WHY SO BLUE?

California is a great place to live. We have nice weather, nice beaches, Hollywood, theater, Disneyland; you name it. I moved here from Las Vegas in 1987 to attend UC Santa Barbara and never looked back. In those days, politics was the last thing on my mind, but I've since matured (well, I still enjoy Star Trek and comic books, so I suppose I haven't grown all that much). In the last decade or so, I've come to realize that another thing I like about calling California my home is that fact that we are a Blue State. Would I live here if we weren't? Sure. But the fact that the majority of Californians share my world view is admittedly comforting.

Conservatives living in California are quite aware of its Blue State status, and they're not happy about it. To hear some of them talk, you'd think they are preparing to be hauled off to secret prison camps in the Eastern Bloc or something. If you don't believe me, just check out our local "woe is me" Conservative Turtle or Minority Report. Jeez, relax guys: liberals make love, not war. Personally, I don't get the fear and paranoia. I mean, you can't honestly feel underrepresented in the US of A, can you?

Now, I'm not naive enough to think that California will always be Blue -- Reagan wasn't that long ago -- but if some day the political winds do change, I want it to be because the majority of Californians voted for it in a fair and honest election. If you've been paying attention lately, there was a recent attempt by Republicans to instantly turn California Red; it's called the "Presidential Election Reform Act" ... In a nutshell, it was an attempt to change the winner take all process for presidential elections so that California's Electoral College votes would be divided by regions. According to past voting records, the end result of this is that the GOP would get 20 additional electoral votes from California in the next election.

It appears that this initiative has crashed and burned, but I think it's important to discuss its underlying implications. In a rather ironic statement, Gov. Schwarzenegger recently said the following regarding the proposal ...

I feel like if you, all the sudden in the middle of the game, start changing the rules it's kind of odd, it almost feels like a loser's mentality, saying I cannot win with those rules, so let me change the rules… I have not made up my mind yet in one way or the other, because I haven't seen the details on it.

This, of course, is comical considering that he is only governor due to that horrible recall election. If anyone has forgotten, let me remind you ... Republican Darrell Issa spent a million dollars of his own money financing that recall election so that he could be governor. That didn't work out so well for him, but the end result is that Schwarzenegger skated into the position on name recognition alone. Ultimately, I'm actually pretty happy about that fact, because listening to Issa defend Blackwater on CSPAN this weekend made me ill. So, what, now supporting the troops means you have to support corporate sponsored contractors?

The point here is that this establishes a pattern for Republicans: before recall elections and reform acts, there was the Texas gerrymandering fiasco and voter suppression in Florida & Ohio. And it doesn't end there: soon the ever more conservative Supreme Court will be taking on Indiana's voter ID law. Gee, I wonder how that 5-4 decision will go?

What I take away from these events is that the Right knows they are losing the battle of ideas, so they have to cheat the system in order to maintain power. With that in mind, I would have to say that Schwarzenegger is correct: if you can't win on your own merits, then you're a loser.