California please lead the way; other states please follow.

nt

The only thing half-bad about Texas is the Repukes. The other half are pretty cool.

yes INDEED

The voters passed an initiative in 2010 which made the budget vote a majority vote. GOP can not block anymore. This year's budget was stalled because Democrats were fighting Brown's cuts. They finally passed it.

Dems can pass a BUDGET with a majority vote. But they CANNOT pass any tax increase without a 2/3 vote, still.

Therein lies the rub -- they are hamstrung by the Reps who won't approve any new taxes or even closing tax loopholes, so we are still stuck with all-cuts budgets that are devastating.

GOP: 37% to 30.2%

No Party: 10.7% to 21.3%

Democrats: 47.1% to 43.4%

So, that's around 11% loss from both parties, with over half of that from the GOP. Note, they DID NOT become Democrats. They could swing back to the GOP at any time, along with those new non-Democrats.

Those voters may still be conservative. Anything that the Democrats do for their base, will send them right back to the GOP. The Democratic Party loss isn't as great as the GOP, but that they still lost that many, is troubling to me.

Those who are active in this group, may be Ron Paul or Tea Party, or if they do get active with the Democratic Party, they may alienate the base.

It's been a real eye opener to me to see just how conservative - and radically conservative - that California really is. It appears the GOP still hold power greater than their numbers in the state legislature, unless the problems they've had with budget are due to hold over terms from before the last election.

How do you guys in CA see this going in 2012?

And is Orly Taits still on the ballot?

The anti-immigrant/anti-latino racism is horrid here. Whites, like my in-laws, blame the state's deficit and crumbling schools on Mexican immigrants, even though the state's decline can be directly traced to Prop. 13, passed in 1978, which requires a super-majority (2/3) to pass a tax increase and froze property taxes not just on grandma but on people and corporations that don't need that break. This has starved our schools and social services. Parts of our state look positively third world. Also, this is the state that voted FOR Prop. 8 (banning same sex marriage) and AGAINST legalizing pot. This state is not as progressive as its reputation. But it did elect Dem Jerry Brown over ultra rich Repuke Meg Whitman, even though she outspent him by a ton. And Obama should carry this state handily in November--despite my in-laws.

That many settled in southern California and they and their descendants are the supporters of people like Issa, etc. I was surprised to learn of a lot of things about California after I moved to the west coast, about the racism that goes back for an extremely long time.

Coming from the south, I thought CA was sooo liberal. I thought Ronald Reagan was just an unfortunate aberration, and there were a lot of Demcratic governors, like Jerry Brown to keep up the reputation of progressive leadership.

I'm trying to figure out why this 1978 law was passed and I was astounded at the Prop 8 vote. I didn't know how regressive the 1978 law was until recently. Perhaps this was a backlash to the Carter administration's enforcement of equal rights across the country. I was a big factor as I saw the Reagan Democrats arise in the south.

I found out in 2010 about tNazis or neo-Nazis in southern CA, another shocker. EFarrari gave me some information about them. Is there any chance your relations will change their minds, seeing the social situation in CA is detrioriating? Is RW radio a big influence for them? TIA and thanks for what you already told me.

lean extremely right. Up around Bakersfield they are teabaggers, from what I hear. But we're mostly a motley assortment in SoCal.

The areas with more highly educated people lean much more to the left than areas with less educated, just like elsewhere in the country.

Extremely right is a bit too far. I have lived in Phoenix and South OC (the most right wing section) and there is no comparison. Phoenix is extreme right, OC leans right. Obama was within a few points of carrying OC and a crooked Sheriff in OC was taken care of rather quickly in spite of being a repub.

I'm convinced the reason CA is so anti-tax, and the reason Prop. 13 passed, was because folks like my in-laws, once they saw schools and the whole state getting browner and browner, didn't want their tax money going to "those people"--even if it meant the roads and schools would crumble. The rich and corporations seized on this (the "Southern strategy" works in a whole lot of places besides the South) and got these folks to cut taxes for them by framing it as not spending money on "illegals."

Oh, heck, the religion thing. Don't want to get them too mad at you. Can't shake that tree or the coocoo nuts will head you in the head.

I have a teabagger relative down south who has been listening to Beck. Was rather normal even if self-aborbed before that, not it's like talking to a loudspeaker with no brain on the other side. I think it's a form of dementia.

You had a boatload of homeowners over 45 who were working for Defense Contractors. They were worried about retirement, figured they got theirs and went for prop 13.

DTS (Decline to State) is the fastest-growing voter bloc in CA. Sorry to burst the fallacy but the vast majority are of DTS are people like myself -- disgusted with both major political parties. We're not "Ron Paul" or "Tea Party, we're just disgusted.

It's not the GOP that holds power, it's Democrats too afraid to break away from the "third-way" state Democratic Party machinery. Case in point: For the THIRD TIME, the Hemp Legalization Bill was passed in the state legislature. Brown vetoed it because he's a good little Party Boy and the Party told him (erroneously) that he would be seen as soft on The Drug War (something the Democrats embrace just as tenaciously as do the Republicans) even though hemp has NOTHING to do with marijuana. Notice how silent he's kept while Holder's Jack Boots shut down the MMJ dispensaries.

