We’ll be liveblogging the results as they come in. Check in for results and commentary throughout the night. Get the latest election returns directly from Debra Bowen’s office by clicking here. Check which counties have reported here (hint: LA won’t be fully reporting for several hours).

ELECTION RESULTS

Last updated at: 7:45 AM

% reporting: 99%

* – declared winner by AP or opponent conceded

CA-Gov: Republican Nomination

Poizner: 27%

Whitman: 64%*

CA-Sen: Republican Nomination

Campbell: 22

DeVore: 19

Fiorina: 56.5*

Prop 14		Prop 15		Prop 16		Prop 17
Yes	54.2*	Yes	42.5	Yes	47.5	Yes	47.9
No	44	No	57.5*	No	52.5*	No	52.1*

LtG – Dems		LtG – Reps
Hahn	34	Aanestad	30
Newsom	55*	Maldonado	43*

AG – Dems

Delgadillo: 10

Harris: 33*

Kelly: 16

Lieu: 11

Nava: 10

Torrico: 15

AG – Reps

Cooley: 47*

Eastman: 34

Harman: 19

Other races will be updated in the liveblog starting right below this paragraph. Latest updates are first.

1:02: So far Props 16 and 17 are narrowly failing. With each update the margin of defeat grows slowly, but steadily. Let’s hope this trend sticks. This time I really am signing off for the night.

12:38: I’m as excited as everyone about Props 16 and 17 now trailing, but there are some cautions. Several big SoCal counties have a ways to go in their counting, and their initial numbers aren’t good:

Orange: 60-40 for Prop 16, 55% reporting

San Bernardino: 65-35 for Prop 16, 16% reporting

Riverside: 65-35 for Prop 16, 44% reporting

San Diego: 57-43 for Prop 16, 36% reporting

Then again, Santa Clara and Alameda counties have only a fraction of their votes counted, and LA is just at the halfway point. So it’s going to be a close one.

12:29 AM: Prop 17 is now trailing by about 5,000 votes. Prop 16 is losing by a steadily growing margin.

11:50: In CA-36, with about 30% reporting, Harman has a big lead over Winograd, 61.5-38.5. That’s about what Winograd got in 2006.

11:44: In some of the legislative races, Das Williams has crushed Susan Jordan in AD-35, 62-38. Wow. Stunning. In AD-28, Luis Alejo leads Janet Barnes 49-38. Santa Cruz County hasn’t reported yet, which is very good news for Alejo, since he’s the mayor of Watsonville. And in AD-53, Betsy Butler has opened up a lead on James Lau, 25-20, but only 30% precincts are in.

11:41: AP calls AG races for Kamala Harris and Steve Cooley. Chris Kelly wasted $10 million on his vanity campaign for AG. What a loser. Meanwhile, No on 16 continues to widen a small lead, and Yes on 17’s lead continues to ebb away.

11:20: I keep getting sucked back in. Prop 17 has been trending in our favor all night, and maybe once LA/Alameda/Santa Clara report, we might well see it too flip to the No column.

11:13: OK, one last update. SF finally reported, and with 99% of their precincts showing voters there rejected Prop 16 33-67, Prop 16 now clearly trails, if narrowly, in the statewide numbers. LA, Alameda and Santa Clara County still have reported only a small amount of votes, so Prop 16 might well go down. If so, it would be more than a David vs. Goliath victory – it’d be an ant taking down an elephant.

Older updates over the flip…

11:03: Given the slow pace of counting (something that could be fixed if California decided democracy was worth paying for) I’m going to turn in for the night. Pretty much everything is decided, except Prop 16. When SF, Santa Clara, and LA counties fully report, Prop 16 may well go down to defeat. Prop 15 will need huge Yes votes in those counties to pass, and there’s an outside change Prop 17 could still go down to defeat. We’ll wrap this up in the morning and deliver some assessments of what this all means. For now, buenos noches.

10:57: SF and Santa Clara County still haven’t reported. If big No on 16 vote comes from there – as we might expect – then it might well go down.

10:55: Abel Maldonado declared winner by LA Times. This should be an interesting race between Newsom and Maldonado.

10:52: Janice Hahn concedes, asks supporters to back Newsom in November. I like Janice Hahn a lot, and she could be a strong candidate in the future. But she needs to learn from this campaign. Hiring Garry South was a mistake that ruined her campaign, and I told her so back when she let him attack Newsom.

