner to recover. This does not qualify as such a scandal.

Attack of the Polls, Part 2

A quick aside... in case you still aren't convinced that any poll can be spun any number of different ways by the media, here are headlines from two state newspapers today reporting on the same exact poll about the Tea Party/Bagger movement:

'Tea Party' making inroads, poll finds (San Bernardino Sun)

State poll: Few hooked on Tea Party (San Diego Union-Tribune)

Just for giggles, here's the Sun's leadoff sentence: "A poll of California voters released Tuesday reports that many Democrats and independent voters say they identify to some extent with the conservative tea party groups that have sprung up over the past year."

...and the Union-Trib's: "The majority of California voters are aware of the Tea Party protest movement sweeping the country but don’t identify with it, a new Field Poll shows."

And the print media wonders why they're doing so poorly these days.

Health Care Hypocrites

Matthew Spieler, at a website called The Faster Times (hat tip to Jonathan Cohn of The New Republic for linking to it), makes a really good point about "progressive" Democrats in Congress who would rather kill health care reform entirely than pass the Senate bill.

Spieler correctly points out that the Senate-bill-versus-no-bill argument, at least for those left of the center, effectively boils down to this: either (a) insure upwards of 30 million people (two-thirds of the uninsured, approximately) using the current private, for-profit system, thus granting billions of dollars in profits to the insurance companies; or (b) deny the evil, horrible insurance companies all of those profits, but also deny the 30 million people the ability to get health insurance. These are the choices, given that the public option seems to be dead and buried forever.

Liberals who are against the Senate bill simply because it would put more money in the pockets of insurance company executives are the worst kind of ideologues. If you can do something good for 30 million mostly low income people who can't afford insurance as it is, why not just do it? Worry about who profits off of it later; let's get these people insured. (Full disclosure: I am twenty-five years old, have a part-time job and was dropped from my parents' insurance when I turned twenty-four over a year ago. So I'm not exactly impartial on this topic. I would love to go see a doctor at some point. Maybe a dentist too. Why are Anthony Weiner and Raul Grijalva opposed to me seeing a dentist? And how about Howard Dean? I voted for you in 2004, dude. I campaigned for you. I donated money to you. Are you going to pay for my fillings?)

For that matter, they're also the worst kind of hypocrites. None of these people - Weiner, Grijalva, Dean - receive their insurance from a public system like Medicare or Medicaid, I promise you. Which means that they're all okay with their dollars lining the pockets of wealthy insurance CEOs; they just don't want any of the 46 million uninsured Americans to have that ability. Come on, guys. Start acting like the party Americans elected to lead in 2006 and 2008, not the party we just threw out.

Just a quick note on how much I hate polls. Early polls especially. And it’s not even the polls’s fault that I hate them so much; it’s the media’s fault, for overemphasizing what’s in the polls.

Take, for instance, this year’s U.S. Senate election here in California. Media outlets up and down the state, from the Associated Press right on down to the smallest blogs, reported on the recent Field Poll results showing that, among other things, incumbent Democrat Barbara Boxer leads all three potential Republican challengers, and that among those challengers getting ready to square off in the June primary, Tom Campbell leads both Carly Fiorina and Chuck DeVore.

The poll actually asked about two separate elections: the June primary and the November general. For the primary, I think the media should have discarded the results entirely. Yes, Campbell technically is in the lead – with a whopping 30 percent, compared to Fiorina’s 25 percent and a meager 6 percent for Chuck DeVore, the preferred candidate of Teabaggers and birthers. The leading candidate in the race was “Undecided,” who also goes by the name “It’s Only January And I’m Much Too Busy Peeing My Pants Over Scott Brown’s Win In Massachusetts To Give A Hoot About The Damn California Election Yet.” That candidate was pulling down 39 percent.

That’s right; fully four out of ten likely Republican primary voters still have no opinion on this race. Among voters at large (i.e., not just Republicans), 64 percent have no opinion of Campbell, 66 percent don’t know enough about Carly Fiorina to make a judgment, and 85 percent haven’t heard of Chuck DeVore. (Either that, or based on his name they assume he’s a drag-queen stripper and therefore not a serious candidate.)

