Special Times in California

The Midwest doesn't stay up late enough for final election results from the West Coast, so I had to wait until this morning to discover that all of Arnold's propositions had fallen to defeat. I wasn't following the details of all this closely, but my understanding is that Arnold realized he could never get his proposals through the Democratic legislature, so he'd just go "over their heads" to the people and sell it through the sheer power of his charisma. Under normal circumstances, there would have been no election in California yesterday, but because Arnold insisted on putting his initiatives in front of the people rather than through the legislature, California taxpayers spent $50 million to set one up. And all so they could tell Arnold he really shouldn't have bothered. He was calling this special election the "sequel" to the 2003 recall that swept him into office, but if that's the case, then that makes next year's true gubernatorial election the third in the series. If this was The Voters Strike Back, we can only guess what happens a year from now.

For the time being, though, I suppose we can put away those Constitutional amendments allowing foreign-born citizens to run for president. We won't be needing them anymore.