The only silver lining in the new governership of Schwarzenegger:

I've been worried that past few days about how ugly it would get if Davis did win, how low his ratings could get before his term ran out--and how far he might drag the party down with him. Or Bustamante winning--apparently he wasn't really up to the job of spokesperson for a big state. We could have just replaced one disaster with another.

That situation is so fucked up, anyone in there is likely to end up unpopular. Hopefully Arnold will be run out of there with his tail between his legs, and the Dems can win it back the next time. Unfortunately, that will be too late to help out Howard Dean or Wesley Clark as they try to defeat Bush next fall.

A lot of power comes with incumbency, but I can only hope Arnold's ratings will already be in the toilet by next November. That may be wildly optimistic, but it may well depend on how the groping scandal plays out.

Yes, assuming the nets are playing it safer after the 2000 Florida debacle, the news is:

Arnold Schwarzenegger is the new governor of California.

And Groper in Chief of the biggest state in the union? He may be governor, but he's not out of the woods on that one.

Based on exit polls, CNN declared a winner just a minute after the polls closed. (After a minute of ridiculous preamble--already trying to stretch, apparently):

Davis will lose the recall by a healthy margin, Schwarzenegger will take his place.

Wow, so much for a long suspensful night. (Or a God out there messing around in things, as Arnold suggested today. Obviously He kept out of it.)

 And apparently other networks have done the same.

Best asswipe quote from a newsmodel two minutes into the proceedings: Candy Crowley: "This cannot come as a surprise to the Gray Davis campaign, but it certainly, I think, still has to come as a shock."

Think about that Candy. The sad part is, she did. That wasn't an offhand line in response to an unexpected question, that was her canned opening of her lead "analysis" just after Wolf announced the winner.

Shit. Shit shit shit shit shit.

Soon we may know how the Californial recall turned out.

I'll be monitoring the networks as soon as the polls close at 11 eastern, and keep you posted.

I get so excited on election nights. I can hardly wait.

I'm not sure what to make of Slate's chief political correspondent, William Saletan. Sometimes he's right on the mark in his analysis, sometimes right out of left field. Today he manages both in the space of one piece:

The virtues and shortcomings of Wes Clark's earnestness.

Great job capturing the essence of Clark's persona:

I've seen a few Clark speeches and a town hall meeting, but this event clarified where he fits into the Democratic field: He's the earnest guy.

Two weeks ago, at the only debate he's attended so far, Clark was full of canned answers. His performance was good but not distinctive from the career politicians onstage. Maybe debates aren't his strong suit, or maybe he should just can the canned stuff. Either way, in a town hall format, he's much more appealing. The reason is that he doesn't have to put on a show. He can just be what he is: bland and sincere. . . .

It's hard to convey the artlessness of his responses. You don't see his eyes, jaws, or hands working over the question, probing for threats and opportunities, the way John Kerry or John Edwards does. One hand grips the mike; the other hangs in his pocket. He stares at the questioner, unblinking. His eyebrows never rise. Neither does his voice.

But he's at his best when he cites a long Clark passage and then explains how it differs from his competitors:

[Clark speaking here:] They do things backward. They have some preconceived solutions, and then they look for circumstances that they can use to excuse putting those solutions in place. They had a tax cut plan. Well, first it was, "The government had too much of our money," so they were gonna give our money back. And then it was, "We were in a recession." But it wasn't exactly like the tax cut was designed to pull us out of the recession. Most of the cuts were way out in the future. … It was a solution looking for a problem. Same thing happened with Iraq. These guys were talking about going into Iraq back before the election. … They used 9/11 as the pretext to take us into that war, I think under false pretenses.

[Saletan analyzing here:] This critique lacks the moral edge of Dean's attack on Bush's divisiveness or Edwards' attack on Bush's elitism. But it has greater truth and, I suspect, broader resonance with public opinion. It doesn't demand that you think Bush is a bad guy or the Republican Party is evil. It only demands that you to look at the facts and put them together to form a relatively charitable, though fatal, conclusion: Bush lacks the temperament to adapt and solve problems as a president must. Gephardt calls Bush a failure and posits that the failure would continue in a second term, but he doesn't explain why. Clark explains why.

