A Massachusetts Miracle in California?
Two events this week could be harbingers for the kind of year Democrats face in California. The latest Field Poll finds that 95 percent of Californians believe we are in “bad times,” and 60 percent say their own well being has worsened over the past 12 months – since Barack Obama became president. This is not exactly “change we can believe in.”
The second event, of course, is the Massachusetts Miracle, Sen-elect Scott Brown’s triumph for Ted Kennedy’s old Senate seat. It has fallen like a brick on a teacup, and it has important implications for California. Could the Republicans do here what they did in Massachusetts?
To answer that, it pays to look at Massachusetts and the Brown campaign. This is the most Democratic big state in the country; more Democratic than California. The last time a Republican won a US Senate race was 37 years ago. If it could happen there, it can happen here.
But the Republicans had a remarkable candidate in Scott Brown; he was a moderate member of their legislature, pro-choice, and he ran exclusively on economic issues – the very thing the Field Poll says Californians want addressed. He campaigned hardest in working class towns like Worcester.
What the Massachusetts Miracle Means for the Golden State
Politics is cyclical, and Scott Brown’s victory in last night’s special Senate election in deep-blue Massachusetts proves that 2010 will be nothing like 2008.
Since Barack Obama has taken office, the Democrats have lost control of the governor’s offices in Virginia and New Jersey, forfeited the opportunity to control the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, and now the United States Senate seat previously held by Ted Kennedy.
For the Democrats, there is no nice way to spin the loss. Massachusetts does not have a single Republican House member, and the party is virtually an endangered species in the state legislature. It is not a “purple” or competitive state – Massachusetts is Democrat country, and yet the incumbent Attorney General could not win a race that should have been a walk in the park.
The party in power brought this debacle on themselves.
Fiorina Scoffs at Boxer’s Fund-raising
Any campaign press release typically should be read with many grains of salt readily available, but the latest blast from Republican Carly Fiorina’s Senate effort also should include a couple of asterisks.
Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer’s campaign fired out a release Tuesday, patting themselves on the back for raising more than $1.8 million in the quarter ending Dec. 31, their best showing of the election cycle.
Californians are writing those checks “because they understand we are fighting for the future of our state,” the senator said in the release.
Not so fast, said Team Fiorina. Those fund-raising numbers, combined with new poll numbers actually “spell storm clouds” for Boxer’s campaign.
The Sky is Not Falling in California Because of the Massachusetts Election Result
The sky over Massachusetts is reported to have fallen last night. But California isn’t Massachusetts, and it certainly isn’t Washington, D.C., where the reverberations are being felt.
If, at a superficial level, both the Bay State and the Golden State can be labeled reliably Blue, yesterday’s outcome may bolster the hopes of California Republicans who are fueling their 2010 campaigns with the hope that their party is not destined to chronic irrelevancy.
But if you look at the size and ethnic make up of both states’ electorates, it is immediately evident that the two places have little in common politically.
Barbara Boxer, Jerry Brown and every one of California’s Democratic leaders would be well served to scrutinize the data coming out of Massachusetts, and to overlay that information on what they already know about political attitudes and trends in California. But they need to be very thoughtful about the conclusions they draw.
California’s Next Retraining Economy
One little-recognized impact of this Great Recession is the hastening of California’s next retraining economy.
For years, even before the Recession, there was enormous movement, resembling Brownian motion, of California workers among jobs. In the 1990s and early 2000s when the economy was running well, and unemployment below 6%, the number of job turnovers, of hirings and separations, totaled over 40% of total employment per year in California, as elsewhere in the United States.
What has changed in the Recession is the shift from movement due to voluntary job changes (“quits” in Bureau of Labor Statistics terms) to movement due to job layoffs/discharges. Nationwide, the quit level, the measure of workers’ willingness to change jobs, was 1.8 million in September 2009, 43% lower than its peak in December 2006. At the same time, the discharge level for September 2009 was 2.1 million, 35% higher than its trough in January 2006.