California dreamin'

Guest post by J.S. Norquay

J.S. Norquay, which may or may not be his or her real name, is a former midwesterner, documentary filmmaker, and academic who now toils deep inside a large public sector institution in eastern Canada.

California has the third highest unemployment rate in the United States at 12% (Nevada and Michigan are higher). So why did the Republicans' red wave not make it to the Golden State? Barbara Boxer and Jerry Brown won big while the Democrats lost just a single House incumbent. The answer should be considered encouraging for Democrats – it was the Latino vote and those of other minorities. As Nate Silver pointed out, the pollsters underestimated the Latino vote in places like California, Nevada, and Colorado. This explains why Harry Reid was behind in the published polls but won comfortably.

One can account for Reid's and Colorado Senator Michael Bennett's victories in part by the fact that they faced Tea Party fruit cakes like Sharon Angle and Ken Buck. But demographic trends suggest California could be the future of America, a place where minorities will play an increasingly important political role, particularly Latinos.

The exit polls from California report that the electorate on Tuesday was 62% white and 38% minority (22 points of which were Latino) compared to a 78-22 ratio nationally. Like elsewhere, California whites voted Republican -- for Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman. (The poll is not broken down by age and race, but it seems likely that a majority of whites aged 18 to 29 voted for both Boxer and Brown).

And the Republican strategic approach to the election didn't matter. As the L.A. Times noted:

California Republicans had multiple reasons for head-shaking on Wednesday. For decades, the state party has squabbled over whether success would come more easily to candidates running as conservatives or those who presented a more moderate face to the state's sizeable bloc of independent, centrist voters. This year they tried both. Senate candidate Carly Fiorina ran a firmly conservative race and Whitman took a more moderate road.

The problem for Latinos, simply put, is Republican attitudes on immigration as reflected in Fiorina's support for Arizona's new anti-immigrant law (Whitman was opposed). Three quarters of California Latinos have an unfavourable view of Republicans. And their share of California's population continues to grow.

California endorsed the state's efforts to curb climate change by rejecting a proposition aimed at rolling them back. In California, Obama's favorability ratings remain strong. Ideologically, the Democrats should be listening to Californians, not trying to make nice with Republicans east of the Sierra Nevadas.

Back here in the east, all the leaves are gone and the sky is gray.

Just how desperate is Meg Whitman?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Well behind in the polls in her California gubernatorial race against Jerry Brown, desperate enough to pull what my friend Joe Gandelman, a Californian, called a "Hail Meg."

Apparently trying to stir up votes on the racist, nativist right, she sunk into the gutter and called for her former housekeeper, revealed during the campaign to be an illegal immigrant, to be deported.

Here's Joe's take, and I have to agree:

In what can only be seen now as a last minute high-stakes gamble, Meg Whitman has now... suddenly... after not calling for it before... called for her former housekeeper to be deported. Note that even The Politico reporter seems a bit aghast at the transparent political motive of this days-before-the-election gambit:

California GOP gubernatorial nominee Meg Whitman says her former housekeeper should be deported.

Whitman — down 10 percentage points in the latest Field Poll after spending over $140 million of her own money on the campaign — said Nicky Diaz should be forced to leave the country for lying about her illegal status.

The following passage also gives you a perfect example of crocodile tears — or, perhaps more accurately, crock tears:

"It breaks my heart, but she should be deported because she forged documents, and she lied about her immigration status," Whitman told Fox News's Greta Van Susteren on Wednesday night.

"And it breaks my heart," she added. "Gloria Allred pulled off a political stunt. And you know what? On November 3rd, no one's going to care about Nicky Diaz. But the law is the law, and we live in the rule of law. It's important." 

Whitman has previously declined to say whether she thinks Diaz should remain in the country after Diaz publicly accused the former eBay CEO earlier this month of knowingly employing her despite her illegal status. 

But now — just coincidentally, mind you... the timing of the election a few days has nothing to do with it... the fact that she was booed at a forum when she refused to go along with Jerry Brown in agreeing to Matt Lauer's call for the two rivals to pull negative ads had nothing to do with it... the fact that the big buck ads she spent have not really advanced her cause and her numbers have been going down have nothing to do with it — she has called for her housekeeper to be kicked out of the country.

It'll be interesting to see if this will improve her polls. But even the most conservative voters in California may be turned off by a move as seemingly transparently, cravenly political as this one.