Stunning passage from Clark. Just that one paragraph and I remember why I'm in love with the guy. And Saletan pretty much reads it right out of my mind.

Great job so far Mr. Saletan. And then he sails right off a cliff:

But the real peril of earnestness isn't that it's boring as a campaign theme. The real peril is that it's insufficient as a governing philosophy.

What? He provides one dopey example and I guess that's supposed to illustrate a point maybe he thinks we agree with intuitively. Or something. (And in my mind, the example illustrates the opposite, but journos can usually be counted on as short-term thinkers.)

I think he's a little out of his mind. I have been praying for an earnest president, a wise man like Clark with (generally) the courage of his convictions, who governs according to true convictions instead of polling data and and long-range thinking instead of short-term political expediency.

I could use a little more excitement out of the guy, but he makes up for it with admiration. That is, every time I see him, I'm not so much electrified as mesmerized: finally, the real deal. A wise, honest and candid man, not (yet) beholden to a bunch of special interests.

Aside from the excitement, everything Saletan has described here--especially the passage directly from Clark--makes me believe he would be an incredible president.

It's today.

We've come a long way in five years, that's all I have to say.

And Judy Shepard is a saint.

AP story here.

From AP, within the hour:

Wesley Clark's campaign manager quit Tuesday in a dispute over the direction of the Democratic presidential bid, exposing a rift between the former general's Washington-based advisers and his 3-week-old Arkansas campaign team.

Donnie Fowler told associates he was leaving over widespread concerns that supporters who used the Internet to draft Clark into the race are not being taken seriously by top campaign advisers. Fowler also complained that the campaign's message and methods are focused too much on Washington, not key states, said two associates who spoke on condition of anonymity. . . .

Fowler has been at odds with communications adviser Mark Fabiani of California and policy adviser Ron Klain of Washington. All three are veterans of Al Gore 2000 presidential campaign  . . .

From the start, there has been tension between the campaign's political professionals and the draft-Clark supporters, many of whom consider computer-savvy Fowler their ally.

Fowler has complained that while the Internet-based draft-Clark supporters have been integrated into the campaign, their views are not taken seriously by Fabiani, Klain and other top advisers, many of them based in Washington. He has warned Clark's team that the campaign is being driven from Washington, a charge leveled against Gore's campaign in 2000 even though its headquarters were in Tennessee. Clark's headquarters are in Little Rock, Ark.

Yow. So much there that is so scary.

For starters, it's always a bad sign to see so much dissent so early in a campaign.

More unnerving to see the same guys that lost the election Gore should have won easily winning out in a battle that from my perspective they surely should have lost. (More on that below.)

And all the worse to see them falling into the same trap that helped do them in last time. In 2000, they responded to charges that they were beltway insiders out of touch with the country by moving the HQ to Nashville--which as far as anyone could tell did nothing but change their scenery.

The best thing Clark had going for him was that he had an organization already in place, set up all across the country. Granted I have only seen the operations in one mid-sized state (I'm in Denver, if you've never noticed the logo at the top of this page), but it was pretty impressive. I have been assuming it was all the stronger in the larger states.

Effectively throwing that away by centralizing everything and not taking those people seriously--God, it sounds like the same old Washington insider/assholes.

I would have thought they would have learned a thing or two from the Dean campaign. It has been the model of combining centralization and decentralization. All the strategy, all the scheduling, all the big decisions come out of Burlington, but the 400,000 volunteers who have signed up really have been encouraged to run around out there and start their own initiatives. Just look at the huge blogroll down the side of Dean's blog: each one of those represent a different initiative somebody out there in the field started, rarely at the behest of anyone in the campaign.

But apparently Clark has turned to a bunch of old-school advisers who surely know a lot about campaigning, but not enough to get Gore into the White House, and not enough to learn a damn thing from the way the Dean campaign has been revolutionizing the process.

That's very depressing news.

Depressing because I thought we were going to have two great candidates battling it out in the primaries. We still may, but this is not a good sign at all for Wesley Clark.

