My Civic Duty

Well, I did my civic duty; I voted. It's been a day, and I've got to stop being lazy about my political writing, so if nothing else, it's time to throw out a few thoughts on yesterday's elections.
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Of course, it's California that I'm most concerned with. As a Democrat, there wasn't much suspense in who my party would nominate in the two big races. Jerry Brown and Barbara Boxer, for all intent and purpose, ran unopposed. Some of the down slate races had names that might be real powers in the future. Most notably the two San Franciscans, Gavin Newsome and Kamala Harris. On the Republican side...well, what can I say. Multi-millionaires, Meg Whitman (A billionaire, actually.) and Carly Fiorina won. It will be fun to see how two candidates who went after the immigrant community (Supporting Arizona's new anti-immigrant law was the new standard for this year's Repugs.) will fare in a state with soooo many Hispanics. Not well, I suspect.
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Both Fiorina and Whitman tout their business backgrounds. I'm not quite sure why Carly does, considering she was fired for running Hewlett Packard into the ground. At least Whitman has been successful at her various corporate gigs. Both ladies love to point out that government doesn't create jobs, private enterprise does. As the big corporations give, so do they taketh away. In the case of Carly, she fired 30,000 American workers and outsourced their jobs to China. Meg wasn't much better. Before she ran eBay, she ran Hasbro. Under her leadership, the children's toy manufacturer also shipped jobs off to China. At least she provided jobs for lots of Chinese children. Such little fingers, so good for making Mr. Potato Heads. Of course, I will say this. The 80 million that Meg spent from her own pocket was an economic shot in the arm for California. At least I think she didn't outsource any campaign jobs.
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As anyone who has ever read either the original (See my first post for an explanation.) or the current version of The New Common Sense knows, I'm not a big fan of the initiative system. We Californians, through the ballot box, have pretty much banned political parties. (Maybe.) Our newly approved top two primary system, where all candidates run on a single non-partisan ballot, followed by a run-off of the top two, doesn't make much sense to me. The whole purpose of having parties is so that people, or coalitions of like minded people, can chose candidates to represent their own political philosophy. The backers of the proposition claim that it will eliminate extreme candidates and give us centrist choices. I don't want centrist choices. I want a supporter of labor unions, single payer health care, a true national pension system, stronger environmental laws, and a strong opponent of unlimited military spending. Oh well, I doubt it will survive court challenges. At least I hope not.
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Just when I thought that we Californians were powerless to resist the siren call of corporate sponsored propositions, we went and rejected prop. 16, sponsored by PG&E, which would have granted the utility near monopoly status, and prop. 17, sponsored by Mercury Insurance that would have royally screwed car owners come insurance renewal time. Small miracles. I guess the outlay of millions of dollars of corporate cash can't buy a victory after all. Carly, Meg, are you listening?
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My two favorite, non-California elections, were in Nevada and South Carolina. In Nevada, Tea Party candidate, Sharon Angle won the Repug primary and the right to oppose Harry Reid for his U.S. Senate seat. Let's see, her ambition is to get rid of Social Security, medicare, the EPA, the Department o Education, and maybe ban the consumption of Alcohol. That will go over big in Vegas. And South Carolina...Democrats are crying foul over the nomination of unknown Alvin Greene to run against ultraconservative, nut case, Jim DeMint. Just because Greene is an unemployed veteran without a college degree, who lives in his parents house, and may be charged with a sex crime at sometime in the near future, they think they've been robbed of the chance to defeat DeMint. The main stream candidate probably wouldn't have beat DeMint, so why not nominate Greene? Who knows, South Carolina is just crazy enough that Greene might have a chance. If nothing else, his unemployed status might win him the unemployed vote, and in South Carolina, that's a lot of people.