So is this an "Underdog Campbell unexpectedly in the lead" story or a "Multimillionaire Fiorina falling behind despite loaning millions to her own campaign" story? Neither! At best, this is a case of "Results inconclusive; check back when more people care." Shame on the Associated Press, the Mercury News, and other media outlets for over-reporting on this one. (For one thing, they’re getting poor Tom Campbell’s hopes up. The man supports same-sex marriage and proposed a temporary hike in the gas tax last year to pay down California’s budget deficit; mark my words, he is not winning a Republican primary.*)

On the other hand, the second half of the poll – asking all likely voters, regardless of party, how they might vote in the November general election – has a little more meaning. That’s because more California voters than not are familiar with Barbara Boxer, who’s represented us in Washington for 17 years, and because an election featuring an incumbent tends to become a referendum on that incumbent’s job performance. Overemphasized in the poll was the fact that Boxer’s favorability rating is “only” 48 percent, as if the other 52 percent automatically dislike her and plan to vote against her. In reality, her unfavorability is only at 39 percent, meaning that 13 percent of prospective voters have no opinion of Barbara Boxer.

For that matter, Boxer is ahead of all three potential challengers. She leads Campbell by a margin of 48-38%, Fiorina by 50-35%, and DeVore by 51-34%. Assuming I’m right that Campbell can’t win the Republican primary and that DeVore’s candidacy is DOA, that leaves Carly Fiorina and her millions as the most likely candidate to take a shot at Boxer in the fall. Fifteen points behind, with ten months to go, and a full 50 percent of voters already backing the incumbent, in a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans by a full 13 points? That’s one poll that can’t be over-reported.

* A note on Tom Campbell – I like the guy, I really do. He’s thoughtful, very intelligent (Ph.D from the University of Chicago, former Stanford professor), and puts forward specific, detailed plans on what he’ll do if elected, rather than generic platitudes like “lower taxes” or “shrink government.” But I predict, with all my heart, that he will be massively outspent by the multimillionaire Fiorina and out-conservatived by both Fiorina and DeVore.

The only possible way Campbell could win the GOP primary is if Fiorina tacks hard enough to the right for her and DeVore to split the conservative vote, thus allowing moderate voters to dominate. But how many moderates are left in the California Republican Party? Consider these two statistics: First, the Field Poll breaks down likely GOP voters by ideology, and a full 43 percent call themselves “strongly conservative.” That leaves “moderate” and “moderately conservative” at 57 percent, combined. What percentage of those do you suppose identify simply as "moderate"? Forty percent? Less? I'm thinking probably less, more like 30 to 35 percent.

Second, in 1992, the last time Campbell faced a contested primary, there were a lot more moderates around, he won just 36 percent of the vote; he’ll need at least that much, probably four to six points more, to win in 2010. (Given his startlingly poor polling, DeVore’s probably either going to drop out or simply fade into obscurity by June, making the primary into more of a two-person contest between Campbell and Fiorina.) You tell me how well a pro-choice, pro-same-sex-marriage, former professor from the Bay Area who has supported tax increases in the past is going to fare among today's Republican voters.

Bits & Pieces

U.S. Senate candidate Carly Fiorina (R-Suckup) told a group of business leaders, “Only in America could a woman who is a medieval-history major, a law-school dropout, a full-time receptionist, rise to become the chief executive of one of the largest companies in the world and now be privileged to run for the U.S. Senate.” That’s right, Carly, only in America… because in any other sensible, semi-literate country, you would be seen as the flagrantly unqualified hack that you are.

She also said, in what must qualify as one of the least politically risky statements any candidate for office in the history of the universe has ever uttered, “I think we need a little more practical problem-solving (in Congress) and a little less back-room deal-making.” Really, Carly? You’re for practical problem-solving and against back-room deal-making? Gosh, how bold of you. I bet you’re also for education and against crime! Anyway, has she forgotten how many legitimate problems (health care, the economy, global warming) went unsolved, and how many corrupt, middle-of-the-night back-room deals were cut (as documented brilliantly by Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone) the last time her party controlled Congress?

What I’d really like to hear Fiorina (and every other Republican running for Congress this year, but especially those running against Democratic incumbents) answer is this: Do you think the country was better off under George W. Bush and the Republicans than it is under Barack Obama and the Democrats? It’s a simple yes-or-no question, and as far as I’m concerned it is now the job of every sensible reporter in this country to get an answer to that question out of every Republican candidate for Congress, everywhere. And then print that answer. On the front page.

* * *

The New York Times notes that Senator-elect Scott Brown of Massachusetts, who has promised to join his 40 fellow Republicans in blocking health care reform, voted for - and still strongly supports - Massachusetts’s landmark health care legislation as a member of the Bay State’s legislature back in 2006. Anyone who knows a hoot about the two plans knows how strikingly similar they are (the Massachusetts plan served, in many ways, as a model for the federal bill), but Brown, on the campaign trail, has “sought to portray [the federal proposal] as fundamentally different from the Massachusetts plan.” According to the Times’s “Prescription” blog, however:

The federal law, like the one in Massachusetts, is built around a system of government-subsidized, private insurance coverage with subsidies on a sliding-scale based on income. The federal law, however, also includes a number national steps aimed at controlling health care costs, and new taxes and fees aimed at paying for the legislation. Massachusetts has continued to struggle with its costs.