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Thanks to Instapundit for the link, via Dave Winer, though the former doesn't seem to have read the story closely, because he mischaracterizes the central dispute. (Kinda surprising.)

Update:

Reuters just posted its version six minutes ago. They say he quit "after being asked to take a reduced role in the fledgling operation, two Clark campaign sources said." That may or may not just be their spin on the mess as the mopped the blood up off the floor.

Otherwise, their version is basically the same.

I have been monitoring CNN all day on the off chance they might offer some nugget of news on the California recall, and I'm reminded what a piece of shit operation they're running there.

No wonder they're getting trounced by a fake-news upstart like FauxNews.

I've barely heard any news all day, but I sure have seen a parade of idiots acting cute.

And I'm just getting my first look at their hot new, different-kind-of-new-show Anderson Cooper 360.

Looks a lot like all the other trashy news shows. New graphics. Great.

The main problem is that virtually all the content is coming from the same lame newsmodels, delivering the same hokey packaged "news" reports.

This just in on the medical condition of Roy Horn--the Roy have of Siegried and Roy--who got it bad from one of his lions: "It's just a miracle he's even alive." Yes, the newsmodel actually said that--quoting the doctor; what an insightful quote--and yes he even ended his report that way.

Same old newsmodels, same old cliches.

Update: Reporting in on the recall, Wolf Blitzer just informed us, "It could be a long night; it could be a short night."

I'm not making this shit up.

The Village Voice has its Best of New York issue out.

I'm just digging in now, but how can you resist a come-on like this?:

Have you been looking for the 10 best places to throw up? Do you want to know where to to shop like a mermaid or shoot deer while drinking? Do you go in search of the city's mysteries, good food, or characters? Welcome to "Hidden New York," the Voice's guide to underground vices, subway buskers, peep shows, secrets at the Natural History Museum, and much more. Enjoy your trip to the dark side.

Can't wait to get back to that great city and check them out personally.

Polls don't close in CA till 8 p.m. local time, 11 eastern. How annoying.

Good for them, of course, but still annoying.

Not half as annoying as the CNN coverage, though. Particularly twitlike was Tucker Carlson.

Why don't they just say they have absolutely nothing to say, and they'll be back at 11. (One exception: they have Arnold Schwarzenegger's camp touting internal polls that supposedly indicate he will win. For what that's worth.)

See you in four hours.

I'll have updates here all night as news breaks on the California recall results.

Well, it hasn't taken the Bush blog long to start distorting.

On just Day Two, they are citing a David Brooks column in The New York Times as showing "Progress Toward a Free Iraq."

Brooks does argue that the Iraqis are making progress on a constitution, but the blog conveniently ignores the fact that Brooks also:

• Devotes half the column to a list of daunting bullet points under the heading: "Still, gigantic issues remain:"
• He concludes that gigantic list with this harsh indictiment of the Bush plan: "There's no way the Iraqis can resolve these issues within six months, the deadline Colin Powell once set."

The latter is crucial, because in essense it says: Yes, the Iraqis are doing as well as can be expected, but the Bush plan for them has proven preposterous. Brooks is patting the Iraqis on the back, but ripping Bush a new one (in an admittedly subtle way, as expected for a hardcore conservative).

All recent entries from the Bush Blogwatch here.

Arnold Schwarzenegger shown on CNN saying repeatedly this morning, "It's up to God now" (or the one time, "Up to the God now.")

I just hate that. Look, I believe in God, too, but I think he's leaving this one up to the people of California.

Maybe it's up to you Arnold, and how good a job you did campaigning, and/or groping. Ever think of taking responsibility for your own successes or failures?

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I'll have updates on the California recall results all night as news breaks.

Salon has a story on Barbie collecting today. Hey! Why didn't they ask me to cover it? (I covered it for the New York Times last year, and had quite the time of it.) Oh well.

Looks interesing, though I can't read it till later. Here's the deck head and deck:

Playing with dollz
This isn't your mother's Barbie: Welcome to a Web subculture where pixelated gothic Lolitas, preps and weirdos are good wholesome fun.

