When Poll Numbers Don't Matter

I have to admit to feeling quite cheered by the plummeting poll numbers on George Bush and the Republicans in Congress. Still, it's early. Congressional elections are still a year away, and the next Presidential election is three years away. Even assuming continued governmental foul-ups (a reasonable assumption, given the past performance of the current regime)and further indictments (also fairly reasonable, given the ongoing investigations into the alleged insider-trading gaffe by Senate Majority Leader Frist and the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame), a Democratic sweep of all elected positions isn't a natural given.

It isn't just that the American public tends to have short memories. It's that unless an absolutely horrendous event happens closer to the election, Americans in general and Democrats in particular just don't get off their duffs and actually vote. We don't even have to get to the issue of vote rigging if the votes aren't there to count (or miscount). That's why a column written by Steve Lopez in the LA Times really hit home for me.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger insisted we had to have this special election next week. Despite a huge budget deficit, it couldn't wait until next year, which would have saved millions. It had to be now, because his "reforms" were too vital to delay another minute.

So the governor got his way, ramming the election down our throats. And now what does he want? He wants most of us to stay home next Tuesday.

That's right, he'd like us to skip the election he called for. Why? Because Big Boy knows the polls say that three of his four reforms are tanking and a fourth is a tossup, so his best chance of winning is to rally conservatives in a state with a vast Democratic majority. Prop. 73 could help his cause, since the parental notification proposal "defines abortion as causing the death of the unborn child, a child conceived but not yet born."

You've heard of democracy run amok? This would be direct democracy run amok, and if Schwarzenegger prevails, I believe California would officially become a banana republic. [Emphasis added]

Clearly this special election is the Governator's end-around the legislature, and clearly most of the propositions on the ballot are idiotic (the one an argument can be made for is the redisticting measure which would end gerrymandering for incumbents, but that issue could have waited for a regular election and saved us some badly needed cash). What concerns me is that those idiotic measures will have some heavy consequences for the state, and the Right Wing minority is counting on the fact that moderate people just don't freakin' vote anymore.

We hear a lot about the Republican flair for energizing its base. The Democrats had better find a way to do the same and to reach out to the moderate people if the current poll numbers are going to have any meaning. I hope Howard Dean realizes this and intends to do something about it.