10:45: Prop 16 now dead even, with No having a 2,000 vote lead. This will go back and forth all night. It’s a remarkable achievement given that the No campaign was outspent something like 40,000 to 1 by PG&E. It would be even better if Prop 16 failed outright. Unfortunately, Prop 17 looks set to pass.

10:20: AP declares Dave Jones Democratic Insurance Commissioner nominee. Prop 16 regains narrow lead. Going to be back and forth all night.

10:14: At this point it looks like the only races where the outcome is in any doubt are Prop 16, maybe Prop 17, and the Republican Insurance Commissioner race (Mike Villines has a 52-48 lead over Brian Fitzgerald). Maybe a few state legislative races too – apparently Lau and Butler are close in AD-53.

10:07: Big batch of LA County votes just came in, and Prop 16 is now losing by about 16,000 votes. The Bay Area still has to report as well, so there is hope yet that 16 will go down. The other props look pretty much done, including Prop 15’s defeat. Ugh.

9:55: And just like that, California’s elections are completely and dramatically changed with the passage of Prop 14, which is only on the ballot because Abel Maldonado blackmailed the legislature in a moment of crisis. Prop 14 is designed to shift the Democratic Party to the right. Progressives will have to figure out how to respond, and fast.

9:42: The Boxer campaign is striking hard at Fiorina, launching FiorinaFacts.com and @Fiorina_Facts to tell the state about Carly Fiorina’s miserable record of failure.

9:35: AP calls Republican Sec of State race for Damon Dunn. It wasn’t even close. Orly Taitz got just 25% of the vote.

9:34: Prop 14 passes. The corporate effort to destroy progressive Democrats in CA now begins.

9:16: Jerry Brown speaking now in LA. LA County Sheriff Lee Baca introduced him as the man who “implemented Prop 13.” Oh great. This campaign season is gonna suck. Back to the 1970s for Jerry Brown: we need “discipline, humility, live within our means.” Brown sounds like he’s going to run as the apostle of austerity.

9:00: With 25% reporting, Das Williams has a huge lead – 67-33 – over Susan Jordan for the Democratic nomination in AD-35. Was NOT expecting that.

8:47: Larry Aceves out to a lead in Superintendent of Public Instruction race with 21.7%, Torlakson at 18.7%, Romero at 15%.

8:45: AP calls Republican Governor’s race for Whitman. Surprise, surprise.

8:41: Judging by the map from the SoS office Prop 15 is getting hammered across the state. 55% of Sacramento County is in and Prop 15 is losing 39-61. Ouch.

8:32: With 7.4% in, Harman leads Winograd 65-35. Should tighten up as night goes on.

8:13 LA County results (7%) show Prop 14 ahead 60-40, Prop 15 behind 45-54, Prop 16 ahead 57-43, Prop 17 ahead 58-42. Harris over Kelly in AG race, 23-18. Fiorina way up with 60%, Campbell 20%, DeVore 16%.

8:10: While we wait for the statewide numbers to update, OC elections show some interesting numbers from early voting. Aanestad has a 38%-33% lead over Maldonado. Damon Dunn is trouncing Orly Taitz in her home county, 71-29, which suggests Taitz is going to get crushed tonight. Oh well.

8:03: Apparently there’s some concern that Mike Gatto might not win the special election in AD-43 tonight due to low Democratic turnout. That would be a crime. Dems have a huge problem to face in mobilizing voters.

7:56: Field Poll predicts 33% turnout. Their final numbers were Whitman 51, Poizner 25 and Fiorina 37, Campbell 22, DeVore 19.

There is a very clear theme to today’s election: will corporations take over California’s politics, or will the voters stand up in defense of their democracy?

This theme appears again and again and again in races across the state, from the governor’s race on down to the ballot propositions and state legislative races. Corporations and the CEOs that used to run them are convinced that their money will be enough to sway voters to give those corporations and CEOs much more power over our wallets and our elections. A massively underfunded, but broadly-based progressive coalition is fighting back, and in some of the key races, the outcome is far from clear.

We can see the stark contrast emerging in both the Senate and governor’s races. Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman, the likely Republican nominees for Senate and governor, are both former CEOs of large Silicon Valley corporations. Both are extreme right-wingers who believe that government’s job is to help corporations dominate our economy by crowding out new innovations and competition, avoid their tax burdens, and undermine our regulatory protections.

But that battle won’t be decided until November. Today, there are some key battles over corporate power that will be decided, primarily regarding the statewide ballot propositions.

Proposition 15 must pass. As I wrote earlier this spring, it allows for the expansion of clean money in California, repealing a ban on public financing and setting up a test case for the Secretary of State race in 2014.

