Jesse at Pandagon has a post discussing the latest wingnut fantasy: Obama could lose California. After he wins California easily, I'm sure they'll chalk it up to illegal immigrants voting or some such thing.
Anyway, Jesse pointed out that no one is putting any resources into early voting for California; since the states 55 electoral votes are a lock, Obama doesn't need to spend money there and McCain is apparently convinced that he has even less of a chance of getting those votes than he does Pennsylvania - which is true, but reality is such a stranger to that campaign I'm actually a bit surprised he's not abandoning the entire nation to focus on winning over Berkeley.
This dynamic goes a long way toward explaining why California is such a weird state. To the rest of the nation, it's a super-ultra-liberal enclave all the way through. Nothing could be further from the truth, of course, as the farther you go from the coast, the more conservative you get. East Bay San Francisco has wingnut enclaves that would make Mississippi jealous. So the state that reliably commits 20% of the 270 electoral votes that Democrats need to win the Presidency is the one that recalled its Democratic Governor and has foisted such Republican all-stars as Randy "Duke" Cunningham, John Doolittle and Richard Pombo upon Congress.
While the California Democratic Party is large and successful, it still could benefit from national attention and support. If the President was elected by popular vote, Obama would have been spending some of his millions in California, and would have imposed his incredible organizational structure on them as well. More Democrats would be registered, and Democrats would be banking early votes in California the way we are in other states. These Democratic voters would not only vote for Obama, but would also vote to defeat Proposition 8, the hateful attempt by the Mormon and Catholic Churches and others to take away the existing right for same-sex couples to marry and impose their religious beliefs upon all others in the state, including many established Christian churches.
The fight over Proposition 8 in California - along with a host of other issues, such as the execrable Proposition 187 that passed in the 1994 - shows us how the national party's necessary focus on electoral votes every four years damages our efforts to advance the progressive agenda in all parts of the country. Switching to direct election of our Presidents would require nationwide party building of which Dean's 50-state strategy is only a pale shadow, and the benefits could be enormous.
As it is, if you're in California or you know people who are, get out and vote and/or pester those you know to do the same. Unless they're going to vote in favor of Proposition 8. Then you might consider the ways you can discourage them or sabotage their attempts to get to the polls. All's fair in love and elections, you know.
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