Thoughts on the California Primary Election

Too tired to say much, but before the week passes I'll just observe a few things:

1) Although I voted for Westly, I am perfectly happy to see Angelides win. I'm told he gives a helluva barnburner on the stump and as the more progressive choice if he can pull it off against Schwarzenegger, that'll be magnificent. Trouble is Ah-nold has done a good job repositioning himself since last year. Insider consensus has it that the only choice for Angelides is for him to try to paint a giant W on our superhero Guvna's chest--tough to do unless it is just, as one pundit put it, a democratic year in a democratic state.

2) It was surprising, but gratifying, that Debra Bowen won the democratic primary for Secretary of State by a huge margin--she would be a wonderful SS. Now she needs to run against Republican Bruce McPherson who is also generally perceived to be even-handed and honest prior to being appointed to Secretary of State. There are rumblings of dark dealings by McPherson; Debra will probably need to go negative on Bruce to win.

3) For the few of my readers who care, it looks like the chamber of commerce picked up business Democrats in 3 or 4 state Senate primaries and lost to progressives in 3 or 4 Assembly primaries. Assuming most of the seats don't change parties in the general, the Assembly and the Senate are somewhat equalized with a split between more progressive and more business-oriented democrats in power.

3 Snouts Up for An Inconvenient Truth

(:)(:)(:) for An Inconvenient Truth better known as "that Al Gore global warming movie."

Despite the lack of a 4th snout, this is a must see. The movie is basically a high tech version of Al Gore's internationally shown slide show on global warming interspersed with learning more about Gore's life and why he cares so much about this issue.

At first Gore's droning southern baritone has the usual soporific effect, but after a while it kind of mesmerizes you so that you get drawn into the narrative and grasp, in a way you never have before, the threat to our survival in this lifetime that global warming promises.

Highlights for me were Gore's wry humor and changing body shape (the dude gives Oprah a run from her honey) along with a very real sense of urgency that we all take this problem seriously. For some reason I was fascinated by the very fact of Gore's choosing to show this slide show painstakingly all over the world--truly deciding to pursue one thing with excellence so as to make a difference.

Don't skip the imaginative and inspiring ending credits and music.

It WAS a booth BTW

A number of people have asked if I was REALLY in a booth a week before election day. The answer is yes. And no, not a booth at Denny's, or a fair. A real elections booth at the County Board of Elections.

Of course, there was no reason I needed to darken my absentee ovals in the confines of the booth--I could just have easily sat on one of their couches. But then I couldn't have said referenced the booth...

Weintraub--right and wrong

I'm grateful to have my last post be referenced by Dan Weintraub in his Insider blog today, although it makes me nervous if it means that he agrees with my reasoning--Dan and I don't usually agree.

In particular, I thought he missed the boat in a recent column of his. Although he properly decried the amount of special interest money in the governor's race, I think he was wrong to reject public financing of elections as a likely way out of this morass of corruption and greed.

True, getting clean money into politics would not be a panacea--but the real evidence from 2 full publicly-financed elections cycles in Maine and Arizona suggests strongly that having a clean mechanism for running for office makes a difference. More average people run for office and win. More people register to vote and vote.

And yes, business as usual continues: public officials still vote with the people who financed their elections.

The difference? With public financing it's the voters who financed the elections. Visit www.caclean.org to find out more about how you can help pass clean money legislation in California.