Things You Don't Talk About in Polite Company

The key to the campaign is this paragraph: "The conservative wing of the California GOP has been grumbling that Schwarzenegger does not share many of their core values. The action star supports, for example, more gun control and abortion rights."

I am ever a fan of divide and conquer strategies. The Democratic leadership, I suspect, have done as well as they could in this campaign. By sticking to the line that they were placing their bets on defeating the recall, they encouraged every fool with a Napoleon complex to throw his or her hat in the ring, at least those right of center. Then, once it became clear that the recall might not be defeated, they put in their chosen candidate with a mostly clear left field, blocked only by a Greenie weenie and left-populist nutjob Arianna Huffington.

Well, I'd like to think the California Democratic Party is thinking about such things. The Democrats in general have problems with long-term strategy and hopefully, this effort, if successful, will be a harbinger of 2004.

So what to do? Obviously, one must find a way to push the social issues that cause cultural conservatives to furrow at the brow and protest at the ballot box. I haven't bothered to see where McClintock, Simon, and Ueberroth stand, but I have to believe that at least one of that troika appeals to the Christian Right. Hopefully, that voter bloc will coalesce betwen one man who is not Arnold S.

Of course, there are even longer-term strategies one may employ. If one believes that the California quagmire was inevitable and iis unfixable in the short-term and can only get worse, it might do wonders for California Democrats if a Republican comes in and mucks things up even more.