I'll report back once I've read it.

AP is reporting very heavy turnout.

I don't know enough about this race to know whether that is a good or bad sign for stopping Schwarzenegger. If anyone knows, enlighten me in the comments and I'll post it.

And here is the latest polling info from the AP story:

The Davis campaign said its internal tracking polls for the past three nights showed voters almost evenly split on the recall issue with just slightly more than 50 percent in favor. Schwarzenegger's campaign, however, said its tracking poll showed the pro-recall side solidly ahead.

The scary part is the 2.2 million absentee ballots sent in before the disclosures on Arnold's groping.

I realize that any blog is going to have a point of view, and a presidential blog will be particularly propogandistic, but the new Bush blog is just too much.

Titles of the last two entries:

• Progress Toward a Free Iraq
• Afghan children are laughing and learning just two years after beginning of war

The first one is laughable, the second obscene.

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I got some great comments from some of you guys on my post last night about the horrifying arrival of the Bush blog (first powerful contender for the jump-the-shark moment in the history of blogging). (And here's an ominous omen--if you click on the link and glance up at the url, you'll find that was my post #666.)

This response from Ben was particularly insightful:

Yup. Web log > blog > politblog > e-newsletter with bulletin board posting available with real-time updating 24/7.

The Blog as a media form is still in a state of evolution. Unfortunately, the Bush blog represents a species that doesn't fit Darwinian standards, let alone what the rest of the world thinks a blog should be. If Bush's intent was to be the first President to have a blog site, well, let's go call the Smithsonian. History will probably still show how Dean's use of the blog revolutionized the election process.

My response: Agreed on both. The personal voice on Dean's blog is not Dean's, but it is personal.

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(And I'm instituting a new feature here, which you'll find a link to in the left-hand sidebar: Bush Blogwatch. I'm not sure how often I'll update it. Depends how interesting and/or appalling the Bush blog becomes.)

Don't Ask, Don't Tell is celebrating its ten year anniversary, and Bill Clinton has chosen the occasion to bash the policy.

News release from the SLDN site:

In his strongest denunciation of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” to date, former President Bill Clinton says that “Simply put, there is no evidence to support a ban on gays in the military.” The written statement was made to Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN) in conjunction with the organization’s End the Witch Hunts national dinner on Saturday. . . .

Well that's great to get his support, but a little hard not to gag on his words.

I am willing to cut Clinton some slack, but he really screwed both gays and the military (in the long run) on this one. Hard to hear him take the strong stand against Don't Ask, Don't Tell now, coming from the very guy who FORCED IT ON US!

Prior to Clinton, any president could have overturned the gay ban with just a swipe of his pen (executive order). But Clinton got this monstrosity enacted into law, and now it will take an act of congress to overturn it.

Thanks Buddy.

I wait too long to get back in the field sometimes.

In this case, it wasn't about researching a story, but . . . hmmmm, I hate to use this word but (promoting?) one.

As I mentioned in the last post, I spent the afternoon yesterday talking to three classes at the Air Force Academy about Columbine. I had been toying with the idea that the public seemed overripe for a book finally addressing what that tragedy was really about, and nothing could have convinced me more.

The professor warned me in advance that like any other college students, they could be both apathetic class material and shy about speaking in class. They were positively riveted. Right out of the gate, they were jumping in with questions, and we could have gone on for hours. And I was surprised, too, by the extent of their knowledge, and the depth of their probing. They were really fascinated by the whole topic.

If this is any indication of the interest level out there among young adults--and I have no doubt that it is--there is a considerable market out there for the book I've been messing with for years.

So, I'm going to take the advice many of you have given me here, get off my ass and get that book proposal together. (And start pitching it to magazines as well.)

There are several new movies surfacing on the subject--I'm going to see Gus Van Sant's Elephant at the Denver Film Festival next week--the five-year anniversary is coming up next April, and I have so much more to tell on this topic. (Particularly about what drove Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold to do it.)

I'll let you know how it goes.

I spent about six hours inside the Academy again yesterday--in some rather unusual situations--and it's always refreshing when I do.

