GRAY "D-1000" DAVIS

I watched Davis' rebuttal speech, and from what I could tell, he hit almost all the right notes.

Five years ago this week, we had the peak of Scaifegate, when Clinton admitted his relationship with Monica, took responsibility for it, and vowed to fight the GOP's undemocratic witchunt. Now, it seems that Davis, who recently hung out with the birthday boy, has taken a former Democratic survivor's advice to heart. In his speech, Davis painted the recall exactly as he should have:

This recall is bigger than California. What's happening here is part of an ongoing national effort to steal elections Republicans cannot win. (long, long applause break) It started with the impeachment of President Clinton, when the Republicans could not beat him in 1996. It continued in Florida, where they stopped the vote count, depriving thousands of Americans of the right to vote. This year, they're trying to steal additional congressional seats in Colorado and Texas, overturning legal redistricting plans. Here in California, the Republicans lost the governor's race last November. Now they're trying to use this recall to seize control of California just before the next presidential election...

If Gray Davis is to survive as governor of the state, this is a big part of what he needs to do. Framing the recall as part of the Republican national trend towards un-democracy seems to be the way to go. One knock on Davis in past elections is that the thrusts of his campaigns haven't been about who he is but rather about considering the bleak alternatives (Lungren, Simon). I'd say that characterization isn't completely fair in regard to his 1998 campaign, but some of the CW was that the recall election would force Davis to have to try to launch a positive campaign about himself, putting him at a distinct disadvantage because he *hasn't* done that before. The thing is, politically, there's a chance that he still doesn't have to do that. If he adopts a twofold campaign strategy consisting of 1) "they wouldn't have done any better had they been in my place during the energy crisis, budget crunch, etc" (a sort of modification of the "consider the alternative" strategy), and 2) pointing out the disdain for democracy held by the Republicans who launched the recall effort, that could be enough to keep him relatively competitive in early October.

Of course, this could all be rendered moot tomorrow if a federal judge agrees with the ACLU and delays the election until march. If that happens, then the high Democratic turnout as a result of the coinciding presidential primary, coupled with a likely erosion of support for the recall due to a number of factors, would not only keep Ahh-nuld or any of the Repubs from winning the statehouse, but would likely guarantee Gray's survival.

UPDATE: obviously Mr Zuniga either reads me, or thinks like me. Probably, nay, definitely the latter.