Is California in play?

[coloradodem2005]

I was watching Tweety because there was nothing for me to do. One journalist was talking about how Ahnold's bond proposal was going to go through. That it would be good for him. They really pumped him up. They mentioned this putting California in play. Your thoughts.


On another note, will the outcome of this election be based solely on the economy?

[mitchtv]

1. wait and see

the bond proposal is not a shoe-in; it was losing last week with an enormous undecided percentage , over 20%. The Dems want it too, all that money. I am voting no on all except prop 56 which gets rid of the 2/3 majority to pass a budget.

[Athame]

2. Doesn't look good

In our Independent (mostly progressive) weekly newspaper this week, the editorial board urged a Yes vote on the bond measure, actually saying, "Just hold your nose and vote yes. Otherwise there will be serious social services disruptions and cutbacks."

It's hard to hold on to hope here, especially after the recall.

[shanti]

8. there will be serious problems even if you DO vote for them!

this is only for the budget year 2004. what about 2005?? watch what happens in july.

[mitchtv]

11. I am getting no services from the state as it is

I should vote for billions of debt? The pukes didn't care about the economy or stability in October. they hate gay people like me. let him close everything down and see what GOP economics does. My town has stopped cleaning the streets, watering the parks, and is perpared to turn off the street lights. Let them raise taxes on Motor vehicles. these F'n idiots around here are all driving SUVs they can't afford, gas is $2.50/gal, and they all want their 200-300 dollars back . Kiss my *ss. they can't even f*n drive, half of them. accidents all day long.Sorry for the rant

[mbee]

13. Does any CA DUer know of a person named Tammy

Bruce? She appeared on C-Span last week and claimed to be a Liberal, but she's voting for Bush because he'll keep her safe or some crock of crap like that. Apparently, she was part of Gov.Arnold transition team and she's planning to be a talk show host. I think this woman is a R/W plant who will do damage before the election talking up how there's no difference between Democrats and Republicans. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but the R/W does a lot of damage claiming to be Liberals when they really aren't. I've never heard too much about Democrats doing the same thing over on the Republican side.

[mitchtv]

15. LA talk show , I believe

I am not an angelino so I don't know

[VOX]

16. She's as RW as they come...

Claims to have been a liberal, and was active in NOW, but was a big backer of Arnie, and is a favorite of Hannity and G. Gordon Liddy. She is openly lesbian but is against gay marriage. Runs a regular column in the ultra-right-wing NewsMax. Recent wrote the book: "The Death of Right and Wrong: Exposing the Left's Assault on Our Culture and Values." (The title pretty much explains her stance.)

She's either the sellout of the century, or has been RW all along. Either way, she's a menace.

[wryter2000]

3. The propositions will pass

But I don't think that means we're "in play" for Bush in 2004. I don't think he has a chance of winning CA.

[coloradodem2005]

5. I hope you are right.

We all know the importance of California.

[mitchtv]

9. if we all knew

California wouldn't be letting red states decide our nominee.

[tedoll78]

4. Latest polls came-out showing that..

a Kerry-Edwards ticket would defeat Bush-Cheney by about 12%. That's the margin that Gore won by in 2000, and this was a poll of likely voters. California, barring some catastrophic event, is safe once again. We can concentrate our Western States resources on Oregon, Washington, Arizona, Nevada, and New Mexico. Maybe run an ad or two in October for CA, but that's about all we'll need.

[coloradodem2005]

6. Colorado too. I don't want to be a red state for Chimp.

[rockymountaindem]

17. Me neither

but it's gonna happen.

[diplomats]

10. Thanks for the update

I do think we have a good chance to win Ariz. and Nevada, two states Bush won in 2000.

[shanti]

7. well, i'm not voting for his proposals

methinks that if they're so sure of the outcome, they've already got it down. i wouldn't vote for ANYTHING he puts out there. prop 56 is sandwiched between his proposals, it's not his, and i will vote for prop 56 which applies sanctions to the cal legislature if the budget isn't signed on time.

[disenfranchised]

12. There is a problem.

I think that the democrats campaigning for Arnold's proposals is a huge mistake. It comes across like they are campaigning for Arnold and for Republicans to bail the Democrats out of the mess that they created. The Democrats are giving credibility to the Republicans in California and to belief that Democrats are irresponsible with money.

