Forget CA - 50 Look At The State-Wide Result

I don't think much can be learned from CA-50, except perhaps that liberals in the Democrat Party need to start being more realistic with their post election analysis. Today, Matt Stoller is turning My Direct Democracy into his Direct Dementia by proclaiming Bilbray a progressive.

Brian Bilbray ran to the left of Francine Busby. I know it sounds weird, but he did. That he won on a progressive platform is biggest story of the night.

Just three weeks ago, MyDD was singing a different tune.

Attacks on the moderate Busby as being "too liberal" have failed and have limited credibility coming from a lobbyist.

Making the results of any election say what we want to hear isn't going to give us a strong two party system. Both parties understanding the electorate is. And what the state-wide California electorate had to say yesterday sounds pretty good if you're a Republican, or Right-leaning Independent.

Proposition 82 was a classic tax the rich entitlement ploy. It wasn't just defeated, it was stomped into the ground - 59.3% to 40.7%. What, other than tax the rich have we been hearing from liberal Democrats on fiscal policy? It doesn't even sell in California. If Progressives think that's the good news, they'd be better off reading a Gideon bible.

The ballot measure would have imposed a 1.7 percent tax on individuals with incomes above $400,000 and on couples with incomes above $800,000 to raise $2.4 billion to fund the preschool program.

Prop 81 did better, but not by much.

53.4 percent of votes had been cast against Proposition 81 and 46.6 percent of votes had been cast in favor of the measure, which proposed the general obligation debt sale to finance building and renovating libraries.

Yesterday, one of the most progressive states in the Union said no to higher taxes, even when alleged to be only for the rich. And they said no to another government spending initiative.

The day of the government program-minded Democrat is over, they can no longer sell pie in the sky to the general population. And they are too beholding to special interest groups to ever propose serious cuts outside of the Pentagon. Iraq War, or no, a security minded America doesn't want its military gutted, again.

America wants smaller, more fiscally responsible government and, read my lips, no new taxes. I'm not worried about the Democrats being able to cobble together some ad hoc agenda that even remotely resembles that.

What troubles me more is how and why the GOP lost touch with what Americans have wanted for years.

Talk about minds thinking alike. Check this out from Bruce Kesler at The Democracy Project

Comments

[tester]

Does $400,000/individual and $800,000/couple fall in middle class in CA?

I would guess that in some areas, it might be middle-upper and upper middle class.

[Sgt. York]

RE: "America wants... more fiscally responsible government"

Huh? The national debt is over $8,371,459,999,999.99 and increasing 1.75 billion every day. What happened to the Republican Party?

* The anti-modernist Evangelical-Republicans are running about hysterically screaming "We must stop boys from kissing boys" as they edit science books to say geology and carbon-dating is just a 'theory' and that the earth is only 6000-years old.

* The utopianist Libertarian-Republicans will yet again attempt to destroy Social Security in order to plunge an entire generation of elderly into poverty in a moronic attempt to create the sophomoric and unworkable 'anarcho-capitalist' fantasy of Ayn Rand. These people are as goofy as the Scientologists.

* The robber-baron Wallstreet-Republicans are salivating over the prospect of amnesty and guest-workers flooding the labor market to ensure your average laborer, factory-employee, and construction-worker is competing for Mexican-level wages. Not to mention driving down the salaries of all those 'egg-heads' in the science fields as every tech-worker from around the world floods the USA market.

Apparently the solution is to ban the Dixie Chicks from country radio and pass a bill to stop hippies from burning the flag. Unless you are a Democrat then... oh my gawd, it's global-warming and we are all doomed in the new and improved end-times apocalyptic destruction of the world! We must all use bicycles, abandon modern medicine and science, and live 'at one with nature' to save the world. We are sooo screwed.

[Rick]

Sgt York don't be so disheartend. There isn't a nickles worth of difference between the two parties. They party, we pay. You'll see when the dems rich white guys take over from the reps rich white guys. The only difference is one uses vaseline, the other K-Y

[tester]

Where are the moderates? Cripes, I don't care which party...I just want a moderate that has the nuts to stay moderate.

I'm not so sure 82 was considered by the broad population to be "tax the rich". I wonder if it would have passed if the threshold was higher. So, I'm not sure any statements about CA moving to the right would ring true.

[Matt Stoller]

Those were two different people from MyDD. I would hope you make that clear, since you seem to be implying that there's some contradiction.