“They’ve all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they’ve voted in more or less approximates to the government they want.”

“You mean they actually vote for the lizards?”

“Oh yes,” said Ford with a shrug, “of course.”

“But,” said Arthur, going for the big one again, “why?”

“Because if they didn’t vote for a lizard,” said Ford, “the wrong lizard might get in.”

This is a terribly depressing approach to democracy but it seems to be true. When looking at the top Democratic candidates for Governor I can’t say I’m too excited. Angelides is a developer and based on his campaign funding, I cannot support him. Westly looked like an awesome candidate and I was all fired up to support him. I really admired his pledge to run a clean campaign but then he broke his promise by being the first to run negative ads. I feel betrayed. If you are going to publicly state “I pledge not to be the first candidate in this primary campaign to initiate any paid advertising in this primary campaign that attacks the other candidate by name” and then you go ahead and do so anyway, you lose your supporters’ confidence in you and you lose the public’s trust. Westly’s website no longer links to the pledge he made and he seems to want to pretend he never made such a promise. As such, I can no longer support Westly.

To find out who to support in the primary, I visited VoteCircle.com where I looked at a list of the Democrats running. I visited each one’s website and in the end I believe the choice is clear. I am very happy to endorse Michael Strimling, a true progressive running for Governor of California. Please, don’t vote for a lizard!

However, voting wasn’t what I expected because there were no candidates to vote for — only propositions. This made it a little anticlimactic. And none of the eight propositions passed. Wow. That’s a great use of what, $250 million in state funds? Thank you Governor Schwarzenegger — oh well, at least I had fun.