[Cross-posted at The Left Coaster.]
11/08/14 0535.22 PST
San Jose, California
It is an old tale, utterly predictable in result with nothing particularly exciting in the product, but the California Democratic Party rout for election 2014 still is a legitimate story nonetheless and should make weary liberals and progressives feel better in these terrible times.
California is the greatest republic the world has ever seen, or will ever see. Democrats swept every statewide office and the Governor got his puny, tentative initiatives passed. As the federal government becomes more irrelevant every hour States will inevitably fill the vacuum to some extent, and there is great hope and promise the California republic can accomplish good liberal goals in the future, they’ll have to be accomplished somehow.
Certainly not in the strange, fearful leadership the State just elected for Governor, Jerry Brown joining a very elite and limited club of men elected to four governor terms, and not concurrent terms, either. Still, he easily could have passed 2 bills through the California legislature a year ago to build water infrastructure and create a reserve fund, but for reasons I haven’t heard an explanation for chose to offer them as public initiatives here in 2014.
It’s simply strange political behavior, usually a politician passes legislative accomplishments and then says here, elect me, this is what we’ve done. Yet Jerry Brown says we have to fix this, wait a year and take the leadership risk it will be rejected.
Those 2 bills passed, and in another strange twist to this election they became the totality of his campaign, for the blasted and hopeless California Republican Party offered an absolute nobody of a governor candidate no one can remember the name of even now, I truly can’t. Jerry Brown never even had to wage anything like a real campaign, just plug those 2 initiatives while looking like a Governor and presto, the brass ring is yours. Wow.
Yet those 2 laws were a semi-accomplishment of the first term, and since the campaign was nothing there was no sell of anything for the second term, what happens now?
No one gives a damn about your train except a few contractors, Jerry. California built 11 prisons and 1 university in the last 25 years, all of our families urgently need a solution to that. K-12 still needs a lot more funding, and all of our Universities desperately need to be public again.
The alternative energy initiatives started by Governor Schwarzenegger need vastly more attention as the planet warms.
We’re still in a total employment catastrophe, millions of our people are desperately poor from underemployment and lousy wages.
The pattern here, of course, is that all of these urgent problems require a liberal solution, there’s absolutely no way around it. I don’t know in totality, of course, but it appears Governor Brown is petrified of doing anything to earn a tax-and-spend liberal label, he will not do it, if he feels it’s necessary he’ll wait for an election to make the people take responsibility for it.
[sigh] Makes for a boring non-story for the second term, another reason the California rout story gets so little attention, Democrats have everything in place to accomplish exciting liberal things with a Governor that wants to build a train. Got any Ebola with that?
The greatest near-term hope for the republic is, strangely enough, cannabis legalization in 2016. So much will be accomplished: the vastly stupid authoritarian model of horribly punishing someone for something allegedly harmful will be abandoned.
The terribly hypocrisy of legal alcohol and nicotine will finally be gone. The awful responsibility for Mexican violence will be lessened, police resources will be used elsewhere, money will come into state and municipal coffers, and oh my god, American citizens will fee free.
Sneer the stoners are finally getting what they want all you wish, so much more is at stake here, not the least of which is the fossilized, callous, blinkered politics of the California Democratic Party, if you don’t come through this time on cannabis legalization you deserve all the national scorn you now get as lily-livered, scared, weenie do-nothing political wannabees who regularly lose to lunatics.
What else, pray tell, can Californians look forward to as liberals in the next 4 years? That train?
Some day, in some way, the California Republic will be blessed with political leadership insistent in solving our problems with liberal solutions. We’re not remotely there yet. Until we are, California Democratic Party leadership will continue to be a boring non-story of what-might-have-been.