Corporate capture of government through unlimited donations is largely responsible for the economic and political problems we face. The only way to get out of that is to restore financial power over politicians to the people. We already pay their salaries. Why not have the state pay for their campaigns – especially when in this case, the money actually comes from lobbyists and not taxpayers?

California’s political and economic crisis will not end until we have kicked corporate money out of our elections. Prop 15 is the necessary first step toward that broader recovery and reform.

Prop 15 is also a clear reaction against Propositions 16 and 17. Put on the ballot and funded by PG&E and Mercury Insurance, respectively, these propositions make use of outright deception in order to undermine our democracy (in the case of Prop 16, requiring a 2/3 vote for the public to create their own power systems) or undermine our consumer protection laws (in the case of Prop 17, enabling auto insurers to get around Prop 103 and charge customers much higher premiums for a lapse in coverage). If these pass, then many other corporations will take note, and start funding their own propositions to undermine our democracy and our laws so they can make more money at our expense.

But that’s not all. Prop 14 would change the way our primary elections work, sending the top two candidates on to the general election ballot in the fall regardless of party. Not only would this shut out smaller parties, it would in many places extend a party primary into the general election – mostly Democratic races. In these “November primaries” there will likely be a progressive candidate and a corporate-funded candidate, and the thinking goes that the corporate-funded Democrat will get Republican votes and defeat the progressive, shifting the Democratic Party to the right and making it more subservient to corporate power.

You can read more about those propositions at the Courage Campaign and CREDO Action voter guide, which you can also receive on your mobile phone by texting VOTECA to 30644. (Note: I work as the Public Policy Director for the Courage Campaign.)

On the topic of Prop 14, some of the key Democratic primary races revolve around the same corporate vs. progressive divide. In AD-28, which includes the Salinas Valley, Watsonville, Gilroy and Hollister, the very progressive mayor of Watsonville Luis Alejo, backed by labor unions and the CDP’s endorsed candidate, is facing a barrage of negative attacks from Janet Barnes, moderate Democrat on the Salinas City Council. Barnes is backed by big agriculture and EdVoice, Steve Poizner’s old outfit, which dislikes Alejo because he will stand up for the teachers that EdVoice hates. I support Alejo in this race and hope he wins.

A similar split is happening in AD-53, with Betsy Butler racking up progressive endorsements (EQCA, CNA, etc) but facing a bunch of negative ads from big business, including insurance companies, on behalf of James Lau.

And of course, the crowded Attorney General field in the Democratic primary sees a similar split as well. Kamala Harris, the progressive DA for San Francisco, has faced a challenge from conservative Democrat Chris Kelly, who has spent $10 million of his own money on the race.

There are some other interesting primary races in both parties – the AD-35 Democratic battle between Susan Jordan and Das Williams (I’m neutral here, but it’s hard to understand why Williams made the foolish decision to back the Tranquillon Ridge deal); the Lt. Governor’s race for both parties (will Newsom win in the end? Can Sam Aanestad pull off the upset over Abel Maldonado?); and other races on down the line.

Calitics will have full coverage tonight. Hope you’ll be joining us for the liveblog!

Michael Arrington has a rather ridiculous post up at Tech Crunch about the government’s need to leave Silicon Valley aloooone. It starts with his recollection of Barack Obama as a good candidate for the tech industry and his bitter disappointment at how those hopes have been dashed. But ultimately it suggests how his blind, hypocritical, ideological dislike of government leaves him unable to see the real problem: corruption.

But it’s more than broken promises. Our government is just way too interested in mucking around in Silicon Valley by creating and enforcing rules based on little or no understanding of the consequences. A perfect example – recent proposed financial reform legislation by Senator Chris Dodd added on a few random provisions that could have devastated Silicon Valley’s delicate venture capital ecosystem.

Earlier this year I was invited to a small closed door meeting with Victoria Espinel, the U.S. Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator appointed by Obama. In attendance were CEOs and other senior executives of a number of large and small Silicon Valley companies. The meeting was supposed to be about how her office can help Silicon Valley thrive. But it became very apparent very quickly that Espinel has a single agenda when it comes to copyright issues – helping the music labels and TV/Movie studios deal with the Internet on their own terms.

The problem Arrington identifies here is NOT “government.” There’s nothing, nothing whatsoever, inherent in government that causes it to “screw up everything it touches,” in Arrington’s ideologically biased framing.