They have a very real problem with the rape situation there, and also an enduring problem with the climate toward women, but that really is not the whole story about the place.

I don't want to come off as a member of the booster squad, but I think it's important to put things in perspective. And I think much of the country just sees that place as some sort of horrifying den of evil, where young robots are lobotomized and marched around to the beat of somebody else's brain, where the only original thought a cadet ever has is "Who can I rape tonight?"

Hardly. I have been developing some contacts there for awhile, and yesterday I was the guest speaker for three classes on Columbine (more on that in a separate post in a minute), and also sat in to observe three lengthy sessions where some of the brightest cadets were grilled by a small faculty panel (I'd rather not go into details.)

Wow. Actually sitting down and talking to--or listening to--cadets down there will turn your head around in a hurry. The classes were in a discussion format, where I mostly responded to questions from both the professor and students, and they were one of the best audiences I've spoken to in years. Bright, thoughtful, highly engaged. You can learn a lot about how people think just by listening to their questions, and these were three really dynamic and impressive groups.

And if you think military cadets must be some mindless automatons, you just need to let go of that stereotype. They laughed, they smiled, they furrowed their brows--one big tough guy in the front row teared up when I responded to a question about Principal Frank DeAngelis, and described how he handled the crisis.

I'm tempted to say that they're just like the students on any other campus, but that's not entirely true. They tend to be more conservative than most college populations, more Christian, more rigid in their thinking unfortunately, and way, way, way more polite. But I have to dredge up the old cliche here, that their similarities to other students are far greater than their differences.

I wish everybody could sit down and have a disucssion with groups of them for an afternoon. Not discussing their own situation, because they can get defensive and sometimes denialistic about that, and they are going to parrot back the party line much of the time. Don't talk about that, just talk to them. At heart, they're just normal 20-year olds struggling with all the same problems as any other 20-year old. Plus the whole military regimine added on top.

And as for the kids facing the panels, of course they were among the top students selected for the opportunity, but two of the three cadets I saw were just stunningly impressive. Sharp, witty, funny, open-minded and wise beyond their years. The cadets are not all like these two, but if this kind of cadet can rise to the top of the Air Force, I feel very secure about the direction the service will take.

Eric Boehlert just posted an interesting piece at Salon suggesting George Bush's $87 billion-speech one month ago today may have been the tipping point in his presidency:

Pollster Stan Greenberg told the Wall Street Journal he couldn't "find a parallel moment" in history when a president's approval rating dropped so dramatically following a nationally televised debate.

The gist of the argument is that the public was getting more and more worried about Iraq, it was a crucial moment he needed to win them over, and instead he convinced them we were out of control:

Instead, over the next few days there seemed to be a collective "holy shit" moment for an awful lot of Americans contemplating the cost of the war and the occupation's duration. . . .

"It was the moment when White House spin collided with the public's appreciation [of] reality," says Joseph Cirincione, author or "Deadly Arsenals: Tracking Weapons of Mass Destruction." "It tipped the scale and made people realize we were in Iraq too deep. Nothing the president said gave public hope we'd soon get out of this."

Why? Because he's dishing out the same old crap he hoodwinked the country with before, and it's just sounding ridiculous in light of how his plans are panning out:

More important, though, was the content of the speech. Despite steady reports all summer about attacks on U.S. soldiers, terrorists pouring into Iraq from other countries and simmering discontent among Iraqis over the American occupation, Bush refused to adjust his spin, and clung to the same rhetoric the White House had been using since the spring. That meant saying that "Iraq is now the central front" in the war on terrorism, while comparing the rebuilding there to the Marshall Plan in Europe following World War II.

"I didn't see the speech itself as having huge defects," says Dan McGroarty, a former speechwriter for the first President Bush. "But maybe there was a benefit to being more candid."

"It wasn't a compelling case," adds Edwards. "He said, 'We've got a plan, it's working well.' That's not credible to the American public. The whole reason for the speech was to give Republicans cover so they could vote for the $87 billion, but he didn’t do that."

There's a lot of other fluff in the piece that just gets in the way, but I think Boehlert nails those key points. I think he's on to something here.

