David Frum is riding high these days. What with calling his party to the mat for not working with the Democrats on health care, he’s a darling of the media these days.  So, today’s he’s got an op-ed on cnn.com that might interest a few Calitics readers.  Essentially, the thesis is that California can be the new birthplace of ReaganRevolution 2.0.

California Republicans are feeling an emotion they have not felt for years: hope. Not only may Republicans elect a governor, but also they have a credible chance of defeating incumbent Barbara Boxer and electing a U.S. senator for the first time since 1988.

Might the state of Ronald Reagan be returning to its old party loyalty? Even a little? If so, that return will have powerful consequences not just for California, but the country.

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But what if California returned to its former loyalties? California’s most recent Republican governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, was foreign-born and constitutionally ineligible to run for president. But if Meg Whitman wins the GOP nomination (as seems likely) and then the governorship, she’ll instantly become a leading candidate for vice president in 2012 and a likely presidential candidate for 2016. (CNN)

I lived in Texas back in 1994 when George W. Bush took down a very popular governor in Ann Richards. You could point to some similarities with Jerry Brown and his level of nameID and background support. But the parallels to Bush break down where so many other dreams come crashing down these days: on the shores of our dysfunctional government.

Let’s start from the beginning. Whitman has no smooth sailing to the Horseshoe, even with her $150 million. Jerry Brown, while admittedly sliding in the polls as Whitman pursues her all out media attack, is still a strong candidate.  

In 1994, George W Bush had a relative cakewalk to the primary and arrived in the general looking fairly benign.  He hewed to the middle (for Texas anyway) and governed a Texas government where the Democrats (who held legislative majorities) worked with the Governor. He was able to produce a few pieces of meaningful legislation by cooperating with legislative figures like the legendary Democratic Lt. Governor Bob Bullock.

Meg Whitman has announced that she will not work on a cooperative relationship with the legislature, rather, she will seek to bend them to her will. Not really the best starting point for building an effective government. Furthermore

Let’s be honest here, Governor Meg Whitman, at best, will be the third term of Governor Schwarzenegger. He’s done so well that he’s at Davis recall level approval ratings. And she’s committed to more brinskmanship, more posturing, and creating fights wherever possible.

And even if she were to work with the Democratic majorities, she’d soon discover that once you go down that road you have difficulties getting Republican votes.  And then you have difficulties getting Republican primary votes. Try asking some Republicans if they’d vote for Schwarzenegger in a primary these days.

And then, there’s the fact that any governor who inherits the gig from Schwarzenegger is coming into a morass that would have sucked in almost any politician. There are no easy answers to getting our government working again, and once you step in to that role, you will bear the political ramifications of our dysfunctional system.

So, Meg Whitman 2012/2016?  David, I wouldn’t print up the stickers just yet.

(For identification purposes only, I’m the Executive Director at Netroots Nation)

Last week yet another poorly crafted Jerry Brown email went out to his email universe. That’s not news, I’ve been cringing at their emails since they first started sending them. Most cringe worthy so far? Jerry Brown’s ring tone.

The subject line was decent, “You wouldn’t believe…” works for me. But the rest of the email violated about every best practice that’s been written for emails. Here’s some simple ones from Blue State Digital for starters.

There’s this weird screen capture of a YouTube video that actually goes to YouTube instead of their donate page (you just lost anyone that intended to donate with that link). Instead of highlighting specific text 2-3 times in the email they opted to use these weird huge contribute images. The email is rambling and without focus. The type is small, nothing is bolded to catch your attention. There’s all sorts of other links to distract you like facebook, etc.

And at the time it was originally sent the lowest contribution you could make without entering something in the “other” box was $100 even though they asked for $10, $25, whatever you can give in the email. And the highest donation was $51,800–now where’s my credit card that’s got that much spare room on it?

You can see a partial shot of it here.

Epic FAIL, the conversion rates have to be terrible.

More on the flip about how Jerry Brown’s email “best practices” are infecting the California Democratic Party and Alberto Torrico’s campaign for Attorney General…

But now this is spreading like a virus in some bad end of the world thriller movie. And it’s doing serious violence to online organizing knowledge.

