California Dems Get Snippy

No less than three Democratic state senators have voiced their distress over the ouster of Gray Davis and the election of Arnold Schwarzenegger:

(1) Sheila Kuehl said the following to The Sacramento Bee's Daniel Weintraub on election night, "This guy has no idea how to run a state. One of two things will happen. He'll have his own ideas and no way to carry them out. I mean he has already proposed three things that the governor cannot do. He wants to roll back the car tax on his own by fiat, which he can't do. He wants to tax the Indians, which he can't do. He doesn't know anything about running the state. So either he will propose a lot of stuff he can't do and we'll have to govern, or he'll be pretty well manipulated by people who have an agenda, very much the way I think the president of the United States has been handled by people who are really telling him how to do these things." It is now her self-acknowleged duty to save California from "ignorance."

(2) John Vasconcellos is threatening to resign rather than serve with a "boob." As a principal sponsor of the photo-red legislation, which now fines Californians $351 dollars with the flash of a traffic camera bulb, I hope that he is a man of his word.

(3) On CNBC, Senate President John Burton didn't attack Schwarzenegger directly but engaged in what has become a routine talking point for the California Democratic Party -- namely, associating the refusal to raise taxes with murder. Republicans, Burton noted, think that raising taxes is like "bayonetting babies in Nanking." Just last month, Gov. Davis said that the GOP would rather "shoot their mothers" then raise taxes. Upon closer look, these are actually backhanded compliments.

There are also threats to boycott Gov. Schwarzenegger's first State of the State address. Their absence will surely be noted, making for a rhetorical high point in what is routinely a supremely boring speech.