[JasonDeter]

14. Considering the republican minority held up the budget last year

to make Davis look bad, but strangely no Democrat made that an issue anythings possible anymore. BUT I DOUBT IT. bush* is the most hated man on the planet. Most American's would prefer a coffee table instead of bush*. The republicans ARE NOT a majority in California, the Democrats are. For bush* to win in California alot of Democrats would have to vote for bush*. I don't think so.

edit: the Democrats have 6.7 million voters, the republicans have 5.3 million mind numbed lemmings. So for bush* to win, way over a million Democrats would have to vote for him! Can anyone seriously see that?

[tobius]

18. heard something like that before arnold was elected.

democrats have been supporting him and the local bay area press predicts that if his bond proposals pass his power will be unprecedented in recent CA history.--

``This is unprecedented,'' says Kevin Starr, the California state librarian and historian. ``The governor is not just making law, he is changing the way we do business.'' <snip>
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/8068235.htm

``The early polls showed it would lose,'' noted John Pitney Jr., government professor at Claremont McKenna College. ``If it wins, it would mean the governor was able to turn around a large chunk of public opinion and that's an ability all politicians respect. -- If I'm a legislator in Sacramento and Arnold wins this thing, I'm thinking he's going to roll me over one way or another.

[JasonDeter]

20. An abuser of women loved by the press. go figure

So it is true, whether abuse of women is ok depends on what political party you belong to. How sick is that?

[cmayer]

19. If we lose CA, it won't matter anyway

If we don't hold California, we will have lost so many battleground states that the only thing it will change is the final score.

I'm from Virginia, and I was surprised to see someone list Virginia as a battleground state. If we win Virginia, it won't matter because it will have been a landslide all the way.

[ParanoidPat]

21. A 'shoe-in', a 'sneaker' or 'the boot'.....

In the California 2000 Presidential election, Al Gore received 5,861,203 votes or 53.5% of the vote and George W Bush* received 4,567,429 votes or 41.7% of the vote. That's a difference of 1,293,774 votes or 11.8% of the vote. Not exactly the 'close' race experienced in other parts of the country.

Using those figures as a starting point, lets examine what factors could sway the 'average' Californian in this years election.

We'll start with jobs since you can't live without money. The following article from the Bay Area Council shows that the job market was strong in 2000 with job growth much higher than the estimates.

2000 Strong, 2001 Uncertain

In February, California released revised employment figures for the state and
metropolitan areas. For the Bay Area, the revised numbers show wage and salary
growth much higher than previous estimates. This growth continued into the fourth
quarter of 2000, despite earlier reports to the contrary. The fourth quarter employment
and unemployment figures give no hint of the troubles of new economy and
dot-com industries.
While the economy slowed nationally, the nine-county Bay Area added nearly
167,838 new nonfarm jobs in 2000, according to estimates based on recently revised
California Employment Development Department (EDD) data. This is a 4.9 % increase
over fourth quarter 1991 or more than one-fourth of regional employment gains
over the past 5 years. At the end of December 2000, nonfarm employment totaled
almost 3.6 million compared with just over 3.4 million at the end of 1999 and 3.0
million at the end of 1995 (Figure 1).

<More>

By the middle of 2003 the jobs situation in California had changed drastically as this Aug. 3, 2003 Press Release from California Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D-CA) clearly shows.

Congresswoman Barbara Lee Comments on Latest California Unemployment Figures

Latest Statistics Show 21,800 More Jobs Lost in the State During July

Oakland, CA, Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D-CA) said today that the latest figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics confirm that President Bush’s economic policies continue to hurt workers in California. Since President Bush took office, 285,600 jobs have been lost in California, with 21,800 of these jobs lost during the month of July.

Since President Bush was inaugurated in January 2001, the economy has lost a total of 3.2 million private-sector jobs. The unemployment rate nationwide is 6.2%, with 9.1 million people out of work across the country, an increase of 51% since Bush took office. In addition, 470,000 people have given up looking for work altogether because they believe no jobs are available. In California, the unemployment rate stands at 6.6%; on Bush’s Inauguration Day, the rate was 4.7%.

The poor economy under the Bush Administration has had a particularly devastating impact on the nation’s manufacturing sector. In July, the economy lost an additional 71,000 manufacturing jobs. Indeed, overall, 2.5 million of the 3.2 million private-sector jobs lost since January 2001 have been in the manufacturing sector.