The California Democratic Party decided to forward Brown’s email this past Thursday night to everyone on their list. They didn’t change a thing, they just forwarded this crappy email verbatim with a little header on top from Burton. You can see a partial screen shot of that here.

And then on the same day Torrico sends something very similar, but actually worse due to lack of focus, to his email list. See that partial screen shot here. I mean hey I’m a Kamala supporter so maybe that’s ok 🙂

Brown has obviously been in politics a long time, and the combination of his team running with these techniques and the CDP supporting them is providing some kind of weird signal to others to adopt them. If Brown’s doing it this must be what it feels like at the top of the game.

So in the hope Brown’s people, CDP people, and folks with other campaigns that read Calitics see this, please stop looking to these emails as examples.

* If you want to follow some good models look at what groups like Courage Campaign, MoveOn and OFA are sending out just to name a few. You’ll notice that fundraising emails are short, carefully constructed and focused, make specific asks, and if there is a video it’s on the donation page. Messaging, unfortunately, is a much longer conversation. But technique is important.

* There’s all kinds of help out there ranging from national consultancies like Blue State Digital (you know, the folks that worked for Obama) to folks like Trilogy Interactive to close to free help like New Organizing Institute provides to scores of articles and blog posts written on the subject. I love Wired for Change tools as much as the next guy but just having their toolset doesn’t cut it, you need to know how to use it.

* If you’re running against an insanely well funded candidate like Meg Whitman, as Brown is, then you need to take online organizing seriously and do it right. It’s an incredibly low cost multiplier to every other aspect of your campaign: fundraising, field, messaging, media, volunteers. All you need to do is look at the story of how a 1 term Senator named Barack Hussein Obama beat one of the most well established and financed candidates in recent political history. It wasn’t by sending emails like this.

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What else can we assume from the fact that she is now flip-flopping on releasing her income tax returns:

Meg Whitman is now saying she will release only a summary of her tax returns, falling short of her initial offer only two weeks ago of releasing her full returns over 25 years.

In comments to reporters after her appearance before a taxpayers’ group, Whitman, the former CEO of eBay who is running for governor, said she might release “a summary statement of the returns,” while conceding her campaign team hasn’t worked out details. (Political Blotter)

If Meg Whitman is constantly shifting her stance on disclosure and transparency already, how can Californians trust her in office?

I’m not sure what else to think of this. Apparently, she’s soooo over the traditional committee structure, and wants to get staff for the her “teams.”

GOP gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman, criticizing the Legislature  as a “bill factory,” said today that she would create legislative teams to focus on her top priorities as governor and veto most other legislation.

Whitman has said she will focus almost exclusively on three areas as governor: creating jobs, cutting government spending and improving the state’s K-12 education system.

“Let’s come together in teams,” Whitman told an audience at the California Taxpayers’ Association’s annual meeting in Sacramento. “Who wants to be on the jobs team? Who wants to be on the government efficiency team?”

The former eBay CEO later told reporters that lawmakers could “self-select” to be on the teams, and that those who didn’t want to participate wouldn’t have to. (SacBee)

So, you’d have these teams, which are really just a Whitman campaign structure. Why exactly would Democrats want to get on board with this? Apparently, Governor isn’t enough for Meg Whitman. She’s looking to become CEO with full authority over the state.

Too bad we have that pesky constitution in her way!

We all knew Whitman had been spending a lot of money, but this is absurd:

Republican Meg Whitman spent $27 million on her campaign for governor in the first 11 weeks of the year, setting a record-shattering pace with a prime-time television ad blitz to introduce herself to voters and attack her GOP opponent, according to a disclosure statement she filed Monday.

Whitman, the billionaire ex-chief of EBay, has spent $46 million since joining the race early last year, seven times more than either of her main rivals. (LA Times)

This is a truly shocking amount of money. She’s basically spent what it cost Gray Davis to get elected governor in 1998 already, and working towards his 2002 numbers very quickly. She will surely shatter Arnold’s spending records.  And an overwhelming majority of this money is coming straight from Meg Whitman’s pocket book. She truly is the “Buy it Now” candidate.

But the question remains, what is she trying to buy? And why?

A ton of financial details for the first 11 weeks of the year has now been released by the candidates.  The LA Times link also has some information about the money for the LG and AG races. And, as always, you can always check out Cal-Access for the full finance details.