So, let me get this straight: the big difference between the Massachusetts bill and the federal legislation is that the federal bill actually pays for itself, and takes steps toward controlling health care costs for everyone! Massachusetts, meanwhile, has failed to do either of these things so far, and the costs of their reform – both to individual consumers and to the state treasury – have been spiraling out of control. And Scott Brown sees the federal bill as being worse than the Massachusetts bill. Hmm.

* * *

University professor Timothy Jost agrees with me that, in the wake of yesterday’s Massachusetts election, the House should just adopt the Senate health care bill, in its entirety, no amendments, to avoid a second vote in the Upper House. Of course, by “agrees with me,” I mean that he makes essentially the same argument I made, but better informed and much more articulately. Check it out.

* * *

Meanwhile, back in the Golden State, somebody named Martin Garrick was elected leader of the Assembly Republicans yesterday. Thus far he seems to be your standard, assembly-line (no pun intended) Limbaugh-Palin conservative who hates abortion, taxes, and government, and loves guns, God, and vague references to “freedom.” Here’s a real head-scratcher – the Bee speculates about how Garrick’s selection will affect the painful annual budget process, and has Jaime Regalado of CSU Los Angeles predicting that bipartisan compromise will somehow be even more difficult under Garrick than it has been in the recent past. “I think when you get ideologues on either side in such important positions, it threatens more of the same (partisan fighting) – and perhaps even worse,” says Regalado.

News flash, Jaime – the Republican caucus is almost entirely composed of ideologues! Even if a sensible, open-to-compromise legislator like Roger Niello were somehow chosen as leader, he or she would be kicked to the curb if they dared to commit the unforgivable sin of compromising with the other party by voting for tax increases. Ever heard of Dave Cogdill? Or Mike Villines? Me neither.

Why the House should just pass the Senate health care reform bill

Given the frightening results of today’s special Senate election in Massachusetts, the prospects for health care reform passing both houses of Congress and making it to the president’s desk have dimmed somewhat. Republican Senator-elect Scott Brown has pledged to vote against pretty much any health reform bill that comes before him, once he is seated.

But wait, you say! Hasn’t a bill already passed in both houses? Wise you are, young grasshopper – the House passed health care reform by a vote of 220 to 215 in early November of last year; six weeks later, on Christmas Eve the Senate passed similar legislation, 60 to 39. (Thanks to the phony filibuster the Republicans don’t have the cojones to actually use, 60 is now the minimum number of votes it takes in the Senate to pass any bill more controversial than, say, a nonbinding resolution commemorating Mother’s Day.)

But the legislation passed by the Senate was only similar to the House version, not exactly the same, and therein lies the rub. Under ordinary circumstances, what would happen is that the two houses would hammer out a compromise between each version of the bill, then return to their respective body and vote the bill out a second time. The problem is that, with 41 members of the Upper House (or, 40 members plus one soon-to-be-inaugurated member), the Republicans are sure to pseudo-filibuster any compromise legislation on the Senate floor.

This leaves the Democrats with only a few options for actually passing a bill in 2010. They could try cajoling the Senate’s last remaining “moderate” Republican, Olympia Snowe of Maine, into supporting the bill. Fortunately, if they are able to accomplish such a feat, global warming won’t be much of a problem anymore, since the earth’s temperature will have dropped significantly due to the freezing-over of hell. Two other options, both very politically risky, would be to either (a) hurry up on that compromise so that the Senate can get a bill out before Scott Brown is inaugurated, or (b) pass the bill through the controversial “reconciliation” process, by which legislation bypasses the normal route and becomes filibuster-proof, thus requiring only 51 votes to pass. Either of these would make the Democrats look like political opportunists going out of their way to subvert the democratic process; at least, that’s how the right-wing media would spin it.

The most sensible option, which has the advantage of being both perfectly legal and legitimate, and also the least politically risky path, would be for the House to simply pass the Senate version of the bill as is, with no amendments whatsoever. This would bypass the requirement for the Senate to hold another vote on the bill, since their prior 60-to-39 vote is still valid. Yes, yes, there’s a million reasons – from the abortion compromise to denying coverage of any kind to undocumented immigrants to setting up state-based exchanges rather than a national one – for the House, and sensible progressive Americans, to object to the Senate bill.

