Bump In The Road

Whoops. Arnold won't support the term limits measure unless redistricting is also on the initiative menu for Feb. 2008. And Perata doesn't want to mess with the Congressional districts. So either it's all going down in flames or we'll have an old-fashioned partisan Governor v. Legislature war.

Would I HAVE to pick sides?

...adding, Arnold is being perfectly consistent here. He always said term limits would be the carrot to get redistricting done. For my part, I don't think anyone understands the degree to which Californians (actually all Americans) gerrymander THEMSELVES. Regional redistricting has been going on at the individual level for a while now. Exactly how are you going to make a balanced district, say, in Santa Monica? You'd have to reverse-gerrymander to get it.

The only way that districts change is demographically, as more and more people from the coastal cities move to the inland areas, for example. That's what we saw in CA-11; the partisan number there lowered enough to make McNerney viable. And if Democrats would stop worrying about how hard it would be to run a race in a red area and just spend the money to do it, they could win anywhere. Case in point: Charlie Brown in CA-04, who was let down by the California Democratic Party (and Art Torres just admitted it:)

Despite the strong Republican composition of the district and Brown's failure to oust Doolittle amid a wave election, the Democrats smell blood. California Democratic Party Chairman Art Torres said Brown might have won last year's race if the party had given him more help and said Democrats don't want to make that mistake again.

"I was out on the campaign trail with him and his wife, and he really resonates with that district," Torres said. "Did we do enough? Probably not; we should have done more."

All talk. Let's see some action, Chairman.