They believe Davis lied to them about the state's $38 billion deficit and the pain and cost of closing it. They are fed up with the exploding cost of government and a soaring tax burden that hits the middle class hardest. They feel the loss of the manufacturing jobs going overseas and see the white-collar jobs beginning to follow.
They have suffered the hammer blow of the collapse of the dot.com boom in Silicon Valley. Finally, native sons are packing and heading east in the hundred of thousands every year because the California they grew up in has become another country.
In one generation, countless millions of immigrants, legal and illegal, have poured in, sending poverty rates soaring in Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Orange and Riverside counties. In Los Angeles County, one survey found that half the 9 million people speak a language other than English in their homes.
What should concentrate the mind of Karl Rove is that the combustible material that has exploded in California is present in many of the states President Bush has to carry in 2004.
Almost every state has a budget crisis. The federal deficit is headed toward $500 billion. President Bush, too, has a credibility problem over why we went to war. The immigration issue is red hot nationwide, which is why the president backed away from a pledge to Mexico's Vicente Fox to grant amnesty to millions of illegal Mexican aliens. One in every seven manufacturing jobs, 2.5 million, has vanished under President Bush. Now, white-collar jobs are being lost to Asia, as American companies use satellites to communicate instantly with their new back offices -- in India.
The Democratic race for the nomination is being ignored by TV news-talk channels that cannot get enough of Arnold and the recall. We may be on the cusp of a people's revolution.
Let us hope so. In any event, the California revolution, which has appalled the elites, is the best political news in many moons. Hallelujah, hallelujah.