California Redemption

Returns from the Bay Area Alameda and Santa Clara counties came in late and returned the results back toward sanity last night. The attempt at a corporate takeover via Propositions 16 and 17 failed. 16 was particularly awful and I am enormously relieved it went down. Elite incumbent interests like PG&E shouldn't have the ability to game the system to impose two thirds majority votes on outcomes that threaten their profits by way of mere majority votes purchased with millions of ad dollars in low turnout elections, it's utterly appalling. Anyway, Bay Area progressives saved the entire state of California from that disaster, and the indispensable Courage Campaign did much of the heavy lifting, their every modest dollar outspent by something like a hundred corporate dollars. It is interesting to note that the awful Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina both won their shots by spending sums comparable to those hosed out by PG&E and Mercury Insurance in their failed efforts to win 16 and 17. So, not only did Bay Area progressives fight against the odds and save all of California from a corporatist takeover, but California Republicans did precisely the opposite, voting robotically the way corporate money told them to vote. I'm disappointed that Prop 14 won -- it was a Trojan Horse capitalizing on indiscriminate frustrations with Sacramento and designed to erode progressive power within the state Democratic party. The lawsuits are already starting, and since they are coming from every direction across the spectrum this may go down in the courts anyway -- and had Democratic primaries been contested and turnout higher possibly it would have failed in any case. I'm not even disappointed that Orly Taitz lost -- although I get why some were crossing their fingers that her oily taint would slick every Republican candidate with whackadoodle if only for amusement value, I personally far prefer the lesson being that at least Taitz's flabbergasting level of irresponsible crazy will be rejected even by Republicans at the polls, the clown with guns Governator notwithstanding. California managed to hold the line in the midst of our deep distress. I think the mid-terms will go well for Democrats and so long as Brown doesn't decide to run for the Governor's mansion as a Shock Doctrinaire King of Pain demanding austerity for the vulnerable as The Way Out (that never works and always kills), then things will be looking up for real.