California Nightmare

Today's Washington Post brings a thoughtful column from EJ Dionne on two overlooked ballot questions in last Tuesday's California primary. Golden State voters rejected referenda to increase funding for local libraries and to establish mandatory preschools for four-year-olds. There's a good-government argument against both: as Dionne notes, California has struggled over the last 20 years with budgeting by referendum, a tool that was designed to consider policy, not spending, questions. But the results also showed a suspicion of government spending that, Dionne argues, should alarm liberals.

In fact, virtually every result from the primary was bad news for the Dems. In the open-seat 50th District, highly touted Francine Busby lost to a weak GOP challenger, former Congressman Brian Bilbray--who, in these anti-lobbyist times, had spent the last four years working as a lobbyist. Immigration seems to have hurt Busby. At the state level, liberals and union supporters united to narrowly hand the Democratic gubernatorial nomination to State Treasurer Phil Angelides, spurning the far more electable Steve Westly. And the seemingly vulnerable chair of the House Natural Resources Committee, Republican Richard Pombo, is vulnerable no more, after Dem voters spurned a moderate alternative and re-nominated the left-wing candidate Pombo had easily bested in 2004.

Ironically, results elsewhere on Tuesday were very good for Dems, especially in Montana, where the party comfortably nominated the strongest possible challenger to embattled incumbent Conrad Burns; and in Iowa, where Chet Culver, son of the former senator, captured the Dems' gubernatorial nomination.

But over the last 20 years, California has been critical to the Democrats' chances nationwide. There might be a Dem surge this November, but it looks as if it will come without California--which would be a most unusual occurence indeed.