The problem here is corruption, plain and simple. Nowhere in his article does he explain how the large corporations and the vested interests trying to preserve a failed status quo have come to dominate the federal government, are perverting regulation to protect their own dinosaur-like existence and choke off new entrepreneurship and new innovation. Nowhere does he assess the role of campaign contributions that distort and misshape government policy.

Other Silicon Valley experts understand this reality quite well. Lawrence Lessig eventually realized the problem wasn’t “government” but “corruption” and started Change Congress. Lessig is now promoting Fix Congress First, an effort to implement a national Fair Elections Act, a federal version of Prop 15 that would create clean money for Congressional races. Lessig understands that until corporate money is taken out of our elections, government will continue to get the key choices wrong.

Someone needs to sit Arrington down with Lessig, because Arrington doesn’t understand this rather obvious point. He blames “government” as a whole, a stance which is only going to hurt him in the end. If government wasn’t involved, there’d be little at all to protect his beloved startups from the market-dominating money of the large corporations whose interests his startups threaten. Government regulation helps give those startups and Silicon Valley the ability to thrive. But corporate money is corrupting our democracy and enabling government to be used for anti-innovative, anti-creative ends.

Arrington actually understands the need for government, ironically enough. After saying “government screws up everything it touches” he then makes a sweeping call for government intervention:

If the government wants to help innovation in this country they should get busy with infrastructure. Lay fiber to every home and business in the U.S. Actually start building some of these high speed train networks to make travel easier. Get computers into the hands of every child in the country as soon as they are physically able to press buttons. Heck, put a woman on the moon. I don’t know if that last one will do much, but at least they’ll be busy not screwing up Silicon Valley while they’re at it.

This kind of massive government intervention is desperately needed – especially a U.S. broadband program – but it won’t happen at all if people start buying the anti-government bullshit Arrington is spewing. He even goes on to tell the myth that Silicon Valley’s success had nothing to do with the government at all, something might surprise those who worked on the federally-funded research projects that fueled the semiconductor industry, or the folks at DARPA.

Arrington’s enemy isn’t government, it’s corporate corruption of government. Instead of channeling his inner Ayn Rand, he needs to throw his weight behind Proposition 15, which starts to clean up California elections and improve our state government by beginning the process of getting corporate money out of our elections. He needs to get active in support of the full range of federal proposals, from Lessig’s to a full repeal of Citizens United, a constitutional amendment that says money is not speech, and elimination of corporate personhood. That will create the kind of positive relationship between government and Silicon Valley that Arrington wants.

He might also want to pay attention to the governor’s and US Senate race in California this fall. Silicon Valley has its own tendency to use large sums of money to dominate politics and corrupt government. Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina would both hand over more government power to large corporations and gut the public services and infrastructure needed to sustain innovation and creativity.

Arrington can either have his silly anti-government attitude, or he can have a functional Silicon Valley. He can’t have both.

Yesterday I read an article about the recent G20 decision to turn away from stimulus and growth and embrace austerity:

Finance ministers from the world’s leading economies ripped up their support for fiscal stimulus on Saturday, recognising that financial market concerns over sovereign debt had forced a much greater focus on deficit reduction.

Hooverism has now gone global, and the result is likely to be prolonged deflation and even depression. Interestingly, as the article showed, Tim Geithner argued against the shift away from stimulus, calling on Germany and China to adopt stimulative measures – though it was unclear whether Geithner was doing that to have other countries pay to help fuel growth and provide the breathing room for the Obama Administration to embrace fiscal austerity here at home that the political and media elites, fueled by Pete Peterson’s billions, are demanding.

The Hooverism we’ve been seeing here in California since 2007 has now gone global. And I got to wondering why that’s the case. Over email I discussed this with Digby, who offered her take here (I’m the unnamed “correspondent”):

After thinking about it for a bit, I’m not sure the same phenomenon we see here isn’t happening internationally. It’s an article of faith among financial elites across the planet that the welfare state is an abomination and this is a global opportunity to end it. Each culture will deal with it slightly differently — riots in Greece, marches in France, blog posts in America. But in the end, the result, short of revolution, will be similar everywhere — the post-war welfare state will be weakened or destroyed. The left is barely relevant anywhere anymore and they simply do not fear any kind of serious populist uprising. I’m not suggesting conspiracy. I think it’s more of a natural result of ideological capture.

Digby’s argument, which I think is sound, is that we’re essentially seeing the product of 20+ years of an effort to weave together an elite global economic philosophy that is inherently neoliberal in character that has, in her phrase, “ideologically captured” both governments and media discourse. The welfare state is seen as a drag on economic productivity, financial markets and creditors are seen as the most important economic actors in an economy, combining to convince many elites that deficits to fund a safety net are bad and should be eliminated. The Washington Consensus on steroids. Again, this makes sense.

