Recently in 2010 General Election Category

Why won't Jerry Brown just announce that he is running for Governor?  Why won't he campaign?  Why is he letting Meg Whitman get so far ahead of things in this campaign?  Does he just assume he has it "in the bag?"

I suspect that is exactly what he assumes.  My take on Brown is that Democrats who were around when he was Governor and later when he ran for President in 1992 are going to support him, many quite strongly, and they regularly let him know this.  I suspect it is hard for him to go anywhere without stopping to shake a hand and hear from someone who tells him what a great Governor he was, that his ideas on energy and the environment were so far ahead of their time, that he should have been elected President, etc.

So he probably feels a wind at his back wherever he goes.  This is for sure: the "moonbeam" things Brown was about like energy and the environment and unions have proven to be the right things.  I wrote about this almost a year ago, 

He was called "Moonbeam" and mocked, but he was right, and we were right, and the country needs to come to terms with this so we can move on and finally DO right.

. . . It is 30 years later and the country needs to get past that mocking of the people who were right. But the mocking and obstruction by entrenched interests are still in the way of letting us move on and do the things we need to do for the economy, the country, and the planet.

The problem with this is that it really is 30 years later now.  This is 2010, and that pool of people just isn't big enough by any means.  You have to be "a certain age" to even care.  He needs to find a way to reach out and be relevant to people who were not around when he was Governor or when he ran for President.

Does he realize this?  If he is not meeting a lot of the people to whom he just isn't relevant and who just don't care, he might not be picking this up at all.  But it just is the case.  He needs to start campaigning and saying things that are relevant to the 21st century of he is going to win this election.

 

In last week's post progressive voters on strike? Santa Barbara blogger Retired UC Santa Barbara Professor of sociology and renowned social activist, Richard Flacks looks at recent polls showing Democratic voters to be unenthusiastic about voting while Republican voters are highly motivated.  Professor Flacks writes,

These numbers tell us that the Democrats are going to lose the elections in  2010, but the underlying data are even more disturbing. They show that the heart of  Obama;s support base is not planning to vote next year.

. . . The same sort of disillusionment pervades the ranks of liberal and progressive activists. Each week we can add new instances of administration betrayal of our hopes. The latest include the handling of the Honduras coup (defying near unanimity in the rest of the hemisphere),  and the continuation of Bush policies on  the land mine treaty. The escalation of the war dwarfs all these other failures.

This is not President Obama's fault, necessarily,

I've said in this space that it's the structure of power in America rather than Obama's weakness of will that accounts for the growing feeling that the chances for progressive reform are slipping away.

Professor Flacks' post looks at a national poll, the "base" sense of betrayal is on national issues, and President Obama is not from California, but there is no reason to believe California Democrats are any more enthused.  More likely less so.  California Democrats who do pay attention see Democrats in Sacramento caving over and over again to the demands of an extremist Republican minority, while those not paying attention see generally that nothing good is happening and government is doing very little for them.

What might come along to raise democratic enthusiasm and encourage them to vote?  Jerry Brown running for Governor?  With the statements he's been making, don't bet that Democrats are going to be enthusiastic about Jerry Brown as their standard-bearer either.