WELL, AS LONG AS MCCLINTOCK DOESNT . . . AND HE WONT

CNN reports that Peter Ueberroth is dropping out of the recall race.

Does this help Arnold? Pete's a moderate Republican, so perhaps the answer is yes. Or is it? It appeared that his support came from those moderate conservatives who wanted a "serious" candidate, and wouldn't touch Arnold with a 40-foot poll made entirely out of rolled-up copies of Oui magazine. Some of those voters may be pragmatists and find their way to Schwarzy, but not all, or perhaps not even a majority of them.

This does, however, increase the chances of the other Peter in the race, Camejo, dropping out in order to boost Bustamante's chances (though who knows what Arianna will do).

What I don't get is, Ueberroth just came out with tv ads and only just introduced his job creation plan (Shorter Ueberroth debate performance: "jobs . . . jobs . . . business . . . jobs . . . business, oops, i mean jobs . . . "). Does it only take 24 these days to get a sense of the impact of such things? Such a huge shift seems to suggest a very calculated decision about the recall election. Given Peter's social views (at least, the ones he has so far), it's unlikely that he's made a decision to swing his support towards McClintock. I doubt he'll endorse Arnold either; has Governor Gang-Bang done anything in the past month to make himself appear closer to being a "serious" candidate? Three-minute speeches, debate-ducking, the occasional egging, and stupid platitudinal nonsense about "cleaning house", "special interests", etc, none of this adds up to any real substance. Musclehead is running on his celebrity, that's it.

I'm sure CNN or whoever will verify this and then have a story up, maybe then we can make more sense of the situation.