George Skelton does Meg Whitman a semi-favor this morning.  He calls her conservative:

Sure, she’s a moderate — even veering liberal — on so-called social issues. But in today’s political climate, that doesn’t tilt her into being a centrist. The weighty issues for voters involve economic distress and dysfunctional governments.

Why do labels matter? Because they’re shorthand tools that politicians use to sway voters. In a Republican primary, “liberal” is an obscenity. Among Democrats, “conservative” is pejorative. In the November runoff, the winning strategy usually is to morph into a moderate with a minimum of flip-flops.

So where does Whitman stand exactly on some issues? Here’s where, based on an interview and a slick, magazine-size booklet the billionaire former EBay chief released last week:

First, the candidate emphasizes, she’ll focus on just three priorities: creating jobs, cutting state spending and fixing schools.

“In a turnaround,” Whitman says, “you can’t solve every single problem. You can’t come to Sacramento and boil the ocean. And I will tell you, having been in politics now for as long as I have” — maybe three years — “the gravitational pull to solve every problem is enormous.” (LA Times)

In other words, this is a woman who has no real plan to solve the state’s enormous fiscal problems. She’ll give you some pablum about “efficiency,” but when the rubber meets the road, she’s not willing to look at all solutions. If it involves getting the government the resources it needs, then it’s off the table.

Meanwhile, while the poll numbers may look good for Whitman right now, as she’s blasting her propaganda at an unprecedented rate, things aren’t always going to be as easy. Like, how is she going to explain to the Californian electorate her past “efficiency” record. Like spending $3 mil on private jets?

Whitman really does span the breadth of the Republican Party. She’s a far Right anti-government populist on some occasions, and a far right Corporate Elitist on other occasions.  Sounds like she fits right in with the rest of her party. Nothing new, nothing shiny, just plain ol’ Republican right-wing corporatism. With 150 million dollars.

Meg Whitman released her “policy book” the other day. One of these proposals was a “spending cap” of sorts. And she talked to the Bee about it.

As eMeg explains it, she’s going to go back to the 2004-2005 budget, and then account for inflation and population growth. And, then attempt to apply a “productivity factor” to reduce spending in each department by 1%.

It sounds really sensible.  One problem: It doesn’t come close to solving our budget problems.  In 2004-2005, our general fund expenditures were at approximately $80 billion. The 2010-2011 budget, as currently scheduled will spend $83 Billion. (2009-2010 was $86 bn.)  So, once you account for inflation and population growth, you are at well over our predicted expenditure for either year. $79.8 Billion in 2004 = $89.9 Bn. today.  Tack on population growth, and all of sudden you don’t so much have a spending cap as much as a huge shortfall that you’ve just expanded.

Even if you toss in her 1% productivity factor for a couple of years, that is reducing spending by 1% every year to achieve the same goals, you still don’t get anywhere close to where we need to be. Furthermore, the productivity factor just doesn’t really apply very well to government.  Sure, you could place that onus on state workers, but the percentage of the state budget that goes to state workers is less than a quarter of the budget. It’s really hard to apply a “productivity factor” to many, if not most, of the state services.

This is just one more example of a wannabe governor that just doesn’t understand the depth of our problems. Or the need for real revenue solutions.

Steve Poizner and Meg Whitman are scheduled to debate in about an hour and a half.  The debate is sponsored by California New Majority, so you are likely to see some full-on wingnuttery on display.  Watch it on CBS2, Ustream is down.

http://cbs2.com/

The folks at the California Accountability Project have even produced a Viewer’s guide (PDF) to all of the likely (mis)statements and half-truths.

Who’s making the popcorn?

UPDATE by Robert: I’ll be liveblogging here in this thread. Feel free to add your thoughts in the comments!

The debate is being held in Costa Mesa, down in my old stomping grounds of Orange County. Interestingly enough, Costa Mesa is where former mayor Allan Mansoor began bashing immigrants a few years back. Already we’re expecting this debate to have lots of immigrant and Latino bashing, as we saw at the CRP convention over the weekend.

…I’m trying to liveblog, but this ustream feed is really buggy.

