Three headed multi-legged sack race

The Cal Secretary of State and the pro-recall groups have filed an appeal to try to reinstate the election blocked by the three judge panel of the 9th. For now, all the candidates are working on the assumption that the election will occur as scheduled.

Did a little history checking on the web and found this report on the Minnesota governor's race when Ventura beat out two well known professional politicos.

The final numbers: Ventura 37% Coleman 35% Humphrey 28%.

From the noises of McClintock and his supporters, they are not likely to bail out and throw their support to the Arnold.

The Arnold needs to go to school on how Ventura won in Minnesota because it doesn't look like Bustamante is going to explode under the weight of his own bad moves taking tons of money from the Indian tribes and saying he will raise taxes even more and being part of the failed Davis administration. In the end, there are that many yellow dog democrats in California who will NEVER vote for a republican.

The Arnold has to convince the independents he is a plausible candidate and draw in new voters. That was Ventura's amazing feat. It was so easy to dismiss him as the wrestler but with debate appearances he became plausible and he skillfully used his image as an outsider to bring in new voters and threw the old political calculations out the window.

If the Arnold can't replicate that feat, he will not be able to overtake Bustamante's core of democrat voters who aren't going to be swayed no matter what.

On the plus side, Bustamante is no Humphrey and McClintock is no Coleman. The charismatically challenged Bustamante is only going to get his base and not much more. And if enough democrats are distressed by the shanigans in Sacto, they may not vote. However, they start off with such a huge registration advantage Bustamante may still win even with weak turnout. McClintock is sharp as a tack and knows what he believes and says what he believes and he wins converts for his earnestness. However, the social liberalism of the typical independent voter is not likely to be won over by him. They may like his candor but they won't poke the chad for him. And so that leaves the Arnold. Unfortunately, they are running a cliche campaign counting on the other guys to self-destruct. That isn't going to be enough. The Arnold has the GOP voters who want to win. He may sway some of the Tombots if he shows some specificity on the issues they care about. If he can show himself as a plausible candidate he may draw in some independants and new voters who want to participate partly because of the novelty of this special election.

As it stands, after all the storming and raging by all sides, we may have Bustamante in the governors office and so the recall worked but left the dems still in charge.

Here's hoping the Arnold can turn it around.