After a long, steady decline, Bush's numbers went in to freefall (the piece says even Fox showed an 8-point decline over two weeks, "the biggest survey-to-survey decline recorded by Fox since Bush took office.") This paints a very plausible picture about why.

(Note: If you don't subscribe to Salon, click on the Free Day Pass option when you follow the link.)

Ugh. George Bush got a blog today. I hate to even link to it, but here it is.

I guess that makes blogs completely passe. The dork factor just soared through the roof.

So far, all they've got is Bush's schedule for today, and links to three news stories.

The real howler is that they brag about "offering the latest news and views from outside the Washington “Beltway” "--complete with annoying gratuitous quotes around beltway--and then follow immediately with stories/op-ed from the Wall Street Journal, NY Post, and W Post. So they're stretching all the way out to the heartland of NY?  To Washington correspondents for rabid-right publications in NY? Wow. No beltway mentality there.

And they start off with two pieces grasping to make their case on WMD. Pitiful.

The initial response on the Dean blog.

As you hopefully know by now, the first contest this primary season will not be Iowa or New Hampshire. It will be the Washington D.C. primary on January 13.

I am all for this change, but the party is desperately trying to discourage candidates from attending, and most are buckling under, fearing backlashes from Iowa and New Hampshire voters.

The one major candidate bucking the trend is Howard Dean, who wants to show his appeal beyond white liberals.

(I don't know why Clark hasn't jumped in as well. He's way behind in Iowa and NH, but could make a legitmate stand here.)

DC is responding with a new tactic. From Tuesday's Washington Post:

D.C. officials disappointed by the amount of attention generated so far by the city's presidential primary are pushing legislation to put all 10 Democratic candidates on the Jan. 13 ballot -- whether they campaign here or not. 

Despite a spate of stories in the national media noting that the District is having the nation's first presidential vote, only former Vermont governor Howard Dean has spent significant time campaigning in Washington. . . .  

"They've written us off," said council member Adrian M. Fenty (D-Ward 4).

To turn up the pressure, council member Jack Evans (D-Ward 2) is drafting a bill to be submitted as soon as today that would put all of the Democratic candidates on the ballot for the city's nonbinding primary. Others could be added by submitting paperwork by a specified date, and those on the ballot could opt out by sending a letter to elections officials.

Evans said that even candidates who may have decided to pay no attention to the District primary may reconsider when faced with the prospect of coming in ninth or 10th just weeks before Iowa and New Hampshire. . .

I don't know how much good it will do, but I sure hope it helps.

What they really need is for one more major candidate to start campaigning there, to make it into a real race. If Wesley Clark, especially jumped in, that would make it the first test of Dean vs. Clark--who are looking more and more like a 2-man race--and suddenly it would be extremely important. But will Clark go for it?

(Aren't you glad I didn't title this "And then there were nine.")

Finally, the field begins to narrow. Sen. Bob Graham, who is looking less and less attractive as even a vice presidential candidate, finally recognized what everyone else in the country who was watching had known for a long time. It's over. It never really started.

It's about time.

But why the hell did he do it on Larry King? I can see starting there, because despite the man's position as CNN's Lead Jackass, he does have a big audience, by petty cable standards. But why leave there? Sucking up for next time? Like there will be a next time.

AP story here if you care to read the details, but are there any details of interest?

Next question: Who's next? Edwards? Lieberman? (The longest-shot three are symbolic candidates with every reason to hang in indefitely, so we need to cull from the middle.)

And you're not far behind Gephardt and Kerry.

The sooner we can narrow this to Wesley Clark and Howard Dean, the better.

Update:

Loved this comment from Ben:

Ya know, I was thinking, we need something like a Tribe Pic Board, with all the Dem Candidates and as they drop out, the pic will get an "x" like at the Survivor site. LOL.

Nothing could please me more than politics and Survivor colliding. My two favorite subjects. Glad some readers here enjoy both of them.

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And I think Edwards will be next, but it will be awhile. He just gave up his Senate seat.

Lieb will hang on forever.

Unfortunately, it's going to be a big dense pack for a long, long time.