The Sh*t L*st

Well, my vote was wasted. True, Huffington wasn't going to win anyway, and I suppose there is something deliciously appropriate in the fact that, out of 135 candidates, I would, with the most conscientious intentions, vote for the one who would turn out not to be a candidate after all. Hopefully, my vote on the recall measure itself will matter.

A more plausible poll from the Los Angeles Times:

The Los Angeles Times poll showed the recall succeeding by a 56 percent to 42 percent margin. That was a shift from a Sept. 12 Times poll that showed support for the recall stalling, with 50 percent of voters supporting it and 47 percent in opposition.

Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger had support from 40 percent of likely voters in Tuesday's poll, Lt. Gov. Bustamante had 32 percent and Republican state Sen. Tom McClintock had 15 percent. Source: Yahoo! AP

I read Hendrick Hertzberg's article on Arnold in the New Yorker yesterday -- a rather sympathetic protrayal. Hertzberg observes something that most people don't notice -- Arnold has red hair:

He looked like a vanilla sundae topped with raspberry sauce. His hair was a rich shade of red that is seldom encountered in nature, and never atop the head of a fifty-six-year-old man.

That his hair color hasn't become the central issue of this campaign only underlines the fundamental triviality of California voters.

I suspect the gap will be much narrower come election day as these media polls seem to invariably underrepresent low-income Democratic voters and, as with Gore-Bush, thoughtful, undecided voters who come to their senses at the moment of truth in the polling booth.

Meanwhile, watching Arnold campaign, I'm reminded of that early Simpsons episode where Burns runs for governor. (Any Simpsons fan who votes for Arnold -- and I'm sure there will be a number of them -- just doesn't get it.) We'll see if Arnold has to swallow any three-eyed fish in the final days of the campaign.