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| Home Front: Politix |
| Is California Irredeemably Blue? |
| 2010-07-19 |
| Newport Beach, Calif.—Carly Fiorina, 55, has been contending with chemotherapy and radiation treatments and reconstructive surgery because of breast cancer, so she is understandably undaunted by the relatively minor challenge of winning a U.S. Senate seat in this state that last elected a freshman Republican senator in 1982, that has not supported a Republican presidential candidate since 1988, and that has not elected a right-to-life candidate in statewide voting since 1998. This race will test the power of the rising Republican wave. Fiorina might surf it from here to Capitol Hill because her opponent, Barbara Boxer, 69, is the Senate’s fiercest liberal, and California is an intensely unhappy laboratory for liberalism—high taxes, opulent entitlements, thick regulations, and subservience to government employees’ unions. During 10 years in Congress, Boxer represented San Francisco suburbs where many residents consider the city’s liberalism too tepid. She is used to having the wind at her back. In 1992, California’s “year of the woman,” she ran for the Senate in tandem with Dianne Feinstein, who won the final two years of the Senate term Pete Wilson left when he became governor. Boxer was reelected in 1998 when California was luxuriating in the tech boom. In 2004 she won when John Kerry was trouncing George W. Bush in the state by 10 points. Now the 28-year Washington veteran seeking a fourth term is running into headwinds. Three years ago, global warming was one of the top issues for Californians. Now it has dropped off the radar in a state with actual, rather than hypothetical, problems. Unemployment is at least 15 percent in 21 of the state’s 58 counties. Of the 13 U.S. metropolitan areas with unemployment that high, 11 are in California, which has lost more than 400,000 jobs since passage of the $862 billion stimulus. Like Barack Obama as he campaigns in what he calls Recovery Summer for more stimulus (because the first did not ignite recovery), Boxer is vexed by the fact that California’s unemployment rate is 2.2 points higher than when stimulus was passed. When she said the stimulus was responsible for 100 jobs at a Los Angeles lithium-battery factory, the owner demurred, saying the stimulus had nothing to do with the jobs. Boxer is stressing Fiorina’s tempestuous tenure as CEO of Hewlett-Packard, the computer company, during which Fiorina sent some jobs abroad. Fiorina’s response is that having coped with the basic fact of globalization—“any job can go anywhere”—she has the experience to create and protect California jobs. Boxer voters may be energized by a November ballot initiative that would legalize marijuana. Fiorina favors and Boxer opposes another ballot measure that would suspend California’s new anti-global-warming taxation and regulation regime until the state’s unemployment rate—currently 12.3 percent—has been no higher than 5.5 percent for four consecutive quarters. California has 308 plants and animals—including a fly—on the endangered-species list. Government-ordered solicitude for one, the delta smelt, has caused water supplies to be curtailed in the Central Valley—the pumping of water somehow menaces this fish. The costs of its safety include dead orchards, fallow acres, and high unemployment, particularly among Latino farm workers. Fiorina’s right-to-life stance may not matter much this year because economic anxieties have largely eclipsed other issues. Besides, it is theoretically impossible to fashion an abortion position significantly more extreme than Boxer’s, which is slightly modified infanticide. She supports “partial birth” abortion—the baby, delivered feet first, is pulled out as far as the neck, then is killed. And when asked during a Senate debate whether the baby has a right to life if it slips entirely out of the birth canal before being killed, she replied that the baby acquires that right when it leaves the hospital: “When you bring your baby home.” Fiorina believes that science—the astonishing clarity of sonograms showing the moving fingers and beating hearts of fetuses; neonatal medicine improving the viability of very premature infants; the increasing abilities of medicine to treat ailing fetuses in utero—is changing Americans’ sensibilities and enlarging the portion of the public that describes itself as pro-life. Polls show the race is quite close. If Fiorina can capture this seat, in 2012 Democrats might, for a change, at least have to spend precious resources to keep its 55 electoral votes. If, however, a candidate like Boxer can survive in a year like this, California really is irredeemably blue. |
| Posted by:GolfBravoUSMC |
| #23 "Is California Irredeemable Pretty much.... :-( |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2010-07-19 21:22 |
| #22 In my opinion California is a closer thing then people are realizing. Meg and Carly are flawed but will win because Boxer and Brown are terrible and the only thing on the ballot to get Democratic turnout this year is the legalize pot measure and potheads are likely to be unreliable and not in enough numbers as a gay rights or pro-choice measure would garner. |
| Posted by: rjschwarz 2010-07-19 21:07 |
| #21 Talk about whistling past the graveyard. California is irredeemable. Whether or not it will for for A republican matters not. |
| Posted by: Mike N. 2010-07-19 20:11 |
| #20 California is not all blue, but the red party seems incapable of finding and supporting true conservative candidates who are articulate and attractive. When the state has a choice between a firm Democrate and a RINO it votes for the honest Democrat. A Ronald Reagan could still get elected in CA if he could get the partying party members and the big business party members to support him the way they do the wimpy RINO's - at least that is my take and what I hear from teh people in my circles. |
| Posted by: Donald McConnell 2010-07-19 20:11 |
| #19 Sorry, time to forget about California and think about the other 56. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2010-07-19 19:42 |
| #18 "Things will only be righted by Prop 7.62" That took me a minute, NS. Would Prop 8.2 right it more? |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2010-07-19 18:39 |
