As Mickey Kaus suggested (sorry, his permalinks seem broken–scroll down to July 10), some “progressives” are trying to recruit Arianna Huffington for the now-almost-certain upcoming race to replace Gray Davis as governor of California. Combined with an entry by Ahhnulld, that will indeed put an entirely new “accent” on the gubernatorial debate.

Golden State donkeys have put themselves into a real bind. Now that the election is inevitable, they’re betting that they can scare the voters into keeping the corrupt robot in office with the threat of an Evil Right-Wing Republican (TM) for governor, by not fielding a candidate. Terry McAuliffe (he who predicted a victory for Janet Reno over Jeb Bush last fall), is running around declaring that no Democrat will be on the ballot.

This is a losing strategy for at least four reasons.

First, I think that they misjudge the depth of animus of California voters to the governor, and just how unlikeable they find him. They may be willing to replace him with John Birch himself, were he still alive.

Second, a fall election, with no other issues on the ballot, is much more likely to bring out those who are passionate on the issue. There’s a lot of passion against Davis. There’s almost none for him. In addition, despite their nasty rhetoric about this being a “right-wing coup,” there are many Democrats that want to remove him as well, and they’ll be marching to the polls.

In my opinion, the combination of these two factors makes his removal almost as inevitable as the election itself now appears to be. The only real issue at this point is who will replace him–keeping him is a lost cause. If the Democrats remain in denial about this, they’re going to lose the governor’s mansion.

The third reason is that if/when the Dems come to their senses and decide they do have to field a candidate, the Republicans will have a field day running McAuliffe’s quote, demonstrating what duplicitous power-hungry whores the Democrats have shown themselves to be.

Example TV commercial: Cue ominous-sounding music running behind a film noire photo of McAuliffe that makes him look like he just took a break from heaving brimstone, his own bellicose words, now shown to be a sham, emblazoned over his mug.

A voiceover from the Twilight Zone says:

“First, the Democrats say they won’t run a candidate. Now, they say they will.”

“What changed? What else will they say, and not mean?”

“What other promises will they break, just to preserve their corrupt hold on power that has led the Golden State so far down the wrong road?”

The fourth reason that this is a lousy strategy is that the advantage will go to the party with the fewest candidates on the ballot, to minimize vote splitting among your own partisans. Right now we know there’s at least one Republican candidate–Issa. I find it hard to believe that once the race becomes reality, Riordan and Schwarzenegger won’t jump in. If Simon takes another shot, that makes four (and that doesn’t even count Arianna, who may still be a registered Republican, as far as I know). So that’s four ways for the Republican vote to split. If the Dems can field a single credible candidate, he or she would almost certainly win, even with a high Republican turnout.

Remember, also, as I said, a number of Democrats are going to the polls, not to save Davis, but to replace him. The party leadership does them a disservice by not offering them a Democrat alternative.

Of course, that’s the rub. It will be difficult for them to unite behind a single candidate, because (as is the case with the Republicans) there’s no primary process in which that can occur. In addition to wanting to maintain a united front against the recall, they also know that once one candidate jumps in, it will be katie bar the door, and a number of others will as well, thinking that they can do better than that clown…

At that point, it becomes a race to the bottom, and there’s no way to tell who can win. I suggested to Mickey at the LA Press Club a few weeks ago that we should set up a reality show–“Who Wants To Be Governor Of California?”

You couldn’t recruit nationwide, because of the five-year residency rule, but given that one out of ten Americans already lives in California, and those people tend, proportionately, to be a little more…interesting…than folks from other parts, there would be no shortage of talent for the game.

You could lock them up on Catalina (or one of the less inhabited channel islands, so they don’t scare off the tourists) with the legislature, and see who survives best on lizards and buffalo, and prickly pear cactus over the next couple of months. It would be a good bonding process for the upcoming tax’n’budget food fights.

The winner would likely have more name recognition than anyone else on the ballot (including Feinstein and Panetta, if they decide to get in), with the possible exception of the Terminator, bringing it down to a two-man (or two-person) race.

And in either case, it will be an improvement over the incumbent.