<More>

In January, KPIX was reporting good news for the jobless in California was just ahead.... :)

Hope for Bay Area Job Growth in 2004

Len Ramirez

The New Year brings renewed prospects for job growth. Economists predict rising corporate profits will prompt companies to hire aggressively in 2004.

Such predictions are a ray of hope for tens of thousands of unemployed workers in Silicon Valley.

<Snip> But with qualifiers..... :(

Nationwide, the unemployment rate is at 5.9% and could drop to 5.5% by November.

California's unemployment figures are still much higher than the nation as a whole.

Silicon Valley, still feeling the sting of the high-tech bust, has the second highest unemployment rate of any large metro area in the country at 7.2 percent.

Although the high-tech economy is showing signs of revving up -- demand for semiconductor, hardware and software products is now higher than at any other time in the past three years -- the building blocks for a full Silicon Valley recovery are still not in place.

<More>

Others like the San Fransisco Chronicle were not so convinced.

California's job loss parallels U.S. report

For 6 of past 7 months, payrolls shrank

Chronicle Staff, Saturday, January 17, 2004

Strong national economic growth isn't boosting California's job count.

The state lost 8,400 jobs outside the farm sector in December, the sixth month in the last seven that California payrolls shrank, the state Employment Development Department reported Friday.

The state's job loss parallels December's disappointing national unemployment report, which showed that payrolls were virtually unchanged across the country.

<Snip>

The state's unemployment rate fell to 6.4 percent, down from a revised 6. 5 percent in November. But the drop is misleading.

Unemployment rates dropped sharply in the Bay Area in December, even though payrolls were little changed. In the San Francisco metropolitan area, which includes Marin and San Mateo counties, the jobless rate fell to 4.5 percent from a revised 5 percent in November. In Santa Clara County, the rate fell to 6.4 percent from 7.3 percent.

Both areas shed jobs during December. Payrolls in Santa Clara County shrank by 1,100, while those in the San Francisco area dipped by 600.

The apparent contradiction of fewer jobs and declining unemployment occurred because thousands of people left the labor force in December and were no longer counted as unemployed.

<More>

Without a job and steady income many people are forced to file bankruptcy. The Bay Area and Silicon Valley are doing better than much of the nation for now but the immediate future doesn't hold much promise as this article from the San Jose Mercury News points out.

Posted on Sun, Dec. 21, 2003

Bankruptcies stay low in valley -- for now

By Mark Schwanhausser Mercury News

Despite an economic meltdown that has cost Santa Clara County nearly one-fifth of its jobs, Silicon Valley is proving to be more resilient than the rest of the nation by one benchmark: the rate of people filing for personal bankruptcy.

So far, at least.

Americans filed a record 1.7 million bankruptcy petitions for the year that ended Sept. 30, with people in the Midwest and parts of the West taking the hardest hit. But the San Jose division of U.S. Bankruptcy Court is on pace to handle only an average caseload -- 8,500 filings this year -- despite the valley's economic misery.

Experts credit the Bay Area's surprising endurance to its mobile, high-income workforce and buoyant real estate prices. Here, more than elsewhere, the unemployed still have savings or can fall back, at least temporarily, on the wealth they draw down from their homes.

Some experts warn, however, that the worst is yet to come in the valley in 2004 because the number of local bankruptcy filings has climbed 15 percent this year. Even though the valley's economy shows signs of coming back to life, it could be too late for thousands of residents.

``This is just the bare tip of the iceberg,'' said Norma Hammes, a partner with Gold and Hammes, a bankruptcy firm in San Jose. ``I don't care what you say about how the economy is rebounding. . . . It's the long-term drain on people that will ultimately force them into bankruptcy.''

<Snip>

Although the San Jose division's bankruptcy rate is still lower than the rest of the nation, the number of filings has jumped an alarming 39 percent since the boom times of 2000. (The division includes Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Monterey and San Benito counties.) The total number of filings has jumped 15 percent over the past year alone -- double the rate of increase nationally.

<More>

I could go on and on posting about cost of living, energy prices, home forclosures, school closings, teacher layoffs, the pending real estate crash as housing prices start to fall, crumbling infrastructure, rising deficets and dwindling tax revenues but I think you get the drift.

My guess is that GW gets the boot from Californians this time around by a much bigger margin than last time. :evilgrin: