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Monday, July 19, 2004
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DEMOCRATS ARE PUSSIES, PART THE FIRST
California's governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, has finally noticed that it's an election year. Election years usually mean that you get to do really fun things, like call people impolite names. Arnold is shockingly uncreative at this. On Saturday, he referred to Democrats as "girlie men."
As some of you may or may not know, I wrote a series of essays about the California recall election that you can read here, here and here. Among the points I made in that series is that California is constitutionally designed to be ungovernorable. Essentially, anything that a government is supposed to be elected to do is addressed by popular vote. This overlooks a small problem, voters are stupid. Voters will pass a ballot inititive that calls for the greatest schools in all of christendom as they pass another that disallows the raising of property taxes, which, in a charmingly fun way, fund schools. Then, eventually, voters will wake up one day to find their children illiterate and violent. This, of course, leads to a recall movement that throws the governor out of office. Once everybody feels better about icing the governor, they'll turn around and re-elect the legislature which caused all of the problems in the first place.
Politicians are incredibly unpopular. Their approval ratings are slightly below those child molesters virtually everywhere. Schwarzenegger is an important exception to the rule. He's a celebritry. Celebrities are allowed to get away with virtually anything, so long as they do it with a snappy catchphrase. This annoys the hell out of California's political class because they realise that they're powerless in the face of fame.
There's also the issue of popularity. There is one very important number that everybody needs to keep in mind. That number is 67. That's Schwarzenegger's approval rating, which if I'm not mistaken, is higher than any single human has had in that state in my lifetime. Much of that can be attributed to his celebrity, but not all. Arnold is a surprisingly astute politician. He is also a Republican, although he rarely identifies himself this way. As a Republican, he would like to see more Republicans in Sacramento, where there are currently about three. Electing Republicans necessititates defeating Democrats.
That's where the name calling comes in.
The problem is that the Democrats are powerless in the face of Arnold's celebrity and they know it. They are incapable of winning a pissing match with the Terminator. All one need do is look at the last week of the recall campaign where he was accused of being a Nazi and a borderline rapist to boot. And he still won by an almost unimaginable margin. All voters see is the superstar and they're swept away. "Oh, Christ," they exclaim. "He fucking rocked in True Lies!" Arnold can say virtually anythng and get away with it.
And what do the Democrats do? They whine and run to their base. "You can't call us Girlie-men," they cry. "That's derogatory toward women and homosexuals!" Except women and homosexuals are just as swept away by Arnold's star power as everyone else. In the end, they just look pathetic and sad.
But this should lead to another interesting point. Schwarzenegger seems unbeatable at this point. Nothing seems to blow up in his face. He can literally say anything and get away with it. That makes the race to watch this year not the presidential one, which John Kerry seems almost desperate to lose, but the one for the Sacremento statehouse. If Arnold can translate his personal popularity to his party of choice, there can be a massive bloodletting in November. Depending on who involved Arnold gets, it could also swing some congressional seats.
But it should be a lot of fun to watch.
UPDATE: George Will still seems to like Arnold though. Well, I think he does. Will is so smart that its sometimes hard to tell what he's saying. The comparison between Bismarck and Conan the Republican was pretty neat though.
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