"The New Republic" is running an online debate on California politics. If the Dems are seen as obstructing reform, they are in trouble, IMO.
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Joel Kotkin
10.15.03, 5:30 p.m.
Josh,
You don't have to be a deluded Tombot (McClintock) supporter to believe that something important is happening in California. But you have to also understand what is not happening.
First, California is not the leading edge of a new Reaganesque wave. Those days are over, except in the fevered mind of the far right. California is too diverse, too socially liberal, and has far too large a welfare state to move much to the right of the American center. Second, the state has not voted to eviscerate the Democratic Party, only to force it back to a reasonable position. The opportunity to keep California Democratic is still there, but only if the legislative party comes to its senses.
But there's the rub. The legislative Democrats are pretty far gone. At a meeting yesterday, I spoke with a group of small factory owners in Vernon, an industrial district just outside downtown Los Angeles. They mentioned a meeting with their local state assemblyman, one of the growing band of Chicano labor activists in the legislature. Though they explained to this representative how rising workers' compensation costs were forcing them to trim their payroll, the representative simply refused to commit to reform. The reason, he admitted, lay in the support for the system from the trial lawyers, for whom workers' compensation claims are a primary source of legal fees.
So here's the situation: California maintains a system of workers' compensation that is among the most expensive for employers--and among the least remunerative for laborers--in the nation. The primary beneficiaries are lawyers and medical mills, who contribute heavily to the Democrats. So representatives like the one mentioned above oppose reform even if it means jobs--predominately Latino--are lost.
This is the kind of political logic that ruled until October 7. Employers got screwed, workers lost their jobs, and the Legislature refused to reform. The same disregard for business and economics ran through the entire party leadership. Where once "business Democrats" like former Speaker Robert Hertzberg had a voice, the party became totally dominated by labor hacks, trial-lawyer pawns, and croupiers for the Indian gaming interests. Moderate Democrats, in a series of primary races over the past four years, have been all but banned from the party.
Yet the moderates, unlike the "progressives" and their many media supporters, at least had a sense of reality. Political journalists must not be traveling to places like Vernon, or any of the places ordinary Californians work. They don't see people whose jobs are on the line, about to be shipped in Texas, Nevada, Arizona, or China. But if they did, they'd understand why 40 percent of union members, and a roughly similar percentage of Latinos, voted Republican in the governor's race.
These voters didn't become Republicans in this election; they chose to be non-Democrats. It was a negative vote against radical policies--economic, social, and cultural--that offend middle- and working-class sensibilities. In 2002, the opposition to Davis and the Democrats grew significantly; this year, due to a recession and growing assertiveness by the left, it achieved a solid majority.
As to what happens next, a lot depends on Arnold--and on the Democrats. Right now Schwarzenegger seems to be making the right moves. He has added many Democrats, including Hertzberg and San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, to his transition team. Hertzberg, who opposed the recall, and former Governor Wilson are off tonight to meet with national political and business leaders, in order to explain the new realities. This alliance has great potential to resuscitate California's image and economic prospects.
Arnold has an opportunity to make real changes and, in the process, shift the political dynamic in California. Business owners, from large to small, are energized and ready to engage the process. Most are pragmatic, as opposed to doctrinaire, in their political views. Few supported McClintock in the first place and could care less about the right-wing social agenda.
With business behind him, including a large and growing minority entrepreneurial class, the new governor can build a new kind of base for the Republican Party. Its central principle would be economic self-interest and growth. Such a party could, like Mayor Richard Riordan successfully did in his 1997 reelection race, reach out to private sector unions, who also have an interest in economic growth. Even some public unions, seeing their interest in fiscal stability, might get on board.
Two things can stop this effort. The Republican right could start an intifada in the legislature and stop any Arnold-crafted compromises. They could insist on running losing candidates in districts that are not safely Republican. In the process, the Republicans could end up feuding with the new governor and weakening him over time.
The other would be a rebirth of political intelligence--and subtlety--among the Democrats. They could appeal to business and middle class people on economic issues, knowing that the hard-left ideologues would have nowhere to go. In Democratic districts, pro-business Democrats could take on the left-wing labor hacks, social engineers, and trial-lawyer stooges who now predominate.
