I’ve been focusing on talking to as many challengers and elected officials as possible.  And I get two almost contradictory opinions.  The presidential primary is great because it brings new energy and attention to the party and new voters into the process; and yet at the same time, the downballot candidates find it difficult to raise money, secure staff and get attention, because it’s all being forced upwards.  This is particularly a problem in California, where we think we run the country, sad to say, and where we get hung up on national issues.  We have to come back home and take advantage of these opportunities we have at the local level.

The encouraging factor is that we have won the budget conversation in the state legislature, and when I say we, I mean those of us who wanted a posture that finally said no to a cuts-only approach, that focused on the 2/3 requirement and the need to either overturn that legislatively or win at the ballot box.  I had the opportunity to have dinner last night with a large group including Asm. Ted Lieu (AD-53), the chair of the Rules Committee, and he was able to designate those targeted seats where we can flip districts (AD-80, AD-78, AD-15) and talk about the oil extraction tax and the yacht loophole in a very direct way.  This is the year we take back the conversation over the budget and call the Yacht Party out for their obstructionism.  That is very exciting.

Obviously there are the endorsement fights.  Outside of the Leno-Migden battle royale, let me just quickly talk about AD-40, which is near where I live: Bob Blumenfield is an associate of Rep. Howard Berman, who kind of runs Valley politics.  He reportedly told Lloyd Levine that he had to support Blumenfield to get his endorsement in Levine’s State Senate race (in my district of SD-23, against Fran Pavley).  Stuart Waldman, who is also running in AD-40, was working for Levine at the time.  So Levine fired Waldman and threw his support to Blumenfield.  So it’s all crappy machine politics of the most odious kind, and it’s not limited to Sacramento.  Our new leadership in the Senate and Assembly offers some opportunities to change that to an extent, but this is still how California is run for the most part.  You’re already seeing here the beginning of the 2009 State Party Chair race and the 2010 Governor’s race.  

That’s transactional politics, and it bores me.  I’m interested in a transformational politics that changes the conversation and inspires those who don’t attend a convention.  Getting single payer in the platform is an example.  Talking about the 2/3 majority and splitting Prop. 13 is an example.  Talking about the budget in a compassionate way, as a document that reflects our priorities, is an example.  The rest is bluster.

As I said, we’ve talked to a number of candidates, and we’ll have audio (and video) up in the next few days with Charlie Brown (CA-04), Russ Warner (CA-26), Bill Durston (CA-03) and Debbie Cook (CA-46), who we’re interviewing this morning.  But I wanted to give the line of the night that I overheard, in a conversation between Russ Warner and Rep. Diane Watson.  She was talking about David Dreier’s shameful conduct as chair of the Rules Committee under the DeLay machine, where he blocked nearly all Democratic amendments and ran the committee with an iron fist.  Watson talked about an anti-terrorism bill the Republicans wanted to pass, and she said to a Republican colleague, “You guys can’t tell me from Maxine Waters, how are you going to tell what Middle Easterner is a terrorist?”  Classic.

So apparently a bunch of foundations are paying Leon Panetta $16 million dollars to come up with new solutions to the political morass in Sacramento.

“The principal dysfunction of Sacramento,” Panetta says, “is similar to what’s happening in Washington: the inability of the elected leadership to come together and arrive at necessary compromises for solutions to the problems we face.”

And how do the politicians get prodded into doing that? “Those who are elected have to be convinced that governing is more important than winning. They have to believe that good government is good politics. If they don’t, they’ll keep on fighting in trench warfare.”

I enjoy pixies and unicorns as well, but “magic bipartisanship” isn’t the $16 million dollar answer here.  It’s actually quite a lot more simple.

• Eliminate the requirements that stalemate government and restrict the elected majority from doing the business of the state, in particular the 2/3 requirement for budgeting and taxes.

• Watch the productivity.

Most Californians are not in the mythical center; this is a fiction used to explain irresponsible government.  If the state legislature would be allowed to do their job, suddenly this desperate desire for bipartisanship would melt away, and the party in power would rise or fall on the consequences of their actions.  As it stands they’re not allowed to have any consequences, and we all suffer.

Panetta and his compatriots offer the same warmed-over stew of redistricting reform (please, do redistrict Santa Monica and downtown LA and San Francisco and Marin County and make them competitive.  Have fun with that) and open primaries (yes, because Louisiana is a bipartisan love-fest).  Now, that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have some ideas that would at least have an impact.

Says Panetta: “We’re not interested in walking off a cliff — or simply issuing reports and letting them sit someplace. Our goal is to focus on reforms that we can, in fact, put in place.”

But he adds that everything will be considered: Tax restructuring, including Proposition 13. School financing, including Proposition 98 guarantees. The two-thirds vote requirement for budget passage. (Why not at least return to how it was before 1962 when a budget that didn’t increase spending by more than 5% could be passed on a majority vote?) Spending limits. (California had one before voters eviscerated it about 20 years ago.) Initiative reforms that would control ballot box budgeting.

Some of these are great, some not so much.  But it’s so clear that California legislators aren’t allowed to do their jobs, and as long as that remains the case, nothing else will get done.  And wrapping it up in this language of “bipartisanship” is almost criminally stupid.  When you can’t get yacht sales tax avoidance stricken by the minority party, when looking at tax breaks is treated like some kind of heresy, when “Budget Nun” Elizabeth Hill finally gives up because her policy prescriptions sit on a shelf, your problem isn’t going to be cured by sitting in a circle and gazing longingly at one another.  It’s going to be solved by having a government that reflects the popular will.

You can mail my $16 million check to the Calitics home office.

A new AP story came down the wire today about possible changes to the budget process.  As this fits well with the discussion on mbayrob's diary, I thought we should keep talking.  So, as the AP sees it, 5 things can happen:

1. Change to a simple majority vote
2. Use spending priorities which would automatically cut funds from lower priorities if necessary
3. Tighten deadlines elsewhere in the process.
4. Make 2/3 Rule apply elsewhere in the process.
5. Change the tax structure to allow more local control
6. Penalize tardiness using innovative penalties (sort of miscellany)

Obviously, I've made my opinion on this clear already: we need to return to democracy by returning to the majority vote requirement. Read the whole story for more details.  Also, we could combine some of these options.  Senator Perata has said he supports reforming the tax structure.  There are many reasonable options, but what is becoming abundantly clear is that the status quo is not one of them.