Needlenose

A year ago, polls in California showed a close race if Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger chose to challenge Barbara Boxer for her U.S. Senate seat.

A new Field Poll (PDF file) today, though, shows how much damage has been done to the erstwhile Terminator’s hopes by our state’s ongoing deficit crisis — which Arnold had been dancing around for years, until the current recession caused it to blow up in his face.

Leading 44-43 in an October 2007 snapshot, Schwarzenegger now trails Boxer 54-30 percent in a head-to-head matchup (with 16 percent undecided). Similarly, Boxer wallops ex-Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina in a two-way race, 55-25 percent (with 20 percent undecided).

For reasons that are probably not unrelated, neither Fiorina nor Schwarzenegger has strong backing from California Republicans — in a prospective primary contest, Arnold leads 31-24 percent, with 36 percent undecided. (With the governor out of the race, Fiorina’s support only rises to 31 percent, with 50 percent undecided). In CA as in the rest of the country, the GOP is a party out of ideas and overloaded with personalities whose schtick no longer sells.

As a Californian who was sickened by Schwarzenegger’s ability to leverage his movie stardom into the governor’s mansion (the same way a lesser celebrity might trade on their fame to get a reality TV show), I couldn’t be happier.

(Cross-posted at Firedoglake.)

From the Washington Post this morning:

A spate of retirement announcements by Senate Republicans this year have further complicated attempts by GOP strategists to begin rebuilding a party devastated by across-the-board losses in recent elections.

The latest departure news came yesterday, when Sen. George V. Voinovich of Ohio said he has decided not to seek a third term in 2010, citing a desire to “step back and spend the rest of our time with our children and grandchildren.” Voinovich joins Republican Sens. Sam Brownback (Kan.), Christopher S. Bond (Mo.) and Mel Martinez (Fla.) on the sidelines heading into the 2010 election. So far this year, no Democrats have announced plans to retire after the current Senate term.

The rapid pace of Republican retirement announcements has dispirited many in the party who thought the 2008 election, in which the party lost seven or eight seats (depending on the outcome of the Minnesota contest), marked the GOP’s nadir.

Obviously, I’m happy with the idea of improved Democratic electoral prospects in 2010, but there’s pressing business in the meantime — and I was looking forward to the possibility of nervous Republican senators (specifically, those up for re-election in ’10 in states Obama carried last November, as Voinovich was) helping Dems over the 60-vote filibuster hurdle on important legislation.

Chris Bowers at Open Left still holds out hope, saying that “retiring Republicans appear far more willing to support Democratic legislation than those who seek to stay in the Senate” — and explaining the logic as follows:

When Republicans are determined to leave the Senate, their leadership seems to lose control over them. This makes sense, as who cares about future retribution if you are leaving the camp altogether?

I’m not so sure.  Even if the retiring Repub senators aren’t officially under their party’s control, they’re still likely to be looking for GOP favors in their post-congressional careers.  And Nate Silver at Five Thirty Eight crunches his formidable database and comes back with a different conclusion than Bowers:

On the whole, though, there doesn’t seem to be much movement. Perhaps old senators — like most old people — are fairly set in their ways. Perhaps also they are voting their conscience — but being Republicans, they have a fairly conservative conscience.

Most of the key pieces of the Obama agenda, moreover, are fairly popular — the “big three” agenda items of the stimulus, health care, and energy policy certainly included. If I’m Obama, I’m not sure I wouldn’t rather have someone like Voinvoich or Martinez subject to the usual electoral constraints on these issues than being free to vote their conscience.

I’m inclined to agree with Nate.  Their conscience is the last thing I want these fuckers to be voting.