This would unsettle Republicans mightily. California is still a Democratic state, and only needs some signs of a return to sanity for it to remain as such. But finding sanity among Sacramento's Democrats these days may take more than a modern day Diogenes.
Josh Benson
10.15.03, 11:00 a.m.
Joel,
Last year, in the middle of the 2002 campaign, I found myself somewhat improbably on a radio show with Tom McClintock, who was then running for state controller. "Tom," I said, "you're a self-described 'caveman conservative,' your own party leadership hates you, and you're on the wrong side of almost every social issue confronting California. What makes you think you can win in November?" He replied with a buoyant optimism perfectly apropos his subject: "That's what they said about Ronald Reagan in 1966. And we know how that turned out." And we know how it turned out for McClintock, too: A few weeks later, he, along with every statewide Republican on the ballot, got creamed. Republicans have been predicting the Restoration for a while, to little apparent effect.
I got to thinking about my radio debut when I read your discussion of the transformation of the California electorate. You skim over a decade's worth of election results--and, by my count, make use of six qualifiers--to suggest Republicans were never really out of the picture in the state. They were. In 1996, Democrats retook the state Assembly in a landslide and added to their majority in the state Senate and the state congressional delegation. In 1998, Gray Davis destroyed then-Attorney General Dan Lungren by 20 points and Democrats took five of seven statewide offices. In 2000, yet more legislative gains and a 1.2 million-vote Gore victory. In 2002 ... well, as McClintock would put it, we know how that turned out. But suddenly Arnold wins an improbable, ahistorical recall and the Republicans are back and hipper than ever? Call me when they win a real election.
I think the problem here may reside in all these geology references: Arnold's "earthquake," the "shifting of the tectonic plates" in favor of the GOP. The more apt natural disaster analogy is the hurricane--like the one I thought would destroy my Dupont Circle apartment a few weeks ago. The storm was a once-in-a-lifetime confluence of factors that blew through the capital but, once gone, and after a bit of clean-up, left things looking pretty much the same. So too with Schwarzenegger.
Here's the real demographic and political transformation that's occurred in recent years (and may arrive soon elsewhere): Democratic leaders forced the party to the center and convinced a traditionally moderate electorate that Democrats aren't soft on crime, careless with money, or determined to raise taxes. Urban professionals and suburban fiscal moderates--especially those in traditionally wealthy Republican enclaves, such as Santa Clara, Santa Barbara, and San Diego--gravitated toward the party. It took hard work (practically every commercial Gray Davis ran in 1998 featured him talking about his service in 'Nam or his fiscal austerity or his determination to jail more poor kids), but in the end, Democrats shed the worst albatrosses hanging around their necks. And they won elections.
To be sure, a good number of these recently-won swing voters deserted Davis last Tuesday. But so did everyone else, including the staunchest liberals. In fact, these scorned lefties sealed Davis's fate. But there is no evidence that the more crucial suburban voters deserted the Democratic Party. You said yourself that if Dianne Feinstein had been on the ballot, she would have "creamed" Schwarzenegger. I'm not sure how one can both acknowledge the potential ease of a Democratic victory and suggest California is undergoing some momentous shift to the right at the same time. And what's all this about most Californians not being liberal "by national standards"? Find me a state south of the Mason-Dixon line with California's support for gay rights, gun control, conservation, secular schools, and labor unions.
Indeed, I'd submit that the interesting question is not whether the Republicans can make up a few legislative seats in 2006. It's whether the Democrats can unite warring factions under the centrist flag they flew so effectively in the 1990s. The outcome of that battle will have policy ramifications far and above what Schwarzenegger can accomplish in three years as the rare Republican in Sacramento. After all, Democrats are still in control of both houses of the legislature, the offices of attorney general, lieutenant governor, treasurer, and controller, the Board of Equalization, the city hall of every major California city, and practically every panel and commission in the state.
