I was (and still am) a big critic of this recall process, I personally just wish that it took
more signatures for ballot access like in other states, and that they used an IRV system of voting to judge the winner (still probably would've been Arnold due to his popularity, but we'll never know).
However, I must admit that the results of this election are really interesting. They've put "the Left" into a bit of a frenzy. On one hand, the victory of Schwarzenegger looks like a victory for "the people," true populism at it's best (it was afterall one of the populists who pushed the recall process into effect in Cali.). On the other side, as Ror has pointed out, it sort of speaks poorly for democracy. In today's Boston Globe, Robert Kuttner stated that "...in a sense, Hiram Johnson had a point. If elected officials want to keep the confidence of voters, they had better get serious about addressing real problems...Unfortunately, Johnson's remedy is allowing disgusted voters to wreck democracy itself."
I'm glad Ror voted his conscience and voted for McClintock.
I do enjoy the slight conundrum this has created for the conservative ideologues in the Republican Party. People like the pill popper Rush Limbaugh supported McClintock, didn't they...? Schwarzenegger is a prime example of the conflict in two-party electoral politics today. On one hand, these parties are self-perpetuating bureacracies, where winning comes long before ideology or conviction. Schwarzenegger isn't the Christian Coalition/socially conservative type that
wants to run the Party. He's more like the economic libertarian/socially liberal type, and he's a perfect fit, IMO, for any kind of Republican power in California (now whjether or not he has any real policy in mind is yet to be seen). Schwarzenegger can win votes, but he may not be "winning one for the team." He may in fact be changing the meaning of Republicanism in California, simultaneously expanding the party, while at the same time (in a sense) liberalizing it.
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