But there’s one big, overriding reason to just pass the thing and get this whole ordeal over with, and that’s the huge political victory the Democrats would be handing the teabagger wing of the Republican Party by failing to pass a health care bill at all. Think of the boost it would give the GOP heading into this year’s midterm elections if they could boast of having defeated President Obama’s single biggest domestic policy initiative despite having only 41 percent of the seats in each House of Congress.

On the other hand, if the Democrats can swing into election season having passed at least some bill, however imperfect, their message will be that much stronger: “Look, you elected us in 2006 and 2008 to make some changes, and as a result of those elections, insurance companies won’t be able to deny you coverage for a preexisting condition or drop you if you’re sick; you’ll be able to keep your health care if you change or lose your job; we’re slowing the rapidly rising cost of health care; and it’s going to be a lot easier for low-income people to purchase and keep health care. If you have a problem with all of those policies and you want them repealed, by all means, vote for the other party. If, on the other hand, you like the direction health care is going and you think we can build on these reforms just like we did with Social Security and Medicare, vote for us.”

The Senate health care bill is far from perfect – heck, parts of it barely even rank as adequate – but defeating it, and thus probably defeating health care reform in any form, would effectively cede the 2010 (and possibly) 2012 elections to the Palin-Beck Republican Party. Doing so would doom America’s chances of passing any major health care reform legislation for at least the next decade.

Read Their Lips, No New Taxes... or, How California Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Spending Cuts

As the Legislature comes back into session to consider Governor Schwarzenegger's final budget proposal, the Sacramento News & Review (Sactown's free weekly) has an excellent piece on how the Taliban wing of the California Republican Party has helped drive the Golden State into a ditch. It's well worth a read, even if you're not a political insider or junkie like I am.

So what's the solution? I don't really know. The new redistricting system we're going to be using for elections beginning in 2012 may help, but it's no panacea; California is a politically divided state, with liberal Democrats tending to dominate the North Coast, Bay Area, and urban Los Angeles, and conservative Republicans cleaning up in Orange County, the Inland Empire, and much of the Central Valley. Changing the shape of a rabid antitax Assemblymember's district from, say, Irvine isn't going to make that legislator more likely to negotiate or compromise on budget issues; nor is putting the drawing of a Marin County senatorial district in the hands of a "nonpartisan" commission going to make that county's representatives see eye-to-eye with businesspeople who may legitimately be burdened by government regulations.

On the other hand, the Open Primary Initiative (officially known by the goofy-sounding name "The Top Two Primaries Act") which will appear on this June's statewide ballot may actually produce some more thoughtful, compromise-oriented legislators in both parties. (Assuming it passes, that is; an exactly identical measure pushed by the Governor in 2004 lost by eight points. Oh, and that's back when Arnie's approval rating was 61 percent. Let's see how many votes his endorsement can get a measure in 2010.)

Until then, there's not much to do except wait and watch the tragicomic opera that is our state political process play out. The Democrats will balk at the Governor's proposed spending cuts, and try to offset them with some mild tax and fee increases, like a severance fee on oil extraction; Republicans will dig in their heels and cry foul that California is the most overtaxed, over-regulated political entity in the history of the universe, perhaps (but not necessarily) including the Soviet Union and Mao's China.

Meanwhile, real people are hurting; according to Alicia Trost, who works for Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, the Governor's budget proposal would cut the average state welfare grant for a family of three in a high-cost county to $585. Twenty years ago it was $694, not adjusted for inflation. Run those numbers through an inflation calculator and California's poorest, most vulnerable families (and their children, who have no say in their parents' financial condition, keep in mind) would be getting less than half of what they got to live on in 1989. Would that every Republican state legislator had to live on $585 per month before they voted on cuts that will literally take food out of the mouths of poor children.

Say it like "Pay-daze," not "Purr-ezz"

Kudos to John A. Perez on being elected Speaker of the State Assembly this morning. He has overcome a lot of challenges on his way to this post, although I suspect being related to powerful Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa hasn't hurt much. The state political media is making a big to-do about Perez's being the first openly gay Speaker in history. It's even been suggested by some that his sexuality was what prevented Perez from being elected by a unanimous vote.

(The Republicans rarely vote against the Democratic nominee for Speaker these days, because of their essentially permanent minority status; but this morning, pearl-necklace-attired Assemblymember Audra Strickland nominated her party's leader Sam Blakeslee for the top post. He lost on a completely unsurprising party-line vote of 48 to 26.)