California Democrats have a choice between limping along as a conflicted majority party and trying to cement a bold new centrism that leads the national party back to prominence. They're certainly capable of the latter. But there remains a far-left contingent still hampering the party. You correctly chastise some of these California liberals, such as State Senator John Vasconcellos, for tactlessness toward Arnold in the wake of the election. But even worse is the fact that Vasconcellos can't show a little civility to members of his own party. Responding Monday to Gray Davis's veto of his bill to ease access to hypodermic needles, Vasconcellos said, "People will die and the people who die can thank Gray Davis." There's Democratic unity for you.
Vasconcellos's temper tantrum aptly illustrates the liberal anger that drove Gray Davis out of office and has lifted Howard Dean to the top of the Democratic primary field. In California, as elsewhere, liberals are angry at the perceived rightward drift of the Democratic Party. They're tired of compromise, sick of moderate politics--even if it won them power in the '90s. They want their party to stand for untrammeled liberalism once again.
But that liberalism is dead, and California Democrats must find an alternative after the hiccup of the recall. The extent to which they do so will help define politics for the rest of the country. It's still true that as California goes, so goes the nation--not with more recalls, but with a resolution to the liberal-centrist divide choking the party. That's the real meaning of the recall--no matter how snarky the Easterners want to be about it. Indeed, give the state a few years to rebuild its economy and find some real Democratic leaders, and then, to paraphrase one former resident, you won't have California to kick around anymore.
Josh
Tuesday
Joel Kotkin
10.14.03, 5:00 p.m.
Josh,
The recent election in California may not have been an 8 on the Richter scale--a shaking good enough to shatter half the houses in Santa Monica or San Francisco--but it was a good solid 6. It shook things up, and California politics needed it.
The overthrow of Gray Davis was not simply a case of sour grapes over a weak economy or a rejection of his moderate policies by leftish Democrats. Geography and demographics are the key to understanding what happened: The coastal left-wing havens voted overwhelmingly for Davis and his pathetic mini-me, Cruz Bustamante, while the interior counties went overwhelmingly the other way and for Arnold. Independents, middle-class voters, whites, and men constituted the base for the triumph.
This temblor was significant enough to drive the left-wingers in California mad. The degree of discomfort on the left can be seen in their post-election statements. While remaining centrist Democrats seem willing to learn from the loss and work with the new governor, the representatives of what they call "progressives" here can only fume.
State Senator Sheila Kuehl of Santa Monica--the onetime Zelda in the "The Many Loves of Dobbie Gillis" show--now complains about another actor taking over the state and thinks she may skip the new governor's State of the State. My old friend John Vasconcellos, whose politics have become somewhat less flexible than in the early 1990s, allegedly called the new governor "a boob" and sniffed that if the deluded people of California wanted "this actor" to govern, "they don't need or deserve me."
Well, I guess, John's self-esteem is still intact. Other leftists are much the same. Their websites are frothing with attitude about the moronic electorate. The leftish columinists--like Peter King--are shocked (shocked!) by the eruption of middle-class self-interest. The Bay Area's "progressives" are talking secession again, to get away from all the morons who live in the south and eastern portions of the state. (On second thought, maybe it's not such a bad idea. Where do we sign?)
What both the left and the right refuse acknowledge is that most California elections, like American ones, are determined in the middle. Some of these people call themselves liberal in California, but aren't really by national standards. They favor some form of gay rights and tolerance for immigrants, and they oppose abortion curbs. But when it comes to defending their property and their jobs, or the sanctity of citizenship, they can, if necessary, make common cause with Republicans.
Nor did this process start when Arnold announced his candidacy on Jay Leno's "Tonight Show." One has to remember that the Democrats hit their high point in California not in 2002, but in 2000. In that election, Gore sailed through against George W. Bush, and the Democrats built up a huge majority in the legislature.
The conditions for the Democrats then were ideal. Davis, as a tactical moderate, allayed any middle of the road fears about Democratic control. The economy was booming, Bush, a bible belt-leaning Republican, and, even worse, a Texan, was never popular in the state. (Texas versus California is really the big split in twenty-first century America, much more important than the petty squabbles of postage-stamp eastern states).
Had McCain been the nominee, the race would have been much, much closer. California Republicans do best when they nominate candidates who can appeal to centrist and even socially liberal voters. Bush did neither.
