It has reached the point where I feel a great need to speak up on the recall, even if only for my own sake. I realize that this is pretty much an 11th-hour treatise, but then I suspect that most people who are likely to read this (and actually living in California) have already made up their minds. Heck, at least one that I know of has already voted by absentee ballot.

(Behind a cut, since I expect this to be pretty long...)

If I didn't live in California, I'd be rooting for Schwarzenegger just so that I could make jokes about it. But I do live here, and it just isn't as funny when you're looking at your home state being run by an action film star with no appreciable political experience. I don't count rubbing elbows and smoking cigars with politicos– that's not experience, that's brown-nosing. He has no experience in this work. He's relying on advisors for everything, and most of those advisors can be traced back to the Wilson govenorship. Just in case you've forgotten, Pete Wilson was the governor who actually signed the energy de-regulation into law. You know, that legislation that Davis is being vilified over. And the promises he is making are empty, with nothing to back them up. He's promised to roll back the VLA fees that Davis signed into law. I'm sure the higher fees are very discouraging to the sort of people who buy Hummers. But that's about $8 billion in revenues that will be lost, and he hasn't offered any explanantions of where he plans to make up the difference. Remember, we're already about $32 billion in the hole, give or take a few tens of millions. Hey, I'm not looking forward to paying higher fees, either. And I'll probably buy a new car in the next 12 months, so I'm not just blowing this off. But I don't have a solution to offer, either. So when I choose a car, I'll keep the fees in mind. Fees on the Humvee too high? Bummer, dude. Consider something more appropriate for in-city driving. If I see fewer SUV's that haven't got a spec of off-road dust on them, all the better.

When this all started, it was about Gray Davis and his unfit leadership of the state. At least, that's what Daryl Issa told us, right up to and past the point where he dropped out of the race entirely. But the leading Republican with experience is being pressured to drop out of the race. By his own party. So, they are more interested in getting a Republican into office than actually putting someone capable there. Why else push Schwarzenegger, who has no hands-on experience? This smacks of a desire to get anyone who isn't Gray Davis into office. There are millions of people in California who aren't Gray Davis. So I feel that there should be more to the qualifications than that.

In a San Jose appearance, Schwarzenegger's wife (Maria Shriver) described him as an "example of a great public servant". How so? Making movies? Or is she referring to the physical-fitness proposition he backed in the last election? The one that would commit the state to allocating $400 million for extracurrilar activities, when it can't afford to pay teachers' salaries? I am very worried about where the budget is going to get cut, should he take office. I also worry about environmental issues– he was the first civilian owner of a Humvee, which makes for an interesting contrast with the fact that California leads the rest of the country in regulations on vehicle emissions. I don't see Schwarzenegger being very sympathetic to environmental issues. I'll concede that he's a borderline liberal on a lot of other subjects, such as a woman's right to choose. This of course just underscores how much the Republicans are committed to getting ahold of the office at all costs; where is their outrage at his pro-choice stance? The one person I know of who's voted for Arnold already (by absentee ballot) is pro-life. I know this because he recently made a catty remark about how the Bush administration has taken the funding that is being withheld from worldwide family-planning agencies (those that use their own [non-U.S.] funds to provide abortion services) and given it instead to agencies that meet their more conservative criteria. Or in his words, "hm, how to put this delicately– organizations which don't kill babies" (ref. memorandum of September 30, 2003, note that it is the United Nations Population Fund that's being cut off). Now, this is one of the more intelligent people I know. But he didn't vote for McClintock, who is pro-life. And from nearly the start of Arnold's campaign, he's been pushing for him rather than pushing for him to step aside and endorse McClintock. And don't say that it's because Arnold can win where Tom can't. If Schwarzenegger used his visibility and public support to stump for McClintock, I suspect that he could have vaulted him to the same place in the polls that Arnold is currently.

The last issue I am taking umbridge with are the recent allegations of impropriety being levelled against him. They've denied most of them, but not all. And they've tried to explain it away as the way things were done "back then". Hey, "back then" they had the "casting couch" (some would say they still do), but it isn't any less exploitive, is it? Republicans have been fond of pointing out that so many people angry with Schwarzenegger for this were supporting Clinton when he was being accused of inappropriate relations with Monica Lewinsky. Yes, we are. But the people defending Schwarzenegger now are the same ones who wanted Clinton out of office back then, for similar or lesser offences. Lesser? Yes, lesser. Whatever else there is or was about the Lewinsky affair, it was consensual. And the number of accusations against Clinton for unwanted fondling or similar are a lot fewer in number. And he was in office for 8 years. Plenty of time to dredge up accusors, as the GOP are accusing the Davis camp (and Democrats in general) of having done in just the last month or so. Does this mean that Democrats are that much better at sleuthing and dredging things up, or does it mean that there was already more there to be found in the first place? My money's on the latter. The Schwarzenegger staff questions the timing of these accusations, calling them 11th-hour in nature, but this campaign is only a few months old after all. I think that it is safe to assume that at least a few of the accusations are solid. Maybe more, but I'll concede that most of them are hard to support fully, due to either or both of age of complaint or shortage of supporting evidence. But how many have to be true, before we reconsider his suitability? I guess the answer to that depends on whether you consider yourself a Republican or a Democrat.

So, what does all this mean for the Democrats? I'm not especially happy with Davis myself. I think he caved in to the energy interests way too easily. I think that if Bush had not gotten elected in 2000, that we would be seeing a lot more vigorous prosecution of Ken Lay and the others responsible for the artificial energy "crisis" that we suffered through. I think that the mess made by de-regulation was a problem Davis inherited from Pete Wilson, not one he brought on through his own policies. That doesn't excuse the things he has done, like brazenly pandering to special interests. And I have to admit that I don't know as much about Cruz Bustamante as I should, since that is who I will be voting for in the second part of the question. I was going to consider the polls, and then vote for an independant if it looked clear that the GOP would not win, or vote for Cruz if it looked like my vote would be that much more important. My chosen independant was Arianna Huffington, but she dropped out recently. I felt like she was the more well-researched on the issues, at least. I found it very telling that Schwarzenegger was dismissive of her opinions and challenging questions at the one debate he chose to grace with his presence (you may recall– this was the debate where all the questions were scripted beforehand). He tried to cut her off and made jokes at her expense, something he didn't do with the other (male) debaters. I had also considered voting for Georgy Russell at an early point in this race. I had long-since given up simply on practical terms, but apparently she was bent on the concept of "any publicity, even bad, is good publicity" when Arnold was having rallies in the bay area. According to the same friend who's already voted for Schwarzenegger, she was noisily disruptive at the Pleasanton rally, then went on to claim in her weblog that she was attacked for no other reason than being there. She then went on to write up her own third-person account of the incident in the form of a press release. So I'm glad I never really got onto that particular band wagon, or I'd be feeling awfully embarassed for my "candidate" at this point.

All in all, this whole affair has left me more disgusted with politics in general than I've ever felt before, including the Florida fiasco that led to Bush being appointed president by the Supreme Court. I think what really illustrates the ridiculousness of it all is the rest of the line-up: a porn king, a porn star, a washed-up child actor, a washed-up comedian, and at least two candidates who feel that spam is a perfectly acceptable campaign tool. But tomorrow I will make certain to vote, NO on the recall and Bustamante as a back-up plan. I do this because I don't want California to be the Florida of 2004. And I consider that a very real danger if Arnold is in Sacramento.