It amazes me that you guys are so busy throwing stones at the Republicans that you never see the boulders sitting in your own house.

They are all in San Bernardino County, which would be a sizable and deep red state if it were not part of CA. They insisted I friend them on facebook, and now I have to scroll through reams of their re-posted right wing drivel. But facebook is how they communicate with us, so I can't just unfriend them.

pay attention to their policies.

He said he can't get in touch with his daughters without it. Sigh.

Valley up to the Oregon Border. GOP stronghold is vast. the only "progressive" regions in the state are in the coastal regions. and particularly in the San Francisco Bay Area... north/westward. 30 miles in from the coast any where and you're heading into Red territory.

Unfortunately RW Radio is massive/pervasive even in the SF Bay Area, and the toxity is frankly lethal culturally speaking as well as politically.

The vesitages of the "Liberal" party are fairly strong in Los Angeles, but we're not really talking progressive, but "monied" Liberal interest/politics and all that goes with it.. not necessarily in the interest of reform that progressives beg for. I have a friend who was politically well connected and insists that the entire Democratic Party machine is controlled right out of Los Angeles. I don't have a stake, nor can I speak to the accuracy of that assertion, but sometimes it does seem to explain California Democratic party electoral politics. and at times, National elections.. look at the campaigning that occurs there, as well as SF but seems much more in LA. Otherwise one would think we'd be like Texas, all Repukes all the time.

Like the Democrats in DC, those in the California capitol find a way to surrender to the GOP no matter how little flesh is left on their rotting corpse.

more power... you think the Senate is dysfunctional? You need a 2\3 majority to pass a tax increase, but a simple majority to pass a tax decrease... and some of the sick rules were passed with provisos like this.

The US Senate is increasingly reminding me of the dysfunction in Sacramento.

On the plus side... yes there is one... voters are getting damned tired of this and are fixing some of this with initiatives... if Cali leads, in 20 years DC may see some improvement. This shit has been going on for about 20.

Even Jerry Brown's initiative doesn't do enough to restore funding.

There are large swaths of the state that are republican-dominated. We don't even have a dem on the ballot for assembly here.

Here we may all laugh about Issa, but good ol' Daryl will be reelected with LARGE MAJORITIES in his crimson red district.

has been a real eye-opener.

area, the coastal zone of San Diego, but don't have to go far to find the real fun parts.

And the debates... oh my the debates... they were some really scary shit.

I call it Grovering The GOP.

but California isn't exactly as liberal as it's reputation presents it as, judging from how it passed prop 8, blocked 420 from being legalized statewide, and also these numbers. 43.4% and 30.2% really isn't that large of a gap between the D's and the R's, plus our side lost registered voters too.

That there are many religious rightwingers moving out to California to try and "Save us" from ourselves. Judging by the number of people holding signs down at Powell and Market Street..





The number has increased...
http://www.thebolditalic.com/taparton/stories/1166-cry-to-the-heavens

California voted for Nixon who came from California in both 1968 and 1972
In 1976 California voted for Gerald Ford and thought the South had put a hayseed in office with Carter.
California voted for Ronald Reagan who also came from California in both 1980 and 1984.
California voted Republican once again with George Herbert Walker Bush in 1988.

Then in 1992 California voted for Bill Clinton and the Right Wing and the Republicans called California "The Left Coast" and wrote off it's 55 electoral votes for the rest of time.

...and I like this one.

It's time for the GOP to be just as relevant as Eastman Kodak.

he could kill a kid on national TV and eat his heart and he'd still be elected with LARGE majorities.

I guess if he was caught with a dead boy on his bed, then perhaps we'd have hope of him losing, not a second before.

I am really amazed this needs to be explained... but have you EVER driven in his district? I have... I have talked to locals too...

The parties exist mainly for candidate funding, but that is less important these days with superPACs.

because the more "independent" candidates we have, the more likely we are to get ridiculous people getting elected.

There is a reason why party affiliation is important on political ads & ballots. It allows people who are marginally informed to at least identify the tendencies of the people they vote for..

There are some judgeship races I refuse to vote on because I would rather not vote than to accidentally help elect some homophobic/racist/xenophobic conservative..

Most of the time you can google candidates and figure out where their loyalties are, but if they are clever, they can hide that.

You really see it in my district where all the conservatives run independent or Republican with bright BLUE lawn signs. Republicans aren't going away. There is too much big money interest to not run conservatives. So they run them under the "independent" banner instead. Most are just as tea party nutty as the "real" conservative. Their new kind of conservative * worked before. California just got rid of Arnold. The future Arnold class won't change their politics they will just change their label. Of course regionally some districts will be as nutty as ever.

As for judges I generally look for lawyer association recommendations and party recommendations. Most lawyers don't want to argue cases in front of the insane.