Yet since 2000, there has been a perceptible resurgence of Republican fortunes, hampered only by the incredible dunder-headedness of the party. Had Dick Riordan's gubernatorial bid not been undercut by his own ineptitude, a right-wing rebellion, and a $10 million Gray Davis vilification campaign, the former L.A. mayor likely would have defeated Davis. As it was, the inept, social conservative Bill Simon came a lot closer than anyone thought possible, and Tom McClintock, in his previous run for statewide office, just missed pulling off an upset.
Clearly the tectonic plates were already shifting. GOP candidates also did better in 2002's legislative elections than expected. Only the state's remarkably partisan redistricting, and a lack of money, prevented more gains.
This year's victory for the Republicans built off this momentum. As Californians watched Davis's inept handling of the budget and the continued left-ward lunacy of the legislature, they became more disenchanted. The passage of unpopular bills--notably the illegal alien drivers' licenses--and continued inability to fix the state's workers compensation system undermined middle-class and small-business support for the Democrats.
The result was not only a victory for the recall, but an even larger one for the two GOP candidates, Schwarzenegger and McClintock, who won three out of every five votes. They won strong majorities not only in the new Republican strongholds of San Bernardino-Riverside, the Central Valley, as well as Orange County and San Diego, but also in Los Angeles County, the largest urban county in the nation.
This means a good number people uncomfortable with the recall--about 12 percent of the total--still opted to vote for Arnold or McClintock. The candidacy of Cruz Bustamante clearly turned these people off with its blatant pandering to public employee unions, trial lawyers, and the Indian tribes. His Latino nationalist overtones didn't help either, even among a good portion of Latinos.
So in the end, did Arnold's victory turn the world upside down? No. But it pushed the focus of politics in California away from the extremes of left and right, and back toward the center. This may not be enough red meat for the conservative ideologues, but it's certainly a step in the right direction for California.
Joel
Josh Benson
10.14.03, 11:00 a.m.
Joel,
Now that Fred Barnes, E.J. Dionne, and Judy Woodruff have concluded their toe-touch into California politics, those of us who follow the Golden State regularly have some 'splaining to do. What produced the historic recall? Where does California go from here? And what are the chances the rest of the country decides to send their governors to the guillotine as well?
For their part, Cal-EE-fornia conservatives have decided the Gipper is back--Arnold is simply the leading edge of a GOP resurgence that will sweep away those awful liberal constituencies (teachers, Indians, poor people) and get California back to the business of, well, business. More broadly, the argument goes, California, and perhaps the nation, has entered into a post-liberal phase where moderates have swung decisively to the right. It's almost a no-win scenario for the liberals: If the remaining Democratic officials confound the new governor, they'll too get tossed in the next election. If they surrender to Schwarzenegger's fiscal conservatism, conservative principles are triumphant. Or, as you recently put it to The New York Sun, "It's time for East Coast sophistos to stop making jokes about California ... [the recall] marks a turning point, not only for California but also for urbanized, coastal America."
Well, can native Californians still crack jokes? I left my beloved Bay Area only a few months ago, but I still think there's plenty of humor to be mined from the Teutonic Triumph. And you don't need to be a member of the Eastern Establishment to scoff at all this prophetic talk of a realignment. You just have to look at the numbers.
And the key number is the percentage of self-described liberals who supported the recall: 25. A quarter of California's most ardent fruits and nuts voted to turn out their own governor. Without progressive anger against Gray Davis, the recall would have been little more than a gleam in the Terminator's bionic eye. What happened on October 7 wasn't a conservative revolution or even a rebellion of the disaffected--it was a Democratic fragging, pure and simple.
Liberals have been wary of Davis since his first year in office, when he proposed to use a sudden budget surplus to create a $1 billion reserve, fund a modest tax cut, and pay for one-time expenditures that wouldn't lock the state into future spending. Sound like the fiscal policies of anyone you know?
The liberal legislature exploded. "No budget will be rammed down our throat," State Senate President Pro Tem John Burton declared. A columnist for the Sacramento Bee mocked Davis's refusal to think big with new spending, likening his judicious reproach to the male "fear of commitment" so evident on "talk shows and [in] women's magazines."