For all the media attention it's getting, however, I doubt Perez's sexual orientation will have any substantive effect on public policy during the five or so years he might potentially serve. For one thing, the Legislature has already done about all it can do for gay rights; last year's Senate Bill 54, by Mark Leno (D-San Francisco), is more likely than not the most substantial piece of gay-rights legislation we're likely to see debated under the Dome for a long time. Besides, with center-left Democrats commanding a solid majority in both the Assembly and Senate, almost any LGBT equal-rights bill is certain to pass, no matter who is Speaker.

A more significant development to watch will be whether or not Perez serves the full five years he is constitutionally eligible to serve as Speaker (provided, of course, that he is re-elected to his Assembly seat in 2010 and 2012), and if so, what impact he has on the institution and the legislation that comes out of it. Most Speakers in the post-term limits era (aka the post-Willie Brown era) have served pretty short terms. Antonio Villaraigosa and Bob Hertzberg, two of the more memorable holders of the office in recent memory, each served a shade over two years; most of the others haven't even made it that far.

Fabian Nunez, probably the most powerful and influential Speaker since Brown, served for a little over four years, and the jury is still out on whether or not he had any long-term influence on public policy or state politics. Sure, the state's most significant piece of environmental legislation so far this century, the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, technically bears Nunez's name in the bill title; but it's pretty well known that Assemblymember (now Senator) Fran Pavley was the lead negotiator on the bill, along with representatives of the Schwarzenegger administration. And Nunez's mild healthcare reform proposal of 2007 was vetoed by the Republican Governor because it didn't provide enough health coverage.

So maybe there isn't much power to the Speakership, but if there is, I wish Perez the best of luck in using it. And even if there isn't, think of all the great jokes Capitol insiders can throw around: "So a gay Latino from Los Angeles and a bodybuilding action-movie star from Austria walk into a bar..."

A quick note on the homophobia thing: Like I mentioned briefly earlier, there's been some speculation that the reason Republicans didn't symbolically line up and vote for Perez like they have for every Democratic Speaker in the last decade has something to do with Perez's being openly gay. For my part, I really doubt it; I just think that, coming out of the hyper-partisan year that was 2009, and heading into what looks like an even nastier, more divisive election year, the Reps felt the need to assert themselves. Good for them. And who knows? Maybe they'll one day be able to nominate a candidate for Speaker who has a chance of winning.

My inaugural post and Schwarzenegger's last year

The Governor of California, who is still Arnold Schwarzenegger (no, this hasn’t all been a dream), delivered his final State of the State address today. My first impression was that the man really is an excellent public speaker – whatever you may think of his politics, his intellect, or his ability to govern a nation-state of 39 million people, any politician alive would be jealous of Arnold’s ability to deliver a speech and connect with an audience. (This owes a lot, no doubt, to his training as an actor; our last actor-governor, Ronald Reagan, turns out to have been a hell of a speechmaker also, even if that’s just about the only thing he was good at.)

Having said that, though, I’d like to focus on one of the more off-putting elements of the speech – the Governator’s wrongheaded attack on the healthcare reform proposals currently being debated by the Democrats in Congress. (I say “debated by the Democrats” because the Republicans have clearly given up on actually debating the merits of the proposal, and at this point are simply trying to obstruct it.) You know, the one that’s about to pass and make it to the president’s desk and get signed into law, probably sometime in the next month or so.

Why is Arnold even wasting his breath on this? He calls the bill “a trough of bribes, deals and loopholes,” and insists that California’s congressional delegation either vote against the bill or fight to load it up with pork and “sweetheart deals” for California just like Ben Nelson did for Nebraska. News flash, Governor: all Democrats representing California in Congress (including our two Senators) are pretty certain to vote for the final healthcare bill, whatever it looks like; all Republicans are certain to vote against it, no matter what. Those “sweetheart deals” you’re railing against were put in there to guarantee the votes of red-state senators like Nelson and Mary Landrieu, who have to go home to constituencies where less than four out of every 10 voters went for Obama in 2008 and explain their vote.

Neither Barbara Boxer nor Dianne Feinstein would be able to secure similar perks for California because neither of them has the political capital to hold their vote on this bill hostage until they get what they want, like red-state Dems do. Boxer, Feinstein, and most of our House Democrats (especially Speaker Pelosi) all have a vested interest in this bill, their president, and their party succeeding; Ben Nelson doesn’t, really. He just has an interest in Ben Nelson succeeding.

Having said all of that, the Governor was absolutely right to insist that, if the bill will place new mandates on California (or any other state, for that matter), the federal government should fully fund those mandates. And if Boxer, Feinstein, or Pelosi fail to fight for even that much, then none of them is worthy of representing California in Washington.

I look forward to writing more about the healthcare bill later, particularly about how it affects California…