California and 'left coast' bucking the pro-GOP election trend?

Los Angeles —
California is bucking the national Republican-leaning trend this election cycle. Democrat Jerry Brown narrowly leads Meg Whitman in the race for governor, while – in a race that could prove crucial for Democratic efforts to hold Senate control – Democrat Barbara Boxer is comfortably ahead of Carly Fiorina in the US Senate race.

Fueled by voter anger over everything from government bailouts, the handling of the Gulf oil spill, and health-care policy, Republicans lead in Senate races from Boca Raton to Boise, Philadelphia to Phoenix, and have narrow leads in West Virginia, Colorado, and Kentucky. In gubernatorial races, Republicans have significant statistical leads in all but Arkansas, Colorado, Hawaii, Minnesota, and five of six New England states.

"The GOP trend is everywhere," says Steven Schier, a political scientist at Carleton College in Northfield, Minn., and author of several books on election trends. He notes that the states where Democrats are leading in Senate races cast 136 electoral votes in 2008, but the states where Republicans are leading cast 274 electoral votes.

Why isn't California joining the trend?

"Given that California leans strongly Democratic, a GOP national trend may have smaller effects statewide than other states," says Mr. Schier.

Democrats are still popular among their base, even if that base is less unenthusiastic than it was a year ago, says Lara Brown, author of "Jockeying for the American Presidency: The Political Opportunism of Aspirants."

"California is one of the Democrats' base states," she says. "Hence it is not really a surprise that, as the election gets closer, California Democrats – including the many liberal Democrats that make up the state Democratic Party – are doing precisely what President Obama wants because they still approve and agree with him."

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Election-2010/2010/1018/California-and-left-coast-bucking-the-pro-GOP-election-trend

:hippie: :hippie: :hippie: :hippie:

Sprawling beneath the two when they debated last week, showed Jerry Brown ahead by over six points.

i.e., the one who made California's suit against Enron for recovery of the $10 BILLION that Enron stole (our entire state surplus) go away. (Google Greg Palast, Ken Lay, Schwarzenegger.)

I just hope that CA Secretary of State Debra Bowen has Diebold/ES&S on a strong enough leash to prevent what I am convinced was massive e-voting machine fraud in 2003 (the weird "recall" election with 125 candidates on the ballot). (That's why they got rid of the prior Sec of State, Kevin Shelley, who had sued Diebold and demanded to see their source code in May 2004). Bowen kicked ES&S out of the state, at one point--they are such bad actors. But ES&S has since bought out Diebold and now has an 80% monopoly of U.S. voting machines, all of them run on 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code, with virtually no audit/recount controls. And, take my word for it (and I'll explain if you ask), ES&S is worse than Diebold as to far, far rightwing connections. So now ES&S has ownership and control of Diebold's 'TRADE SECRET' code, as well as its own. Bowen got rid of the completely non-transparent touchscreens but we still have Diebold/ES&S optiscans and central tabulators, which are also highly vulnerable to inside fraud, and wholly inadequate audit/recount controls, despite Bowen's efforts to improve them.

California could be a Corporate Ruler write-off state. Let Jerry Brown try to fix this goddamn mess that the Bushwhacks created in order to "DROWN GOVERNMENT IN THE BATHTUB." Let HIM take the blame--a dirty game that Obama is suffering from as well. Bring on the bread lines, and the food riots, and the grannies in wheelchairs riots, and the student riots, and the starving and diseased poor children, and I don't know what-all these bastards have in mind...and let the Democrats be in power when it happens, then they can Diebold their Nazis into power and our democracy will be finally, really and truly, over.

So I'm not going to feel especially comforted if Brown wins--just as I never felt comforted when Obama won--because I KNOW the facts about our extremely vulnerable vote counting system, and what kind of power that gives to the rightwing nutballs running ES&S, including the power to pick and choose and carefully time their use of their easy--EASY!--control over election results.

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