That budget crystallized liberal fears that Davis was--ugh--a centrist. And as he continued to stifle the most bold progressive reforms, liberal anger at Davis's middle-of-the-road approach morphed into the idea that he was a corrupt governor, selling his office not to the unions and gaming interests--but to the corporate heavyweights who financed so much of his campaigns (a development you yourself have noted in recent pieces). Indeed, though conservatives uttered the best line about Davis's prodigious fundraising--"the first coin-operated governor"--it was liberals who instantiated the idea. Not until Wayne Johnson, president of the California Teachers Association, claimed the governor tried to shake him down for $1 million in a capitol office did the "pay-to-play" meme really find traction. You'd expect more loyalty from one of those craven liberal interest groups.
In short, it was liberal anger over Davis's less-than-revolutionary ideas that turned the recall into a mainstream phenomenon. Another nifty fact from the exit polls illustrates this: Twenty percent of the voters who supported Davis in the 2002 gubernatorial election also voted for the recall, but thirty percent of Green Party voters from last November supported it. Between the liberals who thought he'd strayed too far to the center, and the conservatives who saw him as a veritable socialist, Gray Davis got caught in a vise grip even Mr. Olympia couldn't shake.
So given these unique political circumstances, what does the recall signify? Not much of anything. Oh sure, we've discovered that, in lean times, voters don't like incumbents--an idea that was novel back when political scientists first noticed it 50 years ago. And we now know that when you combine such intra-party wars with a massive budget deficit and a robotic governor, the incumbent angers rises to the level of a recall. But beyond the events of October 7, there is little reason to think the recall heralds a realignment of any blue-state politics.
Which is not to say Democrats don't have their work cut out for them. Just that their challenge is not to retool their liberalism for a suddenly conservative electorate--it's to make centrism palatable again to liberal constituencies. Gray Davis could never sell third-way politics the way Clinton could, and so he got into trouble. It'll be up to the current generation of New Democrats--former Assembly Speak Robert Hertzberg, Controller Steve Westly, even Senator Diane Feinstein--to unite the center-left factions tearing apart the party.
And in a way, this is still a golden moment for Democrats. Schwarzenegger can't do too much damage with a Democratic legislature, yet he still must assume accountability for California's massive budget problems. Democrats should seize the moment to push through crucial reforms that will keep their party in the center: another version of the open primary, reapportionment by judges, a lower legislative barrier to passing a budget than the current two-thirds majority, so that a moderate bipartisan bloc can enact reforms. If they reinforce their appeal among the professionals and fiscal moderates that won them so much power in the 1990s, the Democrats will return to the statehouse soon enough.
As for Arnold Schwarzenegger, I doubt he can truly remake the Republican Party. For all of his star power and fundraising prowess, the radical social conservatism of the California GOP won't disappear anytime soon; indeed, that faction of the party will likely want payback for holding its nose and supporting someone as socially liberal as Arnold. With an eye towards the Republican primary in 2006, Schwarzenegger will have to play ball.
Even more troublesome, the GOP has been just as nutty on fiscal issues lately. The Republican claim earlier this year that they could close a $38 billion budget gap with no new revenues and without heavy borrowing, when more than two-thirds of all spending is fixed by federal and state mandates, is fiscal mendacity beyond what even George W. Bush is capable of--we're talking borderline mathematical impossibility here. Yet there Arnold goes again, even today, promising no new taxes.
But maybe I'm wrong and Schwarzenegger will surprise us--risking Republican fratricide and using his brute strength to refashion the GOP. Maybe in 2006, California will be introduced to a new crop of Republican politicians who are pro-choice, pro-gun control, pro-environment, with their social moderation tempered by a moderate approach to monetary matters--leaders who balance fiscal discipline with a commitment to protecting education. Come to think of it, we had a term for such politicians when I briefly worked in the State Senate a few years ago, and it wasn't necessarily an epithet. We called them Gray Davis Democrats.
Josh
Josh Benson is a reporter-researcher at TNR. Joel Kotkin is a Senior Fellow at the Davenport Institute for Public Policy at Pepperdine University. He is writing a book on the history of cities for Modern Library. He can be reached at joelkotkin@newgeography.com
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