Wednesday, November 09, 2005

CA-Init: Arnold the One-Term-inator

by kos

Wed Nov 09, 2005 at 11:23:45 AM PDT


To call California a disaster for Arnold is the biggest understatement of the year. Schwarzenegger spent $50 million of taxpayer money in an election in which every single ballot initiative failed, and failed handily (the closest prop, the parental notification one, failed by over 5 percent).

In one fell swoop:

  • Arnold lost his biggest leverage against the Democratic legislature -- the threat of taking his agenda straight to the voters.
  • He destroyed his early efforts to portray himself as a non-partisan moderate Republican. By the time this thing was over, Arnold was exposed as the tool of the right-wing Republican Party. The union-dues initiative was a blatant attempt to strip California Democrats from their biggest source of funding, while leaving Republican sources of political money free from interference.
  • Arnold's agenda, itself, was dramatically rejected by the voters. Of his four initiatives, the public union dues measure did best, and it failed by seven points. The rest of his proposals did much more poorly. His flagship spending measure failed by 24 points.
  • The perception of Arnold's invulnerability is shattered. As early as mid-year, Arnold was still viewed by the media as a formidable political force, unmatched by anything the Dems could offer up. Suddenly, Arnold is looking pretty shitty. And given that the strongest selling point against most of the initiatives was that "Arnold supported them", it bodes terrible for his 2006 chances.
  • By standing up for his special interests, Arnold is now near-universally reviled as a hypocrite. The California press has been full of stories of Arnold's prolific fundraising, surpassing even that of the hated Gray Davis. Schwarzenegger came into office on rampant (justified) discontent with the flood of special interest money into the political process. They've now realized that Arnold isn't any better. And his special interests are a lot worse than ours.

    Arnold will now try to move back to the center and pretend yesterday never happened. Too late. Yesterday happened, and will happen again in November 2006.

    He should really consider retirement.

    Update: $300 million was spent on this special election. Here's were the money went.

    Changed the title to reflect new nickname zeppomarx coined for Arnold in the comments.

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    • Tags: CA-Init, California, Arnold Schwarzenegger (all tags)
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