Yeah, it sucks that Arnold’s our governor, but it’s not like he stole a bunch of votes like Dubya. He won by a pretty wide margin and the Democrats have nobody to blame for that one but themselves. Since day one, they should have been putting forward a clear political message on why Gray Davis shouldn’t be replaced. Why was Davis running the “This recall is a circus” commercial? The majority of Californians didn’t care. Davis should have been running ads with messages like this :

“Thanks to Pete Wilson’s deregulation schemes, energy companies have stolen billions of dollars from the pockets of California’s working families. Now Pete Wilson is the chairman of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s campaign. When you vote on Oct. 7th, ask yourself ‘Can California afford another energy crisis?’”

Instead, by belittling the whole process, Davis and Bustamante just looked like they were pandering to the people.

Now that we’re stuck with the Governator (HA! Get it?? I made a reference to one of his movies! Man, I bet I’m the first person to do that!), should we recall Arnold now?? Opinions are mixed. Kevin Drum has has come out against the idea :

Fighting Arnold or trying to recall him is hopeless, and we should forget about it. A recall would fail, it would engender a big backlash among California voters who are tired of the circus, and it would make the Democratic party look like obstructionists and crybabies.

But this has got to stop. We should be mad as hell over what’s happening, and we do need to be willing to fight every bit as nasty as the Republican leadership is obviously willing to fight. It’s pretty obvious they simply don’t understand any other language.

But we don’t just want to get mad, we also want to get even. And that means picking our battles. State and local action is important, and we should fight hard for every governorship and every congressional seat, all the way down to every city council seat. But ? to kill a snake you cut off its head.

Texas-style Republicanism is the engine of the radical right today, and George Bush is its leader. He should be our target, not Arnold Schwarzenegger. So stay mad, stay mad as hell, but stay smart too. November 2004 is the next battleground, and evicting George Bush from the White House is our goal. Don’t forget it.

While Kos is already planning the next recall :

The law stipulates 90 days before any recall petitions can be filed. That’s okay. We don’t want to file any recall petition until we’re within 80 days of the early March primary.

It looks like we’ll need about 1 million signatures to get the recall on the ballot — not a difficult task. The recall provisions of the California constitution are ridiculously easy to meet.

If timed to coincide with the March primaries, the new recall effort will cost the state little. The reason this recall cost so much is because the state had to create an entire election from scratch. In March, we’re already having an election — the presidential primaries (both senate and Republican).

And given the fact we’ll have a contested Democratic party (as opposed to the sleeper on the GOP side), turnout will clearly favor the recall Arnold forces.

At the time, Arnold will have had six months to prove himself. If he survives sexual harrassment lawsuits and a hostile California legislature, and then garners 50 percent of the vote, then great.

But he should have to prove himself the same way the GOoPers forced Davis to prove himself — 50 percent plus one.

And once the Republicans have been bitten by a recall, then maybe both parties can sit down and amend the constitution to make recalls a much fairer process and difficult proposition.

I’m torn here. As great as it would feel to give the Republicans a taste of their own medicine, it would just end up making the Democrats look like sore losers.

That said, the Democrats (as well as the rest of us on the left) don’t need to just take the moral high ground here. The Republicans have been winning big over the past ten years because they fight dirty and they never give up. Is it “sinking to their level”? Maybe. But if that’s what it takes to win, so be it. Just as you can’t show up to a gun battle with a knife and expect to survive, the Democrats need to stop being pansies and start getting pissed off.