Rachel just said we in CA might decide the

[VOX]

3. My wife and I are dropping our CALIFORNIA ballots in the mail tonight.

We love diversity here -- it works great, and we wouldn't have it any other way. When I was a kid, California, in spite of being the "Florida of the 40s-50s-60s-70s" (film-noir-central, beach bums, beatniks, sho-biz types, hippies, chucklehead surfers, health-food nuts, EST, the Manson Family, Scientology, earthquakes, Angela Davis, the Black Panthers, City Lights Bookstore, Monterey Pop, the Sunset Strip, the Patty Hearst kidnapping/SLA, on and on it goes), was once a conservative stronghold (John Birch Society, Ronald Reagan, John Schmitz, big-money folks in Pasadena, etc.).

Times have CHANGED. After the ice-water plunge of the right-wing-driven recall of Democratic Governor Gray Davis (paving the way for Arnold Schwarzenegger), California wised up, and is now so Blue you could swim in it. And the liberal bench is deep here. There are still the right-wing pockets in the Central Valley (home of Freeperville, and North San Diego County), but their votes get washed out by the San Francisco-Los Angeles-Coastal Democratic/liberal/progressive tide in every election. In the past six years, Riverside and Orange Counties, once Republican strongholds, have shifted over to the Blue side.