But Digby went on to write something that helped me see what I was trying to put a name to, the underlying social factors that produced some amount of public buy-in for austerity:

Disaster capitalism depends upon the people being confused and stressed for its success. (In that sense, rioting in the streets may actually help them.) And all over the world right now, with the rapid change from globalization and resistance to modernity in general, there is a tremendous amount of social stress and cultural upheaval on top of this economic downturn. It’s the perfect time to strike.

It’s that “social stress and cultural upheaval,” the “resistance to modernity in general,” that I’m most interested in. More over the flip.

That buy-in should not be overstated. Digby is right to talk about the defeat and disempowerment of the political left, one of the necessary conditions of neoliberal success over these last 30 years (and always one of their most overriding concerns). Here in California, polls show most voters do not want austerity, at least when it comes to core public services.

Yet there is some level of buy-in for budget cuts, austerity, and worrying about deficits. The logic of “belt tightening” is common. Even many Democratic voters I talk to, some of whom consider themselves progressive, believe there’s just not enough money to go around, that we have to cut back, that’s just what you do in a serious recession.

The shift to a “cuts are good” mentality in a recession is, as we know, extremely damaging and reckless policy. But it appears to flow not from a flawed economic assessment, but from a very different place entirely – the “social stress and cultural upheaval” Digby mentioned. Without it, austerity would not be possible.

The globe is entering a period of fundamental change. The assumptions, values, and lifestyles of the last 60 years are no longer viable and are on their way out. Virtually everyone seems to know it in their bones. Some of us embrace the opportunity to construct something better.

Others resist, and cling ever more tightly to their older values. Much of this is driven by a growing generational gap that is rooted in race. California’s white population is “in decline”, and states like California, Arizona, and Texas have a stark divide between a diverse youth and a white aged population.

We see this in other areas as well; Northern California appears to be abandoning mass transit as older homeowners fight vociferously against new transit systems, be it bus rapid transit in Berkeley, light rail here in Monterey, or high speed rail in the Palo Alto area. Current services are withering due to a lack of funds, and yet nobody seems moved to try and rescue them.

Austerity is being mobilized to protect existing privilege. Whites with some assets, property, and political/cultural dominance see in stimulus for everything from mass transit to schools and health care a threat to their privilege through government aid to those who are the agents of the massive change they feel is coming upon them, change they do not want.

Here in California, unemployment hits unevenly. Latinos, African Americans and young people are facing the highest unemployment rates. Those are among the same people who are at the core of the new California, the new America, a place that in 10 or 20 years will look different than the 1950s or 1980s version of America that the defenders of the status quo remember and cling to.

Austerity helps rip out the legs from underneath those people and gives those who feel threatened by a diverse, different future a sense that their privileges are secure. As we know, this is a totally false hope – not only will the passage of time ensure their America vanishes, but their embrace of austerity is going to rebound on them, especially when their Social Security and Medicare benefits are cut, their pensions slashed, and their home values collapse when nobody is able to sustain the current, overinflated prices (at least here in California).

That’s how I see it working in California and the US more broadly – the embrace of austerity fueled by a desire to maintain white privilege and the trappings of a 20th century lifestyle that is no longer tenable.

So how do we get out of this? It’s unfortunately not enough to make the economic argument against austerity. If it were, Hooverism would remain in its tomb.

Instead it seems we need to do two related things: rally those who lack or are being denied privilege in support of a stimulus that is connected to a clear, coherent vision of future prosperity, a vision that can be sold to enough people in the privileged class that we can cleave them apart.

Disaster capitalism thrives on the belief that there is no alternative. Austerity works because people believe we cannot afford to build the future. So we have to provide an alternative so that people feel willing to build the future, and cast aside the belief that we can only afford to prolong the failed status quo.

It may be the case that we construct such an alternative in fits and starts over the next decade or two, as austerity produces a global “lost decade” – that seems to be Richard Florida’s argument in The Great Reset. I’d like to think there’s a way to construct it sooner and shortcut that painful process.

In either case, the key to blocking austerity is to understand how it is rooted in privilege, and to articulate a future vision that can animate a movement to destroy privilege, resist the elite, and defeat disaster capitalism.