Who knows? Maybe conservatives will like this. They're not big on Mexicans, after all.

I would just note that this isn't just a "transparently, cravenly political" move, it's what Republicans do. When the going gets tough, they scapegoat, lashing out at the Other. Remember Bush I's Willie Horton ad in 1988? Or how about what Sharron Angle is doing in Nevada this year, targeting Mexicans as a bunch of murderers and rapists intent on invading white America?

What Whitman is doing -- to someone who was close to her for years -- may be less ugly but is certainly no less despicable, given how personal it is. She's actually trying to destroy this person's life, putting her political ambition above all else, pandering to the far right (the mainstream of the GOP) to try to claw back at all cost into a race she's losing.

How very desperate. And how very Republican of her.

Meg Whitman, the blame game, and the accountability gap

By Michael J.W. Stickings

So, wait, let me get this straight... California Republican gubernatorial candidate (and former eBay CEO) Meg Whitman:

• hires an undocumented (i.e., "illegal") immigrant as her housekeeper;
• keeps the woman, Nicky Diaz Santillan, on her payroll for nine years;
• claims, now that she's forced to deal with this in the middle of the campaign, that she didn't know anything about it; and
• now blames her opponent, Democrat Jerry Brown, and his "surrogates" for putting the woman at risk?

Classy.

The real tragedy here is Nicky. After Nov. 2, no one's going to be watching out for Nicky Diaz. And Jerry, you know you should be ashamed, you and your surrogates. put her deportation at risk. You put it out there and you should be ashamed for sacrificing Nicky Diaz on the altar of your political ambitions,

Whitman said yesterday at her debate with Brown in Fresno. Which is nonsense, of course. It's not Brown's fault that Whitman hired an undocumented immigrant and that the story is now dominating the race -- and it's not his fault what happens to Diaz. It may be a tragedy if she is deported, but the real tragedy is the use and abuse of undocumented immigrants by people like Whitman.

Besides, aren't Republicans supposed to be tough on illegal immigration? Or is it all okay when they use and abuse illegals in secret? To Whitman, perhaps, the real tragedy is that the story got out.

All of which is to say that Brown is right:

Don't run for governor if you can't stand up on your own two feet and say, "Hey I made a mistake." You have blamed her, blamed me, blamed the left, blamed the unions. But you don't take accountability.

It's everyone else's fault but her own, it seems.

There are many good reasons why she isn't right for Sacramento, but this whole episode shows just what sort of person she is.

I wonder what the opening bid on eBay would be on Whitman's conscience.

Good news in California polling

By Michael J.W. Stickings

A new L.A. Times/USC poll finds:

-- Democrat Barbara Boxer leading Republican Carly Fiorina 51-43; and

-- Democrat Jerry Brown leading Republican Meg Whitman 49-44.

What's going on? California is a left-leaning state, obviously, but:

Republicans Whitman and Fiorina have yet to convince crucial groups of voters that their businesswoman backgrounds will translate into government success...

Both Republicans were hamstrung by voters' negative impressions of them -- particularly Whitman, who has poured a national record $119 million of her own money into an advertising-heavy campaign yet has seen her unpopularity rise, the survey showed.

But it's far from over:

Still, in this year of political tumult, the Democrats were facing stiff challenges too. As they do nationally, Republicans in California held a fierce edge in enthusiasm among likely voters. The poll defined likely voters based both on past voting history and enthusiasm about voting this year -- a measure that projects an election turnout that is more heavily Republican than is typical in California. If the Democratic turnout ends up being even more sharply depressed, that would put the party's candidates at risk.

It's the word that defines 2010: enthusiasm. Republicans have it, not least because of the whole Tea Party "movement," Democrats not so much, not least because of how Obama and Congressional Democrats have conducted themselves, which is, for the most part, less than admirably.

As I have argued before, however, I expect the enthusiasm gap to narrow now that the election campaign has begun in earnest. Republicans will still do well, as history tells us that the party in power loses seats in the first midterms, and they will likely make significant gains at both the federal and state levels, but there's no reason two strong Democratic candidates -- Boxer, the incumbent, and Brown, an ex-governor and currently the attorney general -- shouldn't prevail. Whitman in particular is a formidable opponent, but these are winnable races.

And these are very encouraging poll numbers.