| #17 I lived in Oakland, Fremont and Palo Alto over the last 3 decades. And loved each one. But, ultimately I saw no hope and still don't. I don't know how a middle class family can or will be able to afford to raise a family in LA or SF. That means only rich and poor with each getting more so. The union thugs control government and the tipping point has been reached, in my opinion, with more voters at the government's teat than not. Things will only be righted by Prop 7.62 and I'm too old for out of doors politics. Good luck in the big one. |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2010-07-19 18:36 |
| #16 CA is "Blue"??? D *** NG IT, I SWEAR THE MAMAS-N-PAPAS once verified to America = Amerika that "ALL THE LEAVES ARE BROWN, + THE SKY IS GRAY", + "ON A WINTER'S DAY" too! |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2010-07-19 18:25 |
| #15 Whiskey Mike - I live in Danville (next town west for those not local). Livermore is still a great town that has undergone a gentrification of the downtown area. Still got ranchers and more vinyards (and a fav gun shop of mine). Sadly the rest of the area (SF, LA) is an upholstered cesspool of liberalism. I don't know if CA can be saved, but if not now...when? and if not us...who? We're quickly running out of runway... |
| Posted by: Warthog 2010-07-19 16:07 |
| #14 GolfBravo's video tells it all: the Ghost of CA Past (the older, educated, worldly lady) pandering to the Ghosts of CA Future (illiterate children of illiterate campesinos). If that sounds harsh, consider that per publicly-available STAR test results data, in the CA public schools, "latino" or "hispanic" children fail at a rate of 75-80%, and that this demographic now accounts for HALF of all CA public school students, which share is rising by about 1 percentage point EACH YEAR. This combination of extreme failure and extreme numbers is why various business groups are projecting that CA will, unbelievably, have a shortage of college graduates-- not engineers, not scientists, not well-educated grads but simply college grads overall-- within a decade. Simply criminal. Who imposed this underclass on my state? Why has this been allowed to happen. |
| Posted by: lex 2010-07-19 15:42 |
| #13 |
| Posted by: GolfBravoUSMC 2010-07-19 15:33 |
| #12 Only when we become Greece will we turn purple and just barely. |
| Posted by: Cyber Sarge 2010-07-19 14:51 |
| #11 City has now closed all city government offices, and expects LA to provide them , without much in payment. |
| Posted by: NoMoreBS 2010-07-19 14:47 |
| #10 http://blog.vdare.com/archives/2006/03/21/mexican-petri-dish-located/ California future if present trends continue... |
| Posted by: NoMoreBS 2010-07-19 14:45 |
| #9 I used to work in Livermore. Loved the area, loved the mixture of cattlemen cowboys and vineyard entrepreneurs. Loved the wines. Liked the people. In general though, I disliked the larger cities. I think California as a whole is lost, a sad thing. |
| Posted by: Whiskey Mike 2010-07-19 14:44 |
#8 Government-ordered solicitude for one, the delta smelt, has caused water supplies to be curtailed in the Central Valley—the pumping of water somehow menaces this fish. The costs of its safety include dead orchards, fallow acres, and high unemployment, particularly among Latino farm workers. Just an interesting note. I drove both directions of the San Joaquin Valley this summer via the I-5. All the gov't induced dustbowls (as the signs say) have all been planted in new crops. Huge new grape vineyards have been planted, along with other crops. And the Shasta Lake area's water level is as high as I've ever seen it. Article is slightly behind the times, unless someone's just created a Potemkin village. |
| Posted by: Javins3089 2010-07-19 14:36 |
| #7 Remember the last words of George Armstrong Custer: I never saw so f...ing many Indians in all my life. |
| Posted by: GolfBravoUSMC 2010-07-19 14:12 |
| #6 Fwiw, I have no intention of leaving. I hate what our political class has done to this beautiful and extraordinary place. It is unthinkable that it should be allowed to descend into the status of a POS latin banana republic. Time to stand and fight. Edmund Burke: "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." |
| Posted by: lex 2010-07-19 13:50 |
| #5 As goes NoMoreBS, so goes the rest of CA's non-unionized middle class. Really, unless you're a techie employed in Silicon Valley or the biotech precincts of So. SF and San Diego, or a creative or a suit working in the entertainment industry, there's no good reason to stay in California. CA is rapidly beooming a latin-style oligarchy: huge state with massive and powerful public unions combined with a few anti-growth gazillionaires at the top of the pyramid and a massive and soon-to-explode (when Congress takes up and passes amnesty legislation aka "immigration reform" after Nov 3) illiterate Mexican underclass on the bottom. And hundreds of thousands of middle class families will get the h*ll out of CA as soon as their property values get above water again. CA's social structure used to resemble a diamond: small at the top and bottom, huge in the middle. It's now becoming an hourglass. If the GOP doesn't forcefully and quickly halt this trend-- and that means hunting, killing, eating the Amnesty beast, asap-- then CA will resemble Mexico or Brazil in due course. Can't blame the Dems alone for that. |
| Posted by: lex 2010-07-19 13:47 |
| #4 SF Bay area and the L.A. basin outweigh the rest of the state, and gerrymandering has made the district structure impossible to overcome. Yes it is, despite the possibility of a relapse to sanity this year against Boxer and Brown. Long term, CA is circling the drain, and it's time to bail out. Unfortunately, my plans have been delayed by this pesky economic thing and 30% property devaluation. |
| Posted by: NoMoreBS 2010-07-19 13:09 |
| #3 California is not irredeemably blue but its vote is irredeemably compromised, which works out as the same thing. Of course, the longer this drags on the more sane people will move out. Losing those votes will permanently disadvantage the GOP in California. |
| Posted by: Iblis 2010-07-19 12:19 |
| #2 Are you meaning "Blue" as in hands around your neck until your face turns that color? In that meaning of the word YES |
| Posted by: Redneck Jim 2010-07-19 11:47 |
| #1 No. Come the collapse, the liberal half-with that are employed as telephone sanitizers and such will all starve. Farmers with guns, not so much. |
| Posted by: mojo 2010-07-19 11:06 |