There are few more disreputable or troubling people in law enforcement in America today than Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Since 1992 he has been the sheriff for Arizona’s most populous county, which includes the city of Phoenix. In that time he has made a name for himself as a brutal jailer, with chain gangs, a “Tent City” that forces inmates to live outside in the extreme temperatures of an Arizona summer, and other practices that have repeatedly been found unconstitutional by the courts.

Arpaio is also one of the leading forces in the racist attack on Arizona Latinos and immigrants. His sheriff department is notorious for its racial profiling of Latinos, raiding Latino neighborhoods and making mass arrests in the name of finding “illegals.” Arpaio has been the target of a US Justice Department investigation over these practices. He was a key backer of SB 1070, the notorious anti-immigrant law that Arizona Governor Jan Brewer signed, which implemented as state law what one Arizona paper called “Arpaio’s reign of terror”.

He didn’t stop there. Arpaio has also been implicated in a massive abuse of power scandal, where he and a county attorney targeted members of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, hitting them and judges friendly to the board  with bogus racketeering charges.

In short, Arpaio is the closest thing America has to a dictator. He’s more than a modern-day Bull Connor. He aspires to be a modern-day Pinochet.

That’s the man who just endorsed Steve Poizner for governor. And Team Poizner is now bizarrely touting this endorsement, a sign of how desperate they are now that he is 26 points behind in the latest Field Poll. Here’s what Poizner had to say on his site about this shocking endorsement:

“I’m proud to receive the endorsement from Sheriff Arpaio. Being on the frontline of America’s immigration battles, Sheriff Arpaio truly understands the burden that illegal immigration can have on our nation,” said Poizner. “As the only candidate in this race who supports Arizona’s immigration law, voters can trust that as governor, I will cut off taxpayer-funded benefits for illegal immigrants and other economic incentives that draw illegal immigrants to California.”

Bob Brigham had the best take on this, saying on Twitter What, was David Duke unavailable?

Poizner is going to lose and lose badly. I’m no fan of Meg Whitman, as you know, but Poizner deserves to be trounced if he is going to embrace racists and people who have no respect for the Constitution or the rule of law like Joe Arpaio.

In case there was any doubt where California Republicans stood on the issue, today they showed they believe Californians pay too little in health care costs and should pay much higher premiums whenever their insurance companies demand it. As the Sac Bee explains, Assembly Republicans voted unanimously to oppose a Dave Jones bill to regulate rate increases:

Health care insurers could not raise premiums, co-payments or deductibles in California without state approval under legislation approved Wednesday by the Assembly.

Assembly Bill 2578, by Democratic Assemblyman Dave Jones of Sacramento, passed by a vote of 43-28 with no Republican support. It now goes to the Senate.

…California already requires insurers to obtain state approval before hiking rates for auto, property or casualty insurance.

This comes as a direct result of Anthem Blue Cross’s decision to raise rates on customers by 39% – and some customers saw much greater rate increases. Republicans are apparently supportive of those increases and others like them, judging by their mass opposition to any effort to rein in those cost increases that are so devastating to California’s families during this recession.

Apparently Carly Fiorina believes she has the Republican US Senate nomination locked up, because now she’s going after Barbara Boxer in this ridiculous ad airing on TV stations across California.

The ad features Carly Fiorina saying “Terrorism kills – and Barbara Boxer’s worried about the weather.” In other words, Fiorina thinks global warming is nothing more than mere weather, that its potential to flood part of the Bay Area, devastate our wine and agricultural industries, worsen fires, and produce statewide water shortages is just mere weather.

Fiorina’s attack is intended to mock Boxer’s statment that climate change is a national security issue. But do you know who else sees climate change as a national security issue?

The Pentagon:

The National Intelligence Council, which produces government-wide intelligence analyses, finished the first assessment of the national security implications of climate change just last year.

It concluded that climate change by itself would have significant geopolitical impacts around the world and would contribute to a host of problems, including poverty, environmental degradation and the weakening of national governments.

The assessment warned that the storms, droughts and food shortages that might result from a warming planet in coming decades would create numerous relief emergencies.

“The demands of these potential humanitarian responses may significantly tax U.S. military transportation and support force structures, resulting in a strained readiness posture and decreased strategic depth for combat operations,” the report said.

Fiorina’s attack shows not only that she is anti-science and apparently supportive of the crippling effects of global warming on California’s economy – but that she is also totally delusional about the threats facing this country. She is, in short, as unfit to be in the US Senate as she was unfit to be the CEO of Hewlett-Packard.

She’s Silicon Valley’s Sarah Palin. No wonder the former Alaska governor endorsed Fiorina.

