Tuesday is California's primary, and for the first time in my adult life, I'll be sitting this election out. I never bothered to change my voter registration because:
A.) I don't want any official documents showing I ever lived here. And...
B.) This county is so overwhelmingly Republican it's a lost cause for Democrats and they don't even bother to run for any local offices.
Plus, we'll be living somewhere else by the time the general election rolls around in November.
It's been fascinating watching Republican retail politics in action. Untethered from reality, every race seems to come down to a choice between your garden variety, mouth breathing Wingnut, and a bat shit insane Teabagger. Each promises to out-crazy the other and to steal the most water from Northern California.
With no Democrats to beat up on, they effortlessly turn on each other with venomous TV ads and dirty tricks. I guess that's what passes for "bipartisanship" on that side of the aisle. My favorite is Ken Mettler, a lunatic running for office south of Bako. Trailing in the polls behind a more moderate woman, he did the only sensible thing - he dragooned a friend of his with the same first name as his opponent to add her name to the ballot in an effort to split her vote. He was exposed and completely unrepentant. And who can blame him? Even with his sleazy scheme laid out, the low information voters of the district will probably go ahead and do exactly as he expects and he'll win.
And pity poor Ahnold, the Governator. He's despised here, portrayed as a treacherous turncoat, a R.I.N.O. (Republican In Name Only). You'd think there'd be a little more love for the man who portrayed "The Butcher of Bakersfield" in the movie "The Running Man". At least he fares better than Nancy Pelosi, known around these parts as "The Anti-Christ". One ad even showed her against a backdrop of hellfire flames.
But the saddest spectacle of all is poor Meg Whitman, the former CEO of eBay. She's running for Governor and looked like she had it in the bag. In a state as large and diverse as California, statewide offices are won or lost on TV. Since she's Oprah-rich, she went up early in January with TV spots touting her as a smart, rational, sensible, pragmatic choice. While those qualities are admirable and probably a winning combination for the general election, they're frowned upon on the Right, and she still had the gauntlet of a Republican primary to pass. Her challenger, Steve Poizner, decided long ago to attack from the far right. Even though he was known as a moderate, and even donated a ton of money to Al Gore back in the day, he's spent the past couple of years on the train to Crazytown to better position himself. It's led to a bloody and expensive TV war. She was already slipping in the polls when the draconian immigration law passed in Arizona. Poizner saw a chink in her armor - she's criticized the bill in the past - and the attacks have been merciless. She was already downplaying the rationality and ramping up the lunacy, and the immigrant attacks have sent her over the edge. She was looking pretty frantic and shrill in the days before our TV died. I can only imagine where she is now. Probably offering to eat a Mexican baby on live TV at the border. She'll still probably win, but it will be a Pyrrhic victory. She's so painted herself into a corner of the insane asylum that no one is going to believe her once she starts trying to tack back to the sensible center.
So it looks like we're going to get "Jerry Brown 2.0" for governor. I have no complaints. By all accounts he was more than decent the first time around. Maybe it's a blessing the TV died. We'll be spared 5 months of "Governor Moonbeam" ads set to Linda Ronstadt music.
