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So now that all eight of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's initiatives have been defeated in his special election, what now? What does it all mean?
Given that Governor Schwarzenegger had spent over $26 million on the California Special election by August of this year, it seems obvious that by November 8, this number will have reached well over $50 million. Even after having learned the price behind the propositions currently at issue, the Iniative Bloggers retained a grain of hope that an idealized grassroots iniative would be possible to create. The reasoning behind such a process is that hypothetically, anyone in California's hyper-democratically oriented society with a realistic and beneficial vision for governmental reform should be able to propose that vision to the general public. Unfortunately, as it turns out, the only "anyone's" who can indeed exercise this right, are those with not only great ideas, but also very deep pockets.
As an absentee voter, I have already cast my vote and sent in my ballot, but hundreds of thousands of people will vote to possibly make some big changes in our state on November 8. With the Special Statewide Election only days away, it is time to take a step back and look at the actual initiative process.
As many of the Initiative Madness bloggers have established in the past few entries, California's initiative system is not all that user-friendly. It's complex, convoluted, and, most importantly and disillusioningly, it's costly.
It is undeniable that most things vary from political party to political party. However, interestingly enough I have recently had the opportunity to witness first hand a great component of politics that is consistent all along the left-wing to right-wing spectrum: the importance and craft of public appearance and speech making. Though varying both in their format and subject material, it is impossible to ignore the similarities between Governor Schwarzenegger's Special Election "Town Hall" forum and Senator John Edward's live-at-UC Berkeley speech on poverty.
“This is your movement, this is your effort to end poverty in America.”
It seems that when all else fails, ignore the politicians.