Watch it here:

I have to put “TV ad” in quotes because, as Carla Marinucci notes, this won’t actually run on TV:

It’s clear the other gubernatorial campaigns are skeptical, to say the least about whether this will ever make the airwaves. Tucker Bounds, spokesman for the Whitman campaign, puts it this way: “We got a kick out of Jerry’s latest stunt, which will never actually run on TV. It’s just too funny to see a 40-year Sacramento insider complain about the political climate he’s helped create. Jerry’s new blue sweater can’t cover up his record of fighting to defend the status quo in Sacramento.”…

[Brown spokesman Sterling] Clifford acknowledged this afternoon that the ad is just up on the web, and there’s no buys to put it on TV. Asked about Bounds’ quote, he says: “More negativity.”

That’s a good thing, because if this were a TV ad, Brown would be facing a real problem – the ad sucks. People would have tuned out of the ad or changed the channel because of the cacophony of noise and voices and miss Brown’s short statement at the end (which I believe is taken directly from his campaign launch video back in March).

The concept of Brown running an anti-politician campaign actually makes sense given Brown’s longstanding populist, independent approach to politics. It’s also a good way to tell an electorate that has either forgotten Brown or is too young to remember him that Brown is anything but the Sacramento insider he’s been all his life.

If Brown is going to spend his money on TV ads, he needs to produce unconventional TV ads that can brand him as a candidate of change. This online ad doesn’t really do that. Let’s hope the campaign goes back to the drawing board for their first real TV ad buy.

While Calitics was away enjoying the long weekend here in our Golden State, the latest USC/LA Times poll was released. It contains lots of good information, and now that it’s been out for a couple of days, we can drill down to see what it reveals, instead of just reporting on the toplines.

Don’t get me wrong, the toplines are fascinating. USC/LAT reports Whitman has rebuilt her lead over Poizner (53-29) and that Fiorina has jumped out to a big lead of her own (Fiorina 38, Campbell 23, DeVore 16). Significantly, a lot of Fiorina’s support is recent, suggesting a momentum shift to her and away from Campbell. DeVore’s recent rise further suggests Campbell is doomed, and is left to plead for donations.

The fall matchups are also interesting. Brown has a narrow lead over likely opponent Whitman (44-38) and Boxer has the same lead over Fiorina, 44-38.

But here’s where drilling down into the poll numbers starts to pay off. 54% of voters want a US Senator who will support Obama, whereas only 35% want a Senator who will oppose him. DTS voters are +27 when it comes to “Senator who supports Obama.”

There’s been some discussion of whether Boxer is helped by Obama coming to CA to campaign for her. This poll, along with Obama’s steady approval rating, indicates that Boxer should have Obama here as often as possible. Boxer’s path to re-election is through being Obama’s right-hand woman between now and November. Given the strong OFA presence here in California, left over from 2008, it seems all the more important that Obama and Boxer be a prominent political partnership over the next few months. If so, Carly Fiorina – with her endorsement from Sarah Palin – is toast.

Similarly, DTS voters indicate a strong preference for Jerry Brown over Meg Whitman, further fueling the widely accepted notion that most of California’s DTS voters are Democrats in disguise. 48% of DTS voters back Brown, compared to just 30% backing Whitman. Jerry Brown appeals very well to people who aren’t affiliated with any political party, and appears to have gotten a boost from the bloody battle between Whitman and Poizner.

The USC/LAT poll looked at some issues, such as Prop 14 (depressingly likely to pass) and marijuana legalization (voters are split, as other polls have shown). But where it gets really interesting is on immigration. More over the flip.

A few days back, wu ming linked to an Al Giordano post assessing the huge generational divides in California, Arizona, and several other states where immigration has been a big issue. Based off of a Brookings Institution study, Giordano noted huge generation gaps exist in CA and AZ, with over-65 residents being overwhelmingly white, and under-18 residents being overwhelmingly diverse.

The study indicates that in states like CA and AZ, immigration politics are a fight between an older generation conditioned to think of America as being primarily for whites, and a younger generation conditioned to think America belongs to everyone, regardless of skin tone or spoken language.

The USC/LAT poll found the same thing. White Californians support the Arizona immigration law 58-35, while Latinos oppose it 71-24. However, support increases as you go up the age spectrum. Voters under 30 are the only group to oppose the AZ law – and they do so by huge margins (58% opposed, 39% in favor). Voters 45-64 support it by a 14-point margin, and voters over 65 support it by a 23-point margin.