…Relying on the Twitter feed, Poizner and Whitman are fighting with each other over tax cuts – not whether they’re a good idea or not given their massively negative impact on the budget deficit, but on whether theirs are big enough. Poizner says Whitman’s cuts aren’t big enough, Whitman says Poizner’s will cost too much. The fact is both offer cuts that cost too much and are merely going to benefit the rich.

…Nick Velasquez of the California Accountability Project Tweets: “Hope someone can fix this feed. It’s spottier than Meg Whitman’s voting record.”

…Still can’t follow the feed. I guess Republicans don’t want people to see what their candidates have to say! According to Twitter, Poizner is attacking NPR listeners, as well as saying he wants a part-time legislature, without mentioning that only the rich would be able to serve in such a legislature. Then again, Poizner and Whitman both seem to believe only the rich should serve as governor.

…Whitman says she plans to “pour money back into” UC and CSU, but doesn’t say how. She says she wants “more money to go into the classroom” for K-12 – but how? Giving local districts control of money isn’t enough – the fact is districts don’t get enough money period. Ah, here we go, she wants more charter schools, even though they haven’t been proven to work. Looks like she embraces merit pay as well.

…Poizner says flaws in K-12 is due to Legislature taking control from teachers and local districts. But he doesn’t say that Prop 13 took control from teachers and local districts. Will he support majority vote for school taxes?

…Now Comcast is acting up. Back again. Whitman is dishonest on regulations: they don’t cause job losses, they prevent them, as both climate crisis and financial crisis prove. She and Poizner both support suspending AB 32, despite its devastating negative impact on job creation.

…Whitman takes the immigration question. Says she opposes amnesty. Does she think those who benefited from 1986 amnesty should be kicked out? Does she think Reagan, who backed amnesty, was wrong?

…Poizner thinks immigrants come here for government incentives. Um, no. They come here for work because CEOs like you and Whitman want them to do so. What a clueless moron.

…NBC4’s Conan Nolan asking some good questions here about the inexperience of both Poizner and Whitman, and how they’ll work with a Democratic legislature they spend so much time bashing. Poizner says he’ll try to work with legislators, but will go to voters if legislature won’t play along. Yeah, because that worked SO well in 2005 for Arnold Schwarzenegger.

…Whitman says “imagine what this state will look like with Jerry Brown as governor.” Um, look around.

…Whitman now attacks Jerry Brown as some kind of tax and spend liberal. I wish he were! His record as governor was actually very fiscally conservative and he’s not proposing new taxes.

It really must be very hard to be as wealthy as Meg Whitman. You have to hire all these people to look after your money, and your life. And then you have to spend $150 million to become governor to shock doctrine the state. I mean, certainly, that’s part of the deal, right?

Well, for Meg Whitman, as the saying goes, mo’ money, mo’ problems:

Billionaire GOP gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman has invested her vast wealth in firms that sought to profit from the country’s credit crisis, in venture capital and hedge funds open only to the wealthy, and in oil, gas, healthcare and other concerns seeking to influence state policy.

The first public glimpse into the financial portfolio of the former EBay chief came Thursday, when she filed an economic-interest disclosure required of candidates.

The holdings present potential conflicts of interest for a governor. Whitman spokeswoman Sarah Pompei said the candidate would “likely” move her holdings into a blind trust if she is victorious “and will scrupulously avoid any conflicts of interest.”

Moving investments into such a trust has been standard practice for wealthy officeholders. Whitman’s opponent in the June primary election, state Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner, has placed his investments in a blind trust. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger did the same. (LA Times)

Now, this isn’t really all that surprising. She’s really, really stinking rich. And anybody that rich is going to have wildly diversified holdings, some of them troublesome.  Just ask CalPERS how easy it is to end up with somebody bugging you about your investment holdings.

That being said, this will be troublesome for Whitman, and if I were her, I would have put my investments in a blind trust the day I announced my candidacy. Sure, it’s not required, but it’s just going to turn a lot of voters off.

But there is a benefit of being rich. You get to buy 30 minute infomercials months ahead of the primary. One has to wonder if Michelle Malkin will be live-blogging the “phoniness” of this one like she did with the Obama infomercial.  

Of course, with this infomercial, as we mentioned yesterday, phoniness comes in spades. She’s taking mulligans when she doesn’t answer questions to her liking and “goosing” the audience for applause.

Must be tough to be Meg Whitman.