The LAT article that accompanied the poll illustrated the point, if imperfectly:

Gina Bonecutter, 39, a Republican and fervent supporter of the Arizona measure, said she was frustrated by what she sees as unwillingness by recent immigrants to acclimate to American culture. The Laguna Hills mother and part-time educational therapist said large numbers of illegal immigrants are hurting public schools, one of the reasons she placed her four children in private school.

“What I’m seeing today is immigrants coming here, wanting us to become like Mexico, instead of wanting to become American,” she said. “That’s never going to work.”

These racist attitudes, sadly common among whites in Orange County, contrast with us younger folks:

On the other side of the issue, Daisy Vidal, 23, of Banning said Arizona’s law will lead to racial profiling and she would never vote for a politician who supported it. A registered Democrat, Vidal is a first-generation American, born after her family immigrated to the United States legally in the mid-1980s.

“There should be some type of pathway to citizenship,” said the Cal State San Bernardino student. “This whole country was started by immigrants.”

Vidal is absolutely right. And yet the article limits itself by going to a first-generation immigrant for the “youth” perspective. Don’t get me wrong, I think such voices absolutely deserve to get heard in California, as they’re not nearly heard often enough. But you can talk to other voters age 30 and under – like a 4th generation white Californian, born and raised in Orange County (me) – and hear exactly the same sentiment.

Younger Californians, regardless of background, share in common an upbringing in an era where the California Dream was not defined as being primarily for whites. For voters over 65, they were raised in an era where it was inconceivable that nonwhites could ever share in that dream. For voters over 45, they were raised in an era where nonwhites could share in that dream, but only if there was enough to go around after whites got theirs first. Some of those voters – Boomers – rejected that framing and embraced the Civil Rights Movement, but obviously many others did not. Voters between 30 and 45 are increasingly torn between identifying with Millennial California – open to all – and the older notion of a white California.

These polls indicate that the identification of Millennial voters with deeply progressive values and politics has remained strong, despite some concern that the increasing failures of the Obama Administration would weaken those among that youngest, most numerous generation. Doesn’t seem to have happened, however.

Instead what we see is that the battle over immigration isn’t a battle between white and brown, but a battle between young and old, a generational war over the future of California. Given the realities of human existence, it is a war the young are destined to win. But we’ll see if the old are able to take our prosperity and our values of diversity and equality down with them.

KQED is reporting today on a new study suggesting that California and the Southwestern US have reached what they’re calling “peak water” – similar to the concept of peak oil, where water demand is outstripping supply:

The concepts of peak oil and peak water aren’t entirely analogous for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that, overall, water is a renewable resource.  But there are limits to what water is renewable, and how fast supplies recharge.  While the world is not going to run out of water, the report authors argue, in parts of the world including the southwestern US, we’re likely long past the point of peak water.  That matters a lot, said study co-author Meena Palaniappan, because unlike oil, which is shipped across the world, water is still a local and regional issue.

“We’re not going to run out of water,” said Palaniappan, “but we’re going to see a change.  We’re at the end of cheap, easy access to water.  We’re going to have to go further, pay more, and expect less in terms of fresh water.”…

In the western US, we are definitely past peak ecological water, said Palaniappan.  As evidence of this, she cited the Central Valley aquifer, which is being pumped down far faster than it can recharge and the Colorado River, which supplies Southern California with much of its water, and no longer reaches the ocean most years because every drop of it is appropriated for human use.

The Monterey Peninsula is quite familiar with this phenomenon, having long ago overshot our carrying capacity based on local aquifers and rivers. Since we’re not tied into the state water system, Monterey depends on local sources. And we’ve already grown beyond what those local sources can provide.

Since 1999 the region has been under water conservation orders, resulting in a virtual standstill on approving new water hookups, and the state water resources board has ordered a major reduction in pumping out of the Carmel River. If we want to even maintain the current level of water usage, or have any new growth, we need to build a desalination plant, and one is proposed for Moss Landing.

But that’s just for the Monterey region, with a population of less than 150,000. What of the 38 million Californians who depend on water sources that are becoming overdrawn and more difficult to replenish?

The upcoming November vote on the $11 billion water bond will help determine how Californians respond. The water bond proposal locks in some of the worst abuses and misallocations of water in the state, especially for suburban sprawl and irrigating marginal lands in the westside of the San Joaquin Valley, along with a Peripheral Canal. If the bond is rejected, however, Californians would potentially have the chance to chart a course toward more sustainable water use.

Especially considering the likely effect of global warming on California water systems, with a reduced snowpack, it’s important that we get it right instead of merely finding ways